Geographies of Muslim Identities: Diaspora, Gender and Belonging

Professor Cara Aitchison · Professor Mei-Po Kwan · Professor Peter Hopkins · Dr Mark Boyle · Professor Donald Mitchell · Dr David Pinder

Nov 2012 · Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

About this ebook

In recent years, geographies of identities, including those of ethnicity, religion, 'race' and gender, have formed an increasing focus of contemporary human geography. The events of September 11th, 2001 particularly illustrated the ways in which identities can be transformed across time and space by both global and local events of a social, cultural, political and economic nature. Such transformations have also demonstrated the temporal and spatial construction of hate and fear, and of increasing incidences of 'Islamophobia' through the construction of Muslims as 'the Other'. As the social scientific study of religion continues to be marginalized within mainstream scholarship, there remains an important gap in the literature.

This timely book addresses this gap by collecting a range of cutting-edge contributions from the social, cultural, political, historical and economic sub-disciplines of geography, together with writings from gender studies, cultural studies and leisure studies where research has revealed a strong spatial dimension to the construction, representation, contestation and reworking of Muslim identities. The contributors illustrate the ways in which such identities are constructed, represented, negotiated and contested in everyday life in a wide variety of international contexts, focusing upon issues connected with diaspora, gender and belonging.

About the author

Professor Cara Aitchison is Dean of the Faculty of Education and Sport at the University of Bedfordshire, UK. Peter Hopkins is Lecturer in Social Geography, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne and Mei-Po Kwan is Distinguished Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the Department of Geography at the Ohio State University, USA.

Peter E. Hopkins, Mei-Po Kwan, Cara Carmichael Aitchison, Patricia Ehrkamp, Cameron McAuliffe, Sadiq Mir, Gabriele Marranci, Sonja van Wichelen, Eileen Green, Carrie Singleton, Tess Kay, William C. Rowe, Samuel Zalanga.