Strange familiarities: a response to Ash Amin's Land of Strangers

Abstract

Ash Amin's Land of Strangers captures succinctly the way the multiplicities of urban life have reshaped our thinking about intercultural relations beyond reified characterisations of ethnicity. Amin draws together an analysis of the ensemble of relations between humans, between humans and the non-human, between work and leisure, and between temporal and spatial relations, to explore our ‘society of strangers’. The book provides a productive framework for conceptualising the collaborative commingling that develops across ethnic lines, without losing a sense of imminent conflict, and the pedagogic processes that foster the capacities and habits of living with difference.

Keywords:

• stranger
• Amin
• habit
• pedagogies
• conviviality
• urban