London

For the past four weeks, I have been working at a second-hand bookstore run by the international NGO Oxfam in the Bloomsbury neighbourhood. This is one of the literary hearts of the city, surrounded as it is by universities and its own history—it is the old haunt of writer and feminist Virginia Woolf. My service placement has been less ‘hands-on’ than I had initially anticipated, affording me little opportunity to engage with a particular disadvantaged London community. However, it has still provided me with much material for reflection.

My shifts spent sorting and pricing books and talking with customers and volunteers have caused me to more closely analyze the concept of ‘community’ in London. I work for a highly versatile global NGO in one of the most diverse cities in the world. Oxfam’s campaigns are highly political: questioning notions of power and UK’s government policies. Yet the bookstore where I work does not share this inclination: to the contrary, it thrives because it is constructed as ‘your neighbourhood bookstore’ where any and all from all political inclinations are welcome to browse. It doesn’t advocate a political cause, as does the socialist bookstore across the street. Oxfam is thus both global and local.

Similarly, students at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) hold both global and local identities, evidenced by their particular form of defensive activism due to the structural and demographic makeup of the school. But they are less able to alternate between political and apolitical identities as Oxfam does, maintaining a highly politicized collective identity. The particular corner of London’s community that I am able to witness is paradoxically global and increasingly fractionalized in nature.

The academy as a political space. As I round the corner from my dorm to SOAS’ campus, I’m often struck by the presence of vocal and politicized student groups. A sample of flyers reveals an activism of defense. The slogans are personal: “Tony spent your fees on war and now he’s asking you for more.” Another panel entitled “Islamophobia and the ‘War on Terror’” features three Muslims speaking “from personal experience.” These are not abstract campaigns about far away wars that one should care about for humanitarian reasons; rather these are campaigns about discrimination in one’s own campus community. They are thus local, even if they have their global parallels and they are tied up in anti-war rhetoric. Yet students also share a more abstract global notion of community. One event, the “March for Migrants’ Rights” was advertised under the slogans “No one is illegal! Regularization for all migrants! Equal rights for all!”

The issues. Part of the localization of global trends is due to current developments in British national policy that directly impinge on many of the students’ lives. SOAS attracts students of Asian, African, and Middle Eastern heritage as it is the world’s foremost specialist school in these area studies. Demographically, SOAS is particularly inclined to be personally affected by currents of British culture that increasingly alienate Muslims. Britain’s cultural turmoil does center in part on “the Muslim question,” as one newspaper so tactfully put it. A few weeks ago, the hot topics related to comments by General Sir Richard Dannat that Britain’s presence in Iraq “exacerbated” security dilemmas and that it should pull out “soon,” and that the British government was instituting a new policy of supervision of campus Islamic groups in order to curtail extremism. Clearly, on a campus whose most vocal campus groups are affiliated with causes popular among Muslims, such events elicited condemnation. Other reasons for heightened political awareness include the campus’ location within 20 minutes of the British parliament, and its democratic, commune-esque student union governing structure. Thus, there exists little apolitical space in the SOAS social sphere. Our orientation week party was named “Love Music Hate Racism,” and most student groups raise money through what are called “socials with a conscience.” Political baggage is laid out clearly, and it would be an understatement to say that SOAS waxes to the left.

Oxfam: in all places at once. As a member of the Oxfam volunteer corps, I’m interested in how Oxfam negotiates issues of politics. Oxfam is both global and local. It’s academic bookstore folds itself seamlessly into bookish Bloomsbury. But I have also noticed Oxfam in more “global” capacities. At the train station, a volunteer confronted me with a petition. Oxfam’s current awareness and fundraising campaign is called “I’m in,” according to which a donation of £8 or so funds various developments overseas that combat global poverty. I find it interesting that by “opting in” to the campaign, even a random passer-by at one of London’s stations can be part of a global community, even if there is no explicit personal investment to be made other than a generalized will to end poverty. (Oddly, I think that this ability to be both local and global is part of the reason Starbucks does so well, but nevermind.) I’ve noticed Oxfam in other capacities—most notably in the news. Recently, Oxfam was involved in a patent case involving Starbucks and Ethiopian coffee growers, and an Oxfam “I’m in” brochure fell out of my morning Financial Times.

As British society continues to labor under its current cultural crises, I intend to take note of reactions among SOAS students and at Oxfam. Successful political causes in the marketplace of ideas require the mobilization of collective identities that are vulnerable to the influence of political and cultural currents. SOAS and Oxfam communities are not exceptional in this respect.

-Claire Lauterbach, October 2006