About

We face what is often diagnosed as a crisis of multiculturalism.The dominant liberal discourses of multiculturalism and tolerance are frequently not only resisted by populist majorities, but puzzlingly are also resisted by those they are intended to protect who do not accept the terms of their inclusion - whether it be expectations of cultural change or the rejection of demands for legal pluralism and self-determination. 

 

This project seeks to address this paradox head on with this research project by taking an inductive and empirical approach to the question of coexistence.  Doing this will allow us to reverse the direction of normative intervention- that is to start with the expectations and values of people and move towards theory and policy, as opposed to starting with a predetermined one-size-fits-all set of best practices. 

 

Understanding how communities manage religious and ethnic difference spontaneously based on their moral frameworks and traditions will tell us what they expect and what they want from coexistence.

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We ask: how do communities accommodate difference in spontaneous and culturally resonant ways? What resources do they actually draw on to maintain civil relations and avoid conflict and violence between the different religious and ethnic groups that come to cohabit the same space? 

 

The project takes place in the following cities:

 

• Bereasca, Romania

• Birmingham, UK

• Istanbul, Turkey

• Jajce, Bosnia and Herzegovina

• Marseille, France

• Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina

• Ramle, Israel

• Timișoara, Romania

 

Each site features a high level of religious or ethnic diversity, but low levels of commitment to liberal multicultural ideology. Many sites feature migrant or displaced communities, a mix of older histories of migration or long-term diversity. Struggles for intra-religious tolerance is one of the key features of many of these sites.

The research has two broad lines of inquiry: 1) the ideological and moral justifications for solidarity between religiously or ethnically distinct communities that are articulated outside of the liberal multicultural grammar and 2) the vernacular practices, patterns and accommodations that are established between communities that are not explicitly ideologically or morally justified, but rather arrived at through a series of pragmatic arrangements to avoid conflict. 

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The PI of this project is Dr. Erica Weiss an anthropologist whose research focuses on politics and democracy, the anthropology of political liberalism, and living together with difference.