The Handbook of Displacement, by Peter Adey, Janet C. Bowstead, Katherine Brickell, Vandana Desai, Mike Dolton, Alasdair Pinkerton and Ayesha Siddiqi (eds.), Cham, Switzerland, Palgrave Macmillan under Springer Nature, 2020.
Reviewed by: Aysegul Can, Istanbul Medeniyet University
This ambitious and extensive, edited book on displacement brings together many different authors from all around the world from many disciplines ranging from geography, sociology, psychology to art and anthropology. Peter Adey and colleagues state from the beginning that this Handbook of Displacement is ‘necessarily broad’ to allow for displacement related discussions to flourish from a variety of fields and perspectives. This broadness is one of the book’s strong points. By doing so, this book is able to present an almost global theory of displacement.
This important collection is divided into eight parts, and every part begins with a small piece, of 2-3 pages, in the form of an intervention. These interventions take the reader through different stories of people who experienced any form of displacement in their life time. These striking stories remind us the human side of the case studies we read in this book and the very real struggles people go through. The fifty something number of chapters the book brings together allow the reader to have a unique insight on so many processes of displacement happening all around the world.
Unfortunately, the book lacks a concluding chapter. Nevertheless, the book as is, offers a never-before-seen set of case studies that ties together displacement-related experiences and policies from the Global North and the South. I think that editors have done a marvelous job. Given the size and cost of the book, it seems to be suitable for purchase by libraries. It is truly a valuable ‘handbook’ of displacement for many fields of study.
Pages: 825
The full book review will appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Urban Affairs.
The reviewer may be reached via e-mail at aysegul.can87@gmail.com.
Journal of Urban Affairs 