Ben Gidley
Biographic Data
| ID | 83932 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ben Gidley |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ben |
| FAMILY NAME | Gidley |
| SIGNATURE | BEN GIDLEY |
| AFFILIATIONS | Birkbeck, University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2492-1384 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 82 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Eating (with) the other: Jewish-Muslim gastronomic encounters
Commensality – eating together – is often understood by anthropologists and others as fundamental to human sociality, binding groups together and also creating bridges between groups. Consequently, sharing food or making food together has been emphasised in many policies to promote intercultural and interreligious contact. However, a more critical literature has emphasised how consuming the cultural produce of the other may also create opportunit…
Off and on stage interactions: Muslim-Jewish encounter in urban Europe
Drawing on ethnographic and interview-based research in six cities (Berlin and Frankfurt in Germany, London and Manchester in the UK and Paris and Strasbourg in France), this article explores intercultural, interethnic and interreligious encounter as exemplified by Jewish-Muslim interaction. We look at three sites across the cities: “staged” encounters which take place in formal interfaith and municipal settings, and “unstaged” encounters in publ…
Raising concerns on the dangers of linking biological invasions to human migration
Postcolonial hauntings in riverine London: Conviviality and melancholia
In his 2000 book, Between Camps, and its 2005 follow-up, Postcolonial Melancholia, Paul Gilroy described postcolonial melancholia – a failure to mourn the loss of imperial prestige – and conviviality – the messy and banal navigation of fractally complex but increasingly less meaningful lines of difference in the city – as two opposing but related characteristics of the British urban experience at the dawn of the century. Nowhere is the more evide…
Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion. Volume 13 (2022): Jews and Muslims in Europe. Between Discourse and Experience
From an intergroup conflict perspective, this paper studies cross perceptions and patterns of sociability between Jews and Muslims in a French suburban multicultural context, the town of Sarcelles (Val d’Oise), where violent anti-Semitic riots took place in July 2014. Drawing on a sample representative of the town’s adult population from an experimental telephone survey conducted in January 2019, we show that everyday relations between Jews and M…
Response to Richard Kuper
Labour and Antisemitism: A Crisis Misunderstood
In this article, we argue that Labour’s antisemitism crisis has been misunderstood. We suggest that a more accurate and sophisticated understanding of antisemitism offers a way forward. There are three elements to this claim. First, by drawing on existing data on attitudes towards Jews, we criticise the widespread focus on individual ‘antisemites’, rather than on the broader problem of antisemitism. In turn, we conceive of antisemitism not as a v…
Researching the ordinary
Lived Experiences of Multiculture is an important contribution to a growing body of work that seeks to understand how people live together with difference, identified by the late Stuart Hall as the constitutive question of our time. The ordinaryThe book's starting point is a discourse about diversity dominated by the shrill voices of anxiety and pessimism, amplified by the entrepreneurs of fear who occupy centre stage in our public debates.Citing…
Welfare micropublics and inequality: Urban Super-Diversity in a Time of Austerity
This article argues for the importance of the role of the national and local state, and of increasing socio-economic inequality for understanding urban super-diversity in a time of austerity. Using a methodology and conceptualization that avoids the methodological ethnicism and "methodological neighbourhoodism" inherent in some diversity research, we draw on quantitative analysis and ethnographically produced material from south London to ask wha…
Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe
This is the first book to examine the relationship between European antisemitism and Islamophobia from the Crusades until the twenty-first century in the principal flashpoints of the two racisms. With case studies ranging from the Balkans to the UK, the contributors take the debate away from politicised polemics about whether or not Muslims are the new Jews. Much previous scholarship and public discussion has focused on comparing European ideas a…
Ethnography, Diversity and Urban Space
This article is an introduction to a special issue on ethnography, diversity and urban space. It places the ‘diversity turn’ within studies of migration and multiculture historically and discusses the implications of concepts such as ‘diversity’ and more recently ‘super-diversity’ for scholarship, policy and identity politics. It argues that diversity is a helpful concept for studies of migration and multiculture because it avoids the essentialis…
