Un/doing Differences. This item is unavailable.Un/doing Differences

Cultural realities are built through meaningful distinctions. The most socially consequential are those with which the distinctors themselves differ from each other: the practices of human differencing. They occur in the course of the progressive differentiation and individualization of