Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the City

Edge of Empire examines struggles over urban space in four contemporary first world cities: two sites in London, and two in the Australian cities of Perth and Brisbane. Through these examples the spatialized cultural politics of a number of postcolonial processesare unravelled: the imperial nostalgias of the one-time heart of empire, the City of London; the struggle of diasporic groups to make a homespace in the old imperial heartlands; the unsettling presence of Aboriginal claims for the sacred in the space of the modern city. The book isdistinctive in that it takes theories of colonialism and postcolonialism to the space of the city, giving real space to the spatial metaphors of much contemporary social theory. It is about the unruly spatial politics of race and nation, nature and culture, past and present.