Creating Localities against the Grain of the Myth of the Eternal Return

This chapter explores the usefulness of Edwin Ardener’s approach for illuminating some of the variety of ways in which ‘rooted cosmopolitan’ localities are created and transformed in light of research carried out in the neighbourhoods of Rusholme and Longsight in Manchester, and participation as artist and curator in an exhibition in Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery in 2006, entitled ‘Who are you? Where are you really from?’