Monday 15 November 2010

New and Noted: Tariq Modood, 'Still Not Easy Being British'

Still Not Easy Being British: struggles for a multicultural citizenship

Recently published, by Trentham Books: Tariq Modood, Still Not Easy Being British: struggles for a multicultural citizenship "The late 1980s and early 1990s saw dramatic shifts in race relations in Britain. It was the time of the fracturing of a political ‘black’ identity; of ethnic minority assertions to be British and about remaking what it is to be British; of the manifestation of the social mobility of Indians and, above all, the emergence of Muslim identity politics in the Rushdie Affair. These issues were the subject of Tariq Modood’s Not Easy Being British. One of the first books to note these developments and analyse their implications, Not Easy became an underground classic.

"In this new collection, Modood returns to some of these topics, considering especially the growth of Muslim political assertiveness and the reactions to it in the context of rethinking multiculturalism and Britishness. Modood’s reflections and bold interventions in controversies - which characterise his work and have made him a renowned intellectual commentator on Muslim politics and multiculturalism - could not be more relevant to our fraught and fearful times."

I haven't seen this one yet, which came out in September, but I'm familiar with Modood's 'Not Easy Being British'.