Shifting markers of identity in East London's diasporic religious spaces
This article discusses the historical and geographical contexts of diasporic religious buildings in East London, revealing - contrary both to conventional narratives of immigrant integration, mobility, and succession and to identitarian understandings of belonging - that in such spaces and in the concrete devotional practices enacted in them, markers and boundaries of identity (ritual, spatial, and political) are contested, renegotiated, erased, …
Diasporic Memory and the Call to Identity: Yiddish Migrants in Early Twentieth Century East London
This article explores the associational politics and diasporic memory of Jewish migrant workers in early twentieth century East London. It examines the ways in which associational activity, and specifically landsmanshaftn (hometown associations), tied migrants to sending contexts in both material and affective ways. This meant that diasporic memories were woven into the day-to-day political practices of these migrants, and were mobilised politica…
Landscapes of belonging, portraits of life: Researching Everyday Multiculture in an Inner City Estate
Three tower blocks and three low-rise blocks: nearly a hundred languages and over a hundred countries of origin. A council estate in a super-diverse neighbourhood is not only a space of concentrated difference and division, but also an intercultural space where new modes of living together emerge. At the same time, it is connected in an increasing number of ways with various outsides which make its internal space more complex. This article is bas…
On the Nation and the 'Jewish People
Shlomo Sand and Ernest Renan, ON THE NATION AND THE ‘JEWISH PEOPLE’, London: Verso, 2011, 100 pp., £10.00 (paper) The first curiosity about this book is its authorship, with the living Franco-Israe
Contemporary Anglo-Jewish community leadership: Coping With Multiculturalism1
In this article, drawing on qualitative interviews and documentary analysis, we argue that the Jewish community in Britain has undergone a fundamental shift since 1990 from a 'strategy of security', a strategy of communal leadership based on emphasizing the secure British citizenship and belonging of the UK's Jews, to a 'strategy of insecurity', where the communal leadership instead stresses an excess of security among Anglo-Jewry. We demonstrate…
A Note on the Awkwardness of the Ethnographer
Landscapes of belonging, portraits of life: Researching Everyday Multiculture in an Inner City Estate
Three tower blocks and three low-rise blocks: nearly a hundred languages and over a hundred countries of origin. A council estate in a super-diverse neighbourhood is not only a space of concentrated difference and division, but also an intercultural space where new modes of living together emerge. At the same time, it is connected in an increasing number of ways with various outsides which make its internal space more complex. This article is bas…
Welfare micropublics and inequality: Urban Super-Diversity in a Time of Austerity
This article argues for the importance of the role of the national and local state, and of increasing socio-economic inequality for understanding urban super-diversity in a time of austerity. Using a methodology and conceptualization that avoids the methodological ethnicism and "methodological neighbourhoodism" inherent in some diversity research, we draw on quantitative analysis and ethnographically produced material from south London to ask wha…
Labour and Antisemitism: A Crisis Misunderstood
In this article, we argue that Labour’s antisemitism crisis has been misunderstood. We suggest that a more accurate and sophisticated understanding of antisemitism offers a way forward. There are three elements to this claim. First, by drawing on existing data on attitudes towards Jews, we criticise the widespread focus on individual ‘antisemites’, rather than on the broader problem of antisemitism. In turn, we conceive of antisemitism not as a v…
Shifting markers of identity in East London's diasporic religious spaces
This article discusses the historical and geographical contexts of diasporic religious buildings in East London, revealing - contrary both to conventional narratives of immigrant integration, mobility, and succession and to identitarian understandings of belonging - that in such spaces and in the concrete devotional practices enacted in them, markers and boundaries of identity (ritual, spatial, and political) are contested, renegotiated, erased, …
Off and on stage interactions: Muslim-Jewish encounter in urban Europe
