REFLECTIONS 02
ON SUPER-DIVERSITY by Tariq Ramadan
One of the greatest challenges for art and culture, sounded by intellectuals and also by funding bodies, is to represent diversity. But what precisely does this term mean and why does it so often placate rather than produce what it names? Prof. Steven Vertovec, Director of the Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (Göttingen, Germany) puts forward the notion of “super-diversity,” noting “the need to re-evaluate conceptions and policy measures surrounding diversity by way of moving beyond an ethno-focal understanding and adopting a multidimensional approach.”
Developing this idea further, while aiming to question and complicate the focus on immigration in the current debate, the prolific and provocative scholar and activist Tariq Ramadan weighs in on the subject. In the resulting essay, translated into Dutch and Arabic, Prof. Ramadan sets out an argument that foregrounds universalism as a necessary, if de-valued, horizon and offers a critique of the uses and limits of dialogue and discourse within the day to day practice of super-diversity.
COLOPHON
Series editors
Nicolaus Schafhausen
Caroline Schneider
Monika Szewczyk
Author
Tariq Ramadan
Translation into the Dutch
Walter van der Star
Translation into the Arabic
Salam Shughry
Sahar Mandour
English copyediting
Amira Gad
Monika Szewczyk
Leah Whitman-Salkin
Dutch copyediting
Solange de Boer
Arabic copyediting
Amira Gad
Sahar Mandour
Najla Reaidy
Production
Amira Gad
Monika Szewczyk
Design
Kummer & Herrman, Utrecht
Printed by
fgb. freiburger graphische betriebe
© 2011 Tariq Ramadan, Sternberg Press, and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art.
ISBN 978-1-934105-77-1
DISTRIBUTION
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