ABSTRACT
The forces of decolonialisation, the global movement of refugees entering Europe, North America, and Oceania, but also various parts of Asia and the Middle East, and the rise of the global international student market have meant that cities and various regional centres across the globe have become sites of ‘super diversity’ (Vertovec, 2007). The ‘cultural stranger’ is now a familiar sight, at least for some sections of the host community. Although the observation that we live in a ‘world of strangers’ is not a new, who these strangers are has altered. The idea that we live in a ‘world of strangers’ was popularised by US sociologists trying to comprehend the social and cultural changes caused by rapid urbanisation after World War II (Lofland, 1973; Meyer, 1951). The strangers that were increasingly present in US cities were both immigrants and those moving from the rural South to the industrial cities of the North. Living in a ‘world of strangers’ has changed in a global, transnational and multicultural world. In social theory and sociology and cultural studies, this empirical change has been reflected in a greater focus on issues to do with the construction of identity, Otherness and the role of social and cultural boundaries. These theoretical and conceptual concerns are not necessarily a navel-gazing exercise; they are partly a reaction to, and a reflection of, the complex and contradictory empirical realities of global and transnational processes. For example, such paradoxical processes are found in the political cultures of many Western countries where popular nationalist movements and centreright parties, expressing anti-immigration and Islamophobic views, coexist with human rights activists, nongovernmental organisations ( NGOs), and community organisations espousing a more inclusionary political culture. Thus, whereas this book contributes to a conceptual discussion of the stranger in social and cultural thought, it is engaging and responding to the realities of living with strangers and supports the view that theory and practice are not mutually exclusive.
