I wanted to make a post about this excellent book as it covers many of the themes of central to this blog. Fisrtly Shail Mayaram has put together a diverse collection of original accounts of multiculturalism in non-Western cities, multiculturalism that is often overlooked. His introduction addresses the subject of world cities and draws on Sassen’s classification of “world/global cities”. Quoting de Certeau and Lefebvre, Mayaram is clearly interested in everyday life theory. He is also concerned with space and what he tentatively refers to as subaltern cosmopolitanism. He recognises that there is an unbalanced celebration of cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism, and lists a series of popular definitions that fail to respond to lived multiculturalism (9). The strength of his introduction rests in focussing on the city and, despite its critical scrutiny, its potential for broader investigation.The chapter by Bayat on cosmopolitan Cairo is a rich exploration about everyday relations between Muslims and Coptic Christians in the city. It succeeds in being a parochial account that through reflection poses important questions for relations with Muslims in multicultural settings. This is another particular strength of the collection as a whole; that it addresses Islam and Muslim communities in settings that provide compelling alternative accounts to the concerns regarding Muslims in the multicultural West.
This work although not about multiculturalism in Western cities is actually an necessary addition to that project. It importantly addresses how intercultural relations have been developed and take place in other locations. The use of the everyday grounds these works and provide an important balance by showing again and again, how multiculturalism is characteristic of the places from which it emerges.
