The Infrastructures of Diversity: Materiality and Culture in Urban Space

Guest Editors: Marian Burchardt (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen), Stefan Höhne (Technische Universität Berlin) and AbdouMaliq Simone (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen). With contributions by Suzi Hall, Kim Knott, AbdouMaliq Simone and many others.

In contemporary scholarship materiality and human diversity constitute two largely disconnected ways of think- ing about urban space. Scholars interested in materiality are loosely connected and inspired by the “infrastructural turn” while those focusing on human diversity work within the “diversity turn”. This special issue argues that bringing together urban infrastructures and urban diversity opens up new avenues for thinking about the politics and meanings of space. Spanning distances between Rio de Janeiro, London, Manila and Ankara, the contributions to this special issue ask how socio-material assemblages shape encounters with diversity in urban life in relation to concrete social problems.