RE-TURNING HOME - TRANSNATIONAL MOVEMENTS AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF LANDSCAPE AND CULTURE IN THE MARGINAL COMMUNITIES OF TUNIS

Global capitalism reworks local experience and landscapes in its own i mage, but forms and practices of global capitalism are also rooted in and transformed by local social and spatial structures. This paper dis cusses the simultaneity of both aspects through an examination of chan ging cultural practices of Tunisian workers residing in marginal urban neighborhoods, and shows how these changes are shared by the workers' transnational experiences both as migrants abroad and in transnationa l enterprises at home. One response to such local experiences and inco rporations of the non-local is political Islam, a movement that combin es accommodation and resistance to new cultural forms, and whose appea l and implications stretch beyond national boundaries.