Strange Encounters

Strange Encounters examines the relationship between strangers, embodiment and community. It challenges the assumptions that the stranger is simply anybody we do not recognize and instead proposes that he or she is socially constructed as somebody we already know. In this fascinating new book Saran Ahmed analyses a diverse range of texts which produce the figure of 'the stranger', showing that it has alternatively been expelled as the origin of danger - such as in neighbourhood watch or celebrated at the origin of difference - as in multiculturalism. However, the author argues that both of these standpoints are problematic as they involve 'stranger fetishism'; they assume that the stranger 'has a life of its own'. Using feminist and postcolonial theory this book examines the impact of multiculturalism and globalization on embodiment and community whilst considering the ethical and political implication of its critique for post-colonial feminism.