Everyday Equalities: Making Multicultures in Settler Colonial Cities by Ruth Fincher et al. (review)

So often, researchers focus on the problems of our world, the ugliness. Though something can be said about this widespread method and its importance for social change and transformation, equally important, albeit significantly glossed over, are the instances of possibility, the beautiful.

In Everyday Equalities: Making Multicultures in Settler Colonial Cities, Fincher, Iveson, Leitner and Preston take the latter approach and focus on instances of being together in difference in Melbourne, Toronto, Sydney, and Los Angeles respectively, in the hopes of better understanding and ultimately, reimagining what equality might mean in the urban multicultures of settler colonial cities. It follows then, that this book is primarily intended for geographers or those engaged in urban studies. I would venture to say, however, that readers interested in the politics of social justice would also benefit from the authors' analyses of togetherness.

Drawing on theoretical considerations and urban ethnographic research, the book is composed of six chapters that slowly weave together the authors' normative framework of "being together in difference as equals" (6) through in-depth analyses of encounters with difference (8) in the chosen urban multicultures. What is unique here is that each of these chapters investigates the specifics of the encounters in a different sphere of everyday life – making a home (Melbourne), making a living (Toronto), moving around (Sydney), and making 'publics' (Los Angeles) respectively – rather than focusing on the same sphere in each context for comparison. What emerges then, is an 'equality' that is neither fixed nor universal, but more nuanced and contextualized in both time and place. At the same time, there are several overarching principles the authors present which indeed seem to stand true across all encounters, namely, that 1) equality is enacted and/or performed, 2) being together in difference is a consideration of the collective rather than the self-interested individual and 3) rather unsurprisingly, context matters.

The first two chapters lay the theoretical foundation to the authors' ontological claim about the centrality of encounters with difference and investigate the political potential of said encounters, delineating their limits (temporal, geographical) and their possibility (of transcending context). Fincher and colleagues also make here the key point that being together in difference will not necessarily mean, as it is often assumed, a "happy process" (51) that has eliminated conflict or 'agitation'; rather, being together in difference will involve finding a myriad of difficult ways to negotiate differences, that nonetheless stands in contrast to assimilation and status hierarchies. In other words, it will involve what those in peace and conflict studies call 'positive conflict.'

Chapters 3 to 6 then follow with the promised series of four theorized ethnographical accounts of encounters with difference in Melbourne (Chapter 3), Toronto (Chapter 4), Sydney (Chapter 5) and lastly, Los Angeles (Chapter 6). Each chapter begins by situating the encounters within their specific historical and geographical contexts, including the histories of colonization, the waves of changing demographics that have shaped the diverse milieus of the cities and the issues emerging from the often-problematic attempts to manage them. As a result, institutional infrastructures and rule systems are thoroughly considered and critiqued. At the same time, what I found interesting was the underlying argument made for the potential of the mundane and the power of collective solidarity. Indeed, the authors' ultimate argument is that being together in difference can only be achieved under certain circumstances that include the "…equal status of those in contact, shared common goals and [a] lack of competition" (200), which are often imbedded in current infrastructures. That said, each of the chapters successfully showcase this possibility to transcend existing barriers and "make hope possible" (Raymond Williams, qtd. in Fincher et al., 221) by focusing on those collaborations and coalitions that affected positive change.

Next, in the conclusion, the authors successfully pull together the various threads investigated and offer a list of...