Rethinking Life At The Margins

Experimenting with new ways of looking at the contexts, subjects, processes and multiple political stances that make up life at the margins, this book provides a novel source for a critical rethinking of marginalisation. Drawing on post-colonialism and critical assemblage thinking, the rich ethnographic works presented in the book trace the assemblage of marginality in multiple case-studies encompassing the Global North and South. These works are united by the approach developed in the book, characterised by the refusal of a priori definitions and by a post-human and grounded take on the assemblage of life. The result is a nuanced attention to the potential expressed by everyday articulations and a commitment to produce a processual, vitalist and non-normative cultural politics of the margins. The reader will find in this book unique challenges to accepted and authoritative thinking, and provides new insights into researching life at the margins.

Removing the Margins works to identify and challenge many of the cultural and systematic paradigms that perpetuate racism and other forms of oppression in mainstream schooling. The authors pursue the ideal that education should not simply affirm the status quo but should produce knowledge for social action. This philosophical and theoretical resource also moves beyond the study of educational failure to explore the new and creative ways schooling barriers have been confronted. The focus is placed on the factors of representation, family and community, staff equity, language integration and spirituality as fundamental to school reform. Removing the Margins is the product of five years of research and writing in the search for best practices in inclusive education. The authors address the philosophical and theoretical bases for inclusivity in this book, while laying out the practical approach in the accompanying volume Inclusive Schooling: A Teacher's Guide to Removing the Margins.

This book examines Félix Guattari, the French psychoanalyst, philosopher, and radical activist, renowned for an energetic style of thought that cuts across conceptual, political, and institutional spheres. Increasingly recognised as a key figure in his own right, Guattari’s influence in contemporary social theory and the modern social sciences continues to grow. From the ecosophy of hurricanes to the micropolitics of cinema, the book draws together a series of Guattarian motifs which animate the complexity of one of the twentieth century’s greatest and most enigmatic thinkers. The book examines techniques and modes of thought that contribute to a liberation of thinking and subjectivity. Divided thematically into three parts – ‘cartographies’, ‘ecologies’, and ‘micropolitics’ – each chapter showcases the singular and pragmatic grounds by which Guattari’s signature concepts can be found to be both disruptive to traditional modes of thinking, and generative toward novel forms of ethics, politics and sociality. This interdisciplinary compendium on Guattari’s exciting, experimental, and enigmatic thought will appeal to academics and postgraduates within Social Theory, Human Geography, and Continental Philosophy. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For every woman, from the young to those in midlife and beyond, who has ever been told, "You can't" and thought, "Oh, I definitely will!"--this book is for you. Women are expected to be many things. They should be young enough, but not too young; old enough, but not too old; creative, but not crazy; passionate, but not angry. They should be fertile and feminine and self-reliant, not barren or butch or solitary. Women, in other words, are caught between social expectations and a much more complicated reality. Women who don't fit in, whether during life transitions or because of changes in their body, mind, or gender identity, are carving out new ways of being in and remaking the world. But this is nothing new: they have been doing so for thousands of years, often at the margins of the same religious traditions and cultures that created these limited ways of being for women in the first place. In The Defiant Middle, Kaya Oakes draws on the wisdom of women mystics and explores how transitional eras or living in marginalized female identities can be both spiritually challenging and wonderfully freeing, ultimately resulting in a reinvented way of seeing the world and changing it. "Change, after all," Oakes writes, "always comes from the margins."

Pursuing fragments -- Pulling together, falling apart -- Knowing fragments -- Writing in fragments -- Political framings -- Walking cities -- In completion.

Over the past decades, the growing interest in the study of literature of the city has led to the development of literary urban studies as a discipline in its own right. The Routledge Companion to Literary Urban Studies provides a methodical overview of the fundamentals of this developing discipline and a detailed outline of new directions in the field. It consists of 33 newly commissioned chapters that provide an outline of contemporary literary urban studies. The Companion covers all of the main theoretical approaches as well as key literary genres, with case studies covering a range of different geographical, cultural, and historical settings. The final chapters provide a window into new debates in the field. The three focal issues are key concepts and genres of literary urban studies; a reassessment and critique of classical urban studies theories and the canon of literary capitals; and methods for the analysis of cities in literature. The Routledge Companion to Literary Urban Studies provides the reader with practical insights into the methods and approaches that can be applied to the city in literature and serves as an important reference work for upper-level students and researchers working on city literature. Chapter 15 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com

This book attempts to explore the effects of neoliberalism on particular forms of community. Guy Standing (2011) has popularised the notion of precariousness to describe the unpredictable neoliberal conditions faced by radically different people throughout the world. Members of Standing’s ‘precariat’ lack occupational identities, treat work and other moneymaking activities instrumentally, are focused on the short-term and have no ‘shadow of the future’ hanging over their actions, leaving little incentive to sustain long-term relationships and productive, but unpaid, social activities. This issue presents an interdisciplinary account of the challenges faced by communities at a time in which neoliberalism seems unchecked and uncheckable by the rise of nationalist populism. At points, responses are presented, but it is perhaps reflective of the general sense of helplessness of those committed to tackling neoliberalism that the final article highlights serious deficits in an approach commonly presented as a practicable response: basic income. In the spirit of participation, each article is accompanied by a reply by a non-academic as well as an academic. This ought not to be seen as tokenism – the experience of the project has been that discussions can be advanced much more effectively through engagement with community members and professionals. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Global Discourse.

In Mexico City, as in many other large cities worldwide, contemporary modes of urban governance have overwhelmingly benefited affluent populations and widened social inequalities. Disinvestment from social housing and rent-seeking developments by real estate companies and land speculators have resulted in the displacement of low-income populations to the urban periphery. Public social spaces have been eliminated to make way for luxury apartments and business interests. Low-income neighbourhoods are often stigmatized by dominant social forces to justify their demolition. The urban poor have however negotiated and resisted these developments in a range of ways. This text explores these urban dynamics in Mexico City and beyond, looking at the material and symbolic mechanisms through which urban marginality is produced and contested. It seeks to understand how things might be otherwise, how the city might be geared towards more inclusive forms of belonging and citizenship.