The relation between identity and space is strong and generates many conflicts. Most people attach great importance to their local community and its identity. The possibility of change can cause turmoil and become fertile ground for staking new identities. Understanding how these changes can take place is important to the future of community cohesion across the world. This book gives a detailed analysis of how different stakeholders in two Dutch municipalities use and adapt their identity discourses to deal with changing circumstances, situating this work within a wider international context through global comparisons. The growing spatial interdependence and political pressures for municipal cooperation or amalgamation creates not only threats, but also opportunities for stakeholders in local communities to transform their local identities. By studying how local communities attach to local identities, a new conceptual framework can be formed, informed by lively accounts from residents on the rich and varied use of identity in their communities and their concerns over future developments. This is valuable reading for students, scholars and researchers working in geography, politics, sociology and cultural studies.

Until recently, international mergers of companies have been seen as purely financial ventures without any concern for what they meant for the people involved. However, attitudes are gradually changing. This study of a successful Israeli high-tech company's merger with an American competitor offers an important contribution to a better understanding of the social and personal ramifications of mergers. Based upon in-depth fieldwork, the book explores the reality behind the statistics, balance sheets, and managerial prescriptions that are the focus of most studies of international mergers and acquisitions. Offering a richly detailed description of everyday work life, the author reveals the dramas of identity that unfold as a consequence of the company's attempts to redefine the boundaries of the organizational collective by adding to it people from another country. The book debunks many myths used to support arguments both for and against globalization and offers instead an in-depth depiction and a grounded assessment of its everyday realities.

This edited interdisciplinary collection draws together recent original work on the connections between radicalism and localism in a variety of international locations over the last two hundred years. The areas covered include the United Kingdom, North America, South Africa, the Caribbean, Germany, Italy and Spain. The book questions whether certain political issues have more impact at a local level and whether common radical responses can be discerned across space and time. The contributors’ essays also consider to what extent the local offers a space in which new political possibilities can be explored, and especially the extent to which radical participation from groups who are under-represented in many national campaigns appears more easily available at the local level. Finally, the essays in the collection examine the distinctiveness of local political radicalism. This involves looking at the activities of communal organizations and political parties that defined themselves against nationally-situated sites of power, but also at how the many cultural manifestations of radicalism, such as music, theatre and art, were shaped distinctively at local level and how radical ideas were spread across wider areas from local bases.

Inspired by the path-breaking work of Robert Tittler, the authors explore late Medieval and Early Modern community and identity across England. They examine the decline of neighbourliness, the politics of market towns, clerical status, charity, crime, and ways in which overlapping communities of court and country, London and Lancashire, relate.

Local-level pilgrimages, when based on strong expressions of faith, can have a much wider local, regional and international appeal. It has been estimated that pilgrims and religious tourists number around 330 million per year, meaning development of these faith identities can help drive destination visitation and regional development. This book explores the central role of ordinary people in the popularisation of faith-based practices, thus illustrating religious tourism as an expression of cultural identity. An invaluable review of cultural identity and faith, this book delivers to scholars, students and local policy makers a collection of current perspectives on the growth, development and evolution of faith practices surrounding contemporary and historical sites and saints.

This innovative book explores micro-level neighborhood branding and the creation of distinct local identities in neighborhoods. It begins by situating place branding literature at the neighborhood level and then gives consideration to what the core components of a neighborhood brand might be. It does so by drawing on extensive interviews with key actors in the United States, such as government officials, Realtors, economic development professionals, urban planners, and neighborhood residents. Core topics such as belonging and community, identity, nostalgia, idealism, and recreation are explored. The book concludes with a proposed working definition of neighborhood brands and branding that stakeholders can use to promote and market their neighborhoods accordingly – or avoid branding them entirely. This book offers a novel contribution to place branding and destination management literatures by moving beyond the dominant macro-level narratives. It will be of interest to scholars and students studying in urban planning, tourism, destination branding, marketing, public administration and policy, and sociology.

Gerritsen's study investigates how small groups of people—households, or local communities—constitute and represent their social identity by shaping the landscape around them. Examining things like house building and habitation, cremation and burial, and farming and ritual practice, Gerritsen develops a new theoretical and empirical perspective on the practices that create collective senses of identity and belonging. An explicitly diachronic approach reveals processes of cultural and social change that have previously gone unnoticed, providing a basis for a much more dynamic history of the late prehistoric inhabitants of this region.

Tema conduttore dell’opera è lo studio dell’etnicità altomedievale condotto attraverso l’analisi di un gruppo di cimiteri nella pianura alluvionale di Monaco di Baviera e l’esame dello sviluppo della pratica funeraria in un periodo che va dal V al VII secolo d.C. Iniziate come un atto ibrido di pratiche tardo-romane e barbariche, quando nel secolo successivo, le comunità politiche tribali si consolidarono, le modalità di sepoltura presero le distanze dalle loro origini romane divenendo apertamente barbare. Lo studio delle sepolture diviene per l’A. motivo per una più ampia riflessione sul concetto di identità e sui rapporti fra cultura materiale ed etnia. Contiene il riassunto del volume in italiano.

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Identity provides a clear and comprehensive survey of the field of language and identity from an applied linguistics perspective. Forty-one chapters are organised into five sections covering: theoretical perspectives informing language and identity studies key issues for researchers doing language and identity studies categories and dimensions of identity identity in language learning contexts and among language learners future directions for language and identity studies in applied linguistics Written by specialists from around the world, each chapter will introduce a topic in language and identity studies, provide a concise and critical survey, in which the importance and relevance to applied linguists is explained and include further reading. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Identity is an essential purchase for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of Linguistics, Applied Linguistics and TESOL. Advisory board: David Block (Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats/ Universitat de Lleida, Spain); John Joseph (University of Edinburgh); Bonny Norton (University of British Colombia, Canada).

"Tracing the story of Red Lodge from the 1880s to the present, Christensen tells how a mining town managed to endure the vagaries of the West's unpredictable extractive-industries economy. She connects Red Lodge to a myriad of larger events and historical forces to show how national and regional influences have contributed to the development of local identities, exploring how and why westerners first rejected and then embraced "western" images, and how ethnicity, wilderness, and historic preservation became part of the identity that defined one town."--BOOK JACKET.