In the city of Cairo, certain spaces bear strong historical associations with belly dance, belly dancers, and professional entertainment in general. Azbakiyah, Imad al-Din Street, and Muhammad Ali Street were all staging grounds for innovations in Egyptian belly dance, as well as in Egyptian music, song, and theater, at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and in the Egyptian popular imagination, these places continue to be linked to entertainment and entertainers. However, research reveals that the ties binding these spaces to entertainment extend much deeper: in some cases, this relationship can be traced back to the Fatimid era. The longstanding associations between belly dance and certain Cairene spaces demand a more in-depth investigation into the nature of this historical interconnection. In this work, the author examines the relationship between belly dance space and belly dancer in the Cairo landscape over the course of the city's history, relying on a theoretical framework informed by Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice, Michel Foucault's concept of heterotopia, and Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of the carnivalesque. This analysis reveals the mutually constituting relationship between dance, dancers, and the Cairene landscape and explains why and how certain Cairo spaces have retained their centuries-long historical associations with belly dance and its professional practitioners.

In these essays, dancers and scholars from around the world carefully consider the transformation of an improvised folk form from North Africa and the Middle East into a popular global dance practice. They explore the differences between the solo improvisational forms of North Africa and the Middle East, often referred to as raqs sharki, which are part of family celebrations, and the numerous globalized versions of this dance form, belly dance, derived from the movement vocabulary of North Africa and the Middle East but with a variety of performance styles distinct from its site of origin. Local versions of belly dance have grown and changed along with the role that dance plays in the community. The global evolution of belly dance is an inspiring example of the interplay of imagination, the internet and the social forces of local communities. All royalties are being donated to Women for Women International, an organization dedicated to supporting women survivors of war through economic, health, and social education programs. The contributors are proud to provide continuing sponsorship to such a worthwhile and necessary cause.

The Moving City is a rich and intimate account of urban transformation told through the story of Delhi's Metro, a massive infrastructure project that is reshaping the city's social and urban landscapes. Ethnographic vignettes introduce the feel and form of the Metro and let readers experience the city, scene by scene, stop by stop, as if they, too, have come along for the ride. Laying bare the radical possibilities and concretized inequalities of the Metro, and how people live with and through its built environment, this is a story of women and men on the move, the nature of Indian aspiration, and what it takes morally and materially to sustain urban life. Through exquisite prose, Rashmi Sadana transports the reader to a city shaped by both its Metro and those who depend on it, revealing a perspective on Delhi unlike any other.

Raqs sharqi, the Egyptian dance form also known as belly dance, has for generations captured imaginations around the globe. Yet its origins have been obscured by misinformation and conjecture, rooted in Orientalist attitudes about the Middle East--a widely accepted narrative suggests the dance was created in response to Western influences and desires. Drawing on an array of primary sources, the author traces the early development of raqs sharqi in the context of contemporary trends in Egyptian arts and entertainment. The dance is revealed to be a hybrid cultural expression, emerging with the formation of Egyptian national identity at the end of the 19th century, when Egypt was occupied by the British.

TERRAINS OF CONSCIOUSNESS emerges from an Indian-German-Swiss research collaboration. The book makes a case for a phenomenology of globalization that pays attention to locally situated socioeconomic terrains, everyday practices, and cultures of knowledge. This is exemplified in relation to three topics: - the tension between 'terrain' and 'territory' in Defoe's 'Robinson Crusoe' as a pioneering work of the globalist mentality (chapter 1) - the relationship between established conceptions of feminism and the concrete struggles of women in India since the 19th century (chapter 2) - the exploration of urban space and urban life in writings on India's capital - from Ahmed Ali to Arundhati Roy (chapter 3).

In this book, Hae explores how nightlife in NYC, long associated with various subcultures of social dancing, has been recently transformed as the city has undergone gentrification, and how this transformation has dampened urban inhabitants' rights to the uses of urban space and access to diverse urban cultures.

This exciting new and original collection locates dance within the spectrum of urban life in late modernity, through a range of theoretical perspectives. It highlights a diversity of dance forms and styles that can be witnessed in and around contemporary urban spaces: from dance halls to raves and the club striptease; from set dancing to ballroom dancing, to hip hop and swing, and to ice dance shows; from the ballet class, to fitness aerobics; and 'art' dance which situates itself in a dynamic relation to the city.

In 1955, a conference was held in Bandung, Indonesia that was attended by representatives from twenty-nine nations. Against the backdrop of crumbling European empires, Asian and African leaders forged new alliances and established anti-imperial principles for a new world order. The conference came to capture popular imaginations across the Global South and, as counterpoint to the dominant world order, it became both an act of collective imagination and a practical political project for decolonization that inspired a range of social movements, diplomatic efforts, institutional experiments and heterodox visions of the history and future of the world. In this book, leading international scholars explore what the spirit of Bandung has meant to people across the world over the past decades and what it means today. It analyzes Bandung's complicated and pivotal impact on global history, international law and, most of all, justice struggles after the end of formal colonialism.

It’s handy having a dad who can fix just about anything. A young girl believes her father is the king of fixing things. But following the death of her mother, she discovers that broken hearts are not as easy to repair as damaged toys and cracked teapots. Together, she and her father find a way to glue back the pieces of her lives. The Fix-It Man is a poignant picture book that explores how a child can cope with the loss of a parent (in this case, the young girl’s mother). Repairing damaged emotions is not as straightforward as gluing a broken kite back together or sewing up a torn toy. And grief affects all members of a family, with each responding in their own way to the loss. By sticking with her father, the young girl is able to strengthen her resilience and ability to cope with one of life’s harshest experiences. The author was encouraged to seek publication for this story after receiving the endorsement of several grief counsellors who work with children and who recognised the need for a book such as this.

There are now many books on postcolonial theory, yet relatively few of them gather together sustained, dynamic and insightful analyses of visuality, art and art history outside of hegemonic Euro-American themes and concerns. Global and Local Art Histories explores what it means to have a global and local experience of art. The 15 essays published here suggest ways of interpreting works of art from a broad range of cultural perspectives, many of them transcultural. Here are voices contesting concepts of history and culture, evaluating and exploring global and local identities in a changing world. Because of the variety of different approaches and cultural perspectives that Global and Local Art Histories brings together, the book presents a unique opportunity to question what we mean by that dangerously globalising category: “the work of art” and “art history” exploring “g-local” approaches that challenge such falsely universalising rubrics.