Recognition, Globally
I am currently conducting research for my book project titled "Recognition Globally" where I analyze recognition claims in a variety of contexts to help us better understand how to move toward a more inclusive society. Collaborative comparative interview-based case studies concern claims for political recognition by “invisible” US and UK working-class youth living in Manchester, New Hampshire; Manchester, UK; Tampere, Finland; and Osaka, Japan, with collaborators; recognition claims through environmental justice and work by indigenous people in the Northern Mariana Islands (Micronesia) and Anishinaabe Algonquin territories in Eastern Canada; and “impossible” cases where recognition is relatively inaccessible to certain groups (e.g. claims about racial discrimination in France and Germany, sexual discrimination in Senegal and China, and others). .
These studies all concern recognition in a different context of uncertainty about the future. They also concern groups that vary in terms of their “groupness” (the fluidity of their group identity and experienced symbolic boundaries), whether and how, and whether and how they experience misrecognition.
This project is supported by various programs at Harvard (Asia Center, Canada Program, FAS Dean’s Competitive Fund for Promising Scholarship, The Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, and the Weatherhead Center for Advanced Research). External to Harvard, this project is supported by the Hewlett Foundation and Freedom Together Foundation.
Beyond Polarization: Religious Dialogue, Bridge-Building and Peacebuilding
Collaborators: Elisabeth Becker-Topkara (Heidelberg), Michèle Lamont (Harvard), Shai M. Dromi (Harvard)
Funding: Supported by the Heidelberg | Harvard Explorer Seed Fund
How can interfaith dialogue cut across deep religious and political divides? When does dialogue build bridges, and when does it fall apart? This project examines interfaith dialogue initiatives centered on and shaped by debates about Israel–Palestine in Germany and the US in order to understand how actors navigate the tensions between seeking to transcend cultural and political differences and seeking to address deep‑seated power imbalances. While some projects may be understood as meaningful forms of bridge‑building by participants and observers, they may also be criticized as normalizing injustice and avoiding structural questions in favor of shallow “feel good” solutions. Understanding interfaith peacebuilding around such a heated conflict can shed light on broader sociological questions of recognition gaps, moral boundaries, and the cultivation of pluralism.
Empirically, the project relies on interviews with organizers, facilitators, and participants, as well as observations in meetings and workshops. It also draws on organizational documents and public commentary. While Israel–Palestine is the point of reference for these conversations, our fieldwork focuses on Germany and the US as representing two diasporic contexts in which the conflict is interpreted and acted upon. Comparing these settings will illuminate how different historical trajectories (Holocaust memory and postwar migration in Germany; racial and campus politics in the US) shape the boundaries people draw, the forms of bridge‑building they consider legitimate, and the kinds of dialogue they reject.
Through this work, we aim to understand how faith can serve as a resource or a barrier to crossing political divides, as well as the conditions under which dialogue is perceived as legitimate. Aside from journal articles, the project will also include a summer school at Heidelberg University and a teaching toolkit on Israel/Palestine as a global peacebuilding issue. It will similarly produce a comparative report for NGOs, foundations, and policy actors with concrete guidelines for designing, sustaining, and evaluating encounter‑based initiatives, including how to address potential setbacks and critiques.