ABSTRACT
In this unique book Scott A. Bollens combines personal narrative with academic analysis in telling the story of inflammatory nationalistic and ethnic conflict in nine cities – Jerusalem, Beirut, Belfast, Johannesburg, Nicosia, Sarajevo, Mostar, Bilbao, and Barcelona. Reporting on seventeen years of research and over 240 interviews with political leaders, planners, architects, community representatives, and academics, he blends personal reflections, reportage from a wealth of original interviews, and the presentation of hard data in a multidimensional and interdisciplinary exploration of these urban environments of damage, trauma, healing, and repair.
City and Soul in Divided Societies reveals what it is like living and working in these cities, going inside the head of the researcher. This approach extends the reader’s understanding of these places and connects more intimately with the lived urban experience. Bollens observes that a city disabled by nationalistic strife looks like a callous landscape of securitized space, divisions and wounds, frozen in time and in place. Yet, the soul in these cities perseveres.
Written for general readers and academic specialists alike, City and Soul in Divided Societies integrates facts, opinions, photographs, and observations in original ways in order to illuminate the substantial challenges of living in, and governing, polarized and unsettled cities.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |20 pages
Polarized Cities
chapter |2 pages
Introduction
chapter |5 pages
Scholarship with an ‘I'
chapter |11 pages
Soul in the City: Epic Cultures and Urban Fault-Lines
part |179 pages
Nine Cities, Nine Sorrows
chapter |17 pages
Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina: ‘Urbicide' and Dayton
chapter |13 pages
Belfast, Northern Ireland: A ‘Peace' Not Envisioned
chapter |11 pages
Nicosia, Cyprus: Surmounting Walls, Not Politics
chapter |15 pages
Basque Country, Spain: Moving from Etxea to Euskal Hiria
chapter |12 pages
Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina: The City as War Spoils
chapter |16 pages
Barcelona, Spain: An Inclusive Nationalism?
chapter |21 pages
Jerusalem, Israel/West Bank: Narrowing the Grounds for Peace
chapter |28 pages
Beirut, Lebanon: City in an Indeterminate State, Part I 1
chapter |27 pages
Beirut, Lebanon: City in an Indeterminate State, Part II
part |51 pages
Synthesis