Posted on in 2018, 2019, Americans in Belgium, Belgium, Fulbright
My parents have lived next to the same three families for thirty years. They have never fought over property lines, noisy parties or the shade provided by various trees. Relations between “them” and “us” have almost always been friendly. We wave hello, feed each other animals during times of vacation and redeliver errant mail. Yet, I can honestly say that I don’t really know them at all. Outside of the family unit, the first collective that most humans belong to is their neighborhood. And yet, “neighbors” in both my personal experience and in the historical past remain under-known quantities. More specifically, we might ask, what does it mean to have a relationship with a “neighbor” and how does it become possible to feel “rooted” on a street, in a neighborhood, in a city or in the broader nation? Ask we did. And after two days of discussing these questions and the larger issues of “neighbors,” a dozen experts assembled in Brussels began […]
by Fulbright