An introduction to alternative spaces / Jens Dahl, Esther Fihl & Birgitte Schepelern Johansen -- The United Nations and the indigenous space / Jens Dahl -- The legitimacy of South Indian Caste Councils / Esther Fihl -- "Gambling is gambling" : creating de-contextualized space at an Indian Racecourse / Stine Simonsen Puri -- Frontier zones of diaspora-making : Circassian organizations in Turkey / Lars Funch Hansen -- A politics of place : the scaling and re-scaling of events in young Muslims' Internet use / Dørthe Høvids Possing -- Voices and exits in Oaxacalifornia : the reconfigurations of political spaces in the US-Mexican context / Lars Ove Trans -- An alternative national-religious space : the Danish Seamen's Church in Singapore / Margit Warburg -- A space to gaze from hence to thence : Chechens in exile / Helen Krag -- States of exception : effects and affects of authoritarianism among Christian Arabs in Damascus / Andreas Bandak -- Escalations : spying and totalitarianism in western China and beyond / Lars Højer.

Many people seek, in various ways, to carve out a space for themselves independently of the existing social and political realities of which they continue to be a part. Through a range of ethnographical cases, the contributors in this book address the innovative and complex ways in which social groups position themselves between cultures, between states, between moralities, and between local communities and state authorities, thus creating new opportunities for agency in the modern world.