Drawing on ethnographic and interview-based research in six cities (Berlin and Frankfurt in Germany, London and Manchester in the UK and Paris and Strasbourg in France), this article explores intercultural, interethnic and interreligious encounter as exemplified by Jewish-Muslim interaction. We look at three sites across the cities: “staged” encounters which take place in formal interfaith and municipal settings, and “unstaged” encounters in publ…
Contemporary Anglo-Jewish community leadership: Coping With Multiculturalism1
In this article, drawing on qualitative interviews and documentary analysis, we argue that the Jewish community in Britain has undergone a fundamental shift since 1990 from a 'strategy of security', a strategy of communal leadership based on emphasizing the secure British citizenship and belonging of the UK's Jews, to a 'strategy of insecurity', where the communal leadership instead stresses an excess of security among Anglo-Jewry. We demonstrate…
Postcolonial hauntings in riverine London: Conviviality and melancholia
In his 2000 book, Between Camps, and its 2005 follow-up, Postcolonial Melancholia, Paul Gilroy described postcolonial melancholia – a failure to mourn the loss of imperial prestige – and conviviality – the messy and banal navigation of fractally complex but increasingly less meaningful lines of difference in the city – as two opposing but related characteristics of the British urban experience at the dawn of the century. Nowhere is the more evide…
Diasporic Memory and the Call to Identity: Yiddish Migrants in Early Twentieth Century East London
This article explores the associational politics and diasporic memory of Jewish migrant workers in early twentieth century East London. It examines the ways in which associational activity, and specifically landsmanshaftn (hometown associations), tied migrants to sending contexts in both material and affective ways. This meant that diasporic memories were woven into the day-to-day political practices of these migrants, and were mobilised politica…
A Note on the Awkwardness of the Ethnographer
Eating (with) the other: Jewish-Muslim gastronomic encounters
Commensality – eating together – is often understood by anthropologists and others as fundamental to human sociality, binding groups together and also creating bridges between groups. Consequently, sharing food or making food together has been emphasised in many policies to promote intercultural and interreligious contact. However, a more critical literature has emphasised how consuming the cultural produce of the other may also create opportunit…
A Note on the Awkwardness of the Ethnographer
On the Nation and the 'Jewish People
Shlomo Sand and Ernest Renan, ON THE NATION AND THE ‘JEWISH PEOPLE’, London: Verso, 2011, 100 pp., £10.00 (paper) The first curiosity about this book is its authorship, with the living Franco-Israe
Contemporary Anglo-Jewish community leadership: Coping With Multiculturalism1
In this article, drawing on qualitative interviews and documentary analysis, we argue that the Jewish community in Britain has undergone a fundamental shift since 1990 from a 'strategy of security', a strategy of communal leadership based on emphasizing the secure British citizenship and belonging of the UK's Jews, to a 'strategy of insecurity', where the communal leadership instead stresses an excess of security among Anglo-Jewry. We demonstrate…
Diasporic Memory and the Call to Identity: Yiddish Migrants in Early Twentieth Century East London
This article explores the associational politics and diasporic memory of Jewish migrant workers in early twentieth century East London. It examines the ways in which associational activity, and specifically landsmanshaftn (hometown associations), tied migrants to sending contexts in both material and affective ways. This meant that diasporic memories were woven into the day-to-day political practices of these migrants, and were mobilised politica…
Landscapes of belonging, portraits of life: Researching Everyday Multiculture in an Inner City Estate
Three tower blocks and three low-rise blocks: nearly a hundred languages and over a hundred countries of origin. A council estate in a super-diverse neighbourhood is not only a space of concentrated difference and division, but also an intercultural space where new modes of living together emerge. At the same time, it is connected in an increasing number of ways with various outsides which make its internal space more complex. This article is bas…
Ethnography, Diversity and Urban Space
This article is an introduction to a special issue on ethnography, diversity and urban space. It places the ‘diversity turn’ within studies of migration and multiculture historically and discusses the implications of concepts such as ‘diversity’ and more recently ‘super-diversity’ for scholarship, policy and identity politics. It argues that diversity is a helpful concept for studies of migration and multiculture because it avoids the essentialis…
Shifting markers of identity in East London's diasporic religious spaces
This article discusses the historical and geographical contexts of diasporic religious buildings in East London, revealing - contrary both to conventional narratives of immigrant integration, mobility, and succession and to identitarian understandings of belonging - that in such spaces and in the concrete devotional practices enacted in them, markers and boundaries of identity (ritual, spatial, and political) are contested, renegotiated, erased, …
Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe
This is the first book to examine the relationship between European antisemitism and Islamophobia from the Crusades until the twenty-first century in the principal flashpoints of the two racisms. With case studies ranging from the Balkans to the UK, the contributors take the debate away from politicised polemics about whether or not Muslims are the new Jews. Much previous scholarship and public discussion has focused on comparing European ideas a…
Researching the ordinary
Lived Experiences of Multiculture is an important contribution to a growing body of work that seeks to understand how people live together with difference, identified by the late Stuart Hall as the constitutive question of our time. The ordinaryThe book's starting point is a discourse about diversity dominated by the shrill voices of anxiety and pessimism, amplified by the entrepreneurs of fear who occupy centre stage in our public debates.Citing…
Welfare micropublics and inequality: Urban Super-Diversity in a Time of Austerity
This article argues for the importance of the role of the national and local state, and of increasing socio-economic inequality for understanding urban super-diversity in a time of austerity. Using a methodology and conceptualization that avoids the methodological ethnicism and "methodological neighbourhoodism" inherent in some diversity research, we draw on quantitative analysis and ethnographically produced material from south London to ask wha…
Response to Richard Kuper
Labour and Antisemitism: A Crisis Misunderstood
In this article, we argue that Labour’s antisemitism crisis has been misunderstood. We suggest that a more accurate and sophisticated understanding of antisemitism offers a way forward. There are three elements to this claim. First, by drawing on existing data on attitudes towards Jews, we criticise the widespread focus on individual ‘antisemites’, rather than on the broader problem of antisemitism. In turn, we conceive of antisemitism not as a v…
Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion. Volume 13 (2022): Jews and Muslims in Europe. Between Discourse and Experience
From an intergroup conflict perspective, this paper studies cross perceptions and patterns of sociability between Jews and Muslims in a French suburban multicultural context, the town of Sarcelles (Val d’Oise), where violent anti-Semitic riots took place in July 2014. Drawing on a sample representative of the town’s adult population from an experimental telephone survey conducted in January 2019, we show that everyday relations between Jews and M…
Postcolonial hauntings in riverine London: Conviviality and melancholia
In his 2000 book, Between Camps, and its 2005 follow-up, Postcolonial Melancholia, Paul Gilroy described postcolonial melancholia – a failure to mourn the loss of imperial prestige – and conviviality – the messy and banal navigation of fractally complex but increasingly less meaningful lines of difference in the city – as two opposing but related characteristics of the British urban experience at the dawn of the century. Nowhere is the more evide…
Eating (with) the other: Jewish-Muslim gastronomic encounters
Commensality – eating together – is often understood by anthropologists and others as fundamental to human sociality, binding groups together and also creating bridges between groups. Consequently, sharing food or making food together has been emphasised in many policies to promote intercultural and interreligious contact. However, a more critical literature has emphasised how consuming the cultural produce of the other may also create opportunit…
Off and on stage interactions: Muslim-Jewish encounter in urban Europe
Drawing on ethnographic and interview-based research in six cities (Berlin and Frankfurt in Germany, London and Manchester in the UK and Paris and Strasbourg in France), this article explores intercultural, interethnic and interreligious encounter as exemplified by Jewish-Muslim interaction. We look at three sites across the cities: “staged” encounters which take place in formal interfaith and municipal settings, and “unstaged” encounters in publ…
Raising concerns on the dangers of linking biological invasions to human migration
Sociology (14 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · History (9 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · Judaism (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Archaeology (6 works) · Gender Studies (6 works)