Encountering Difference

In the face of the destructive possibilities of resurgent nationalisms, unyielding ethnicities, and fundamentalist religious affinities, there is hardly a more urgent task than understanding how humans can learn to live alongside one another. This fascinating book shows how people from various societies learn to live with social diversity and cultural difference, and considers how the concepts of identity formation, diaspora, and creolization shed light on the processes and geographies of encounter.

Encountering Difference by Robin Cohen and Olivia Sheringham reveals how early historical encounters created colonial hierarchies, but also how conflict has been creatively resisted through shared social practices in particular contact zones including islands, port cities, and the ‘super-diverse’ cities formed by enhanced international migration and globalisation. Drawing on research experience from across the world, including new fieldwork in Louisiana, Martinique, Mauritius, and Cape Verde, their account provides a balance between rich description and insightful analysis showing, in particular, how identities emerge and merge ‘from below’.

Moving seamlessly between social and political theory, history, cultural anthropology, sociology, and human geography, the authors point to important new ways of understanding and living with difference, surely one of the key challenges of the twenty-first century.