Where is "the East of the West"? This provocative collection confronts the assumptions behind how we divide the world into knowable regions.

Anti-Atlas uses the upheavals of Eastern Europe as a lens through which to rethink the politics of area studies. This collection unsettles traditional hierarchies, questioning how knowledge is produced, who controls it, and how we divide the world into “areas.”

Consisting of an eclectic mix of scholars from Europe, the UK, and North America, the book experiments with diverse genres—from academic essays and autobiographical reflections to travel guides and data visualizations. Through this innovative approach, the editors propose a manifesto for area studies to be more critical and reflexive; to be undisciplined and deeply engaged with local perspectives.

By dismantling the assumptions embedded in atlases and disciplinary boundaries, Anti-Atlas invites readers to think differently about how we construct and categorize the world. Of particular interest to scholars of area studies and critical theory, this work reassesses what it means to study places in an era of geopolitical rupture.

Re-Centring the City rethinks the concept of the center in studies of the urban across the social sciences and humanities. Through cases ranging from Moscow and Berlin to Mexico City, Cairo, and Chennai, the contributions explore the tension between forces of decentering and recentering as they reshape the political, economic, and social fabric of the urban and force us to reconsider the genealogy of the contemporary global city.    
By drawing our attention back to the center as an object of analytical and empirical study, this book counters a long-term trend in both planning and urban scholarship that emphasizes decentralization as the hallmark of the twenty-first-century city. It argues that such a “centrifugal” turn in urban studies is neither empirically accurate nor normatively incontestable, especially when one looks beyond the West. Rather, as the contributions to this volume show, decentering obscures the ways in which the center continues to exert a powerful influence on cities of today. The concise chapters, situated at the intersection of urban studies, social anthropology, architecture, and art theory, provide new perspectives on the role of the center in defining the city’s terrain. Together, they constitute a collection of sharp, provocative interventions into debates about the transformation of global urban forms in the twenty-first century.