One of the greatest challenges for art and culture, sounded by intellectuals and also by funding bodies, is to represent diversity.
Professor Steven Vertovec, Director of the Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity 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, Professor Ramadan sets out an argument that foregrounds universalism as a necessary, if devalued, horizon and offers a critique of the uses and limits of dialogue and discourse within the day-to-day practice of super-diversity.
On Super-Diversity constitutes the second book of the Reflections series, co-published with Kunstinstituut Melly, formerly Witte de With. Each edition, consisting of a specially-commissioned essay, engages a leading thinker in reconsidering one key question that defines contemporary culture.
About the Publishers
Sternberg Press is a Berlin-based publishing house of art, cultural criticism, creative nonfiction and literary and experimental fiction. Founded by Caroline Schneider in New York in 1999, it aims to support both new and established writers and nourish lasting editorial relationships. The press is committed to publishing books with an interdisciplinary focus on contemporary visual culture and related critical discourse.
Founded in 1990 Kunstinstituut Melly was conceived as an art house with a mission to present and discuss the work created today by visual artists and cultural makers. The non-profit institution organises exhibitions, commissions art, publishes and develops educational and collaborative initiatives, working with artists and engaging audiences who are interested in posing challenging inquiries and articulations of our present.
