Urban communities / city life Books

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisThis book presents a critical and aesthetic defence of “non-place” as an act of cultural reclamation. Through the restorative properties of photography, it re-conceptualises the cultural significance of non-place. The non-place is often referred to as “wasteland”, and is usually avoided. The sites investigated in this book are located where access and ownership are often ambiguous or in dispute; they are places of cultural forgetting. Drawing on the author’s own photographic research-led practice, as well as material from photographers such as Ed Ruscha, Joel Sternfeld and Richard Misrach, this study employs a deliberately allusive intertexuality to offer a unique insight into the contested notions surrounding landscape representation. Ultimately, it argues that the non-place has the potential to reveal a version of England that raises questions about identity, loss, memory, landscape valorisation, and, perhaps most importantly, how we are to arrive at a more meaningful place. Table of Contents1. Introduction.- 2. Walking as a Decisive Moment.- 3. Representations of the Urban Landscape.- 4. Anthropological Encounters in Non-Place.- 5. The Valedictory Landscape.

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Book SynopsisThe fate of towns and cities stands at the center of the environmental history of World War II. Broad swaths of cityscapes were destroyed by the bombing of targets such as transport hubs, electrical grids, and industrial districts, and across Europe, Asia, and the Americas, urban environments were transformed by the massive mobilization of human and natural resources to support the conflict. But at the same time, the war saw remarkable resilience among the human and non-human residents of cities. Foregrounding the concept of urban resilience, this collection uncovers the creative survival strategies that city-dwellers of all kinds turned to in the midst of environmental devastation. As the first major study at the intersection of environmental, urban, and military history, The Resilient City in World War II lays the groundwork for an improved understanding of rapid change in urban environments, and how societies may adapt.Table of ContentsI. Introduction1. Environmental History, the Second World War, and Urban ResilienceII. Urban Environment2. Critical Networks3. Fortress City: The Militarized Landscape of Seattle4. War and Urban-Industrial Air Pollution in the UK and US5. Imagined ResilienceIII. Urban Nature6. Guerrilla Gardening? Urban Agriculture and the Environment7. Gaining Strength from Nature8. Resilience behind Bars9. Where Have all the Pigeons GoneIV. Urban Society10. Partial Resilience in Nationalist China's Wartime Capital11. Japanese-Occupied Hanoi12. The Esteros and Manila’s Postwar Remaking13. Apocalyptic Urban FutureV. Conclusions14. Epilogue: What Makes a City Resilient?

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Book SynopsisThis book highlights the expansion of the influential Pentecostal Hillsong Church global megachurch network from Australia across global cities. Ethnographic research in Amsterdam and New York City shows that global cities harbor nodes in transnational religious networks in which media play a crucial role. By taking a lived religion approach, media is regarded as integral part of everyday practices of interaction, expression and consumption of religion. Key question raised is how processes of mediatization shape, alter and challenge this thriving cosmopolitan expression of Pentecostalism. Current debates in the study of religion are addressed: religious belonging and community in global cities; the interrelation between media technology, religious practices and beliefs; religion, media and social engagement in global cities; media and emerging modes of religious leadership and authority. In this empirical study, pressing societal issues like institutional responses to sexual abuse of children, views on gender roles, misogyny and mediated constructions of femininity are discussed.Trade Review“This book uncovers the penetration of the media-saturated sociocultural environment into the everyday life of Hillsong Church through the religious perspectives and practices of Hillsong Church actors and then explores the intertwining of the media with the Hillsong Church. This book is a catalyst for research in Pentecostal Christianity, globalization and religious mobility, and media–religion relations.” (Wei Xiong, Religious Studies Review, Vol. 48 (4), December, 2022)Table of ContentsIntroduction.- Community Formation in Global Cities.- Time and Presence.- Social Engagement.- Authenticity and Transparency.- Media Protest.- Pentecostal Popular Feminism.- Mediatized Christianity.- Conclusion.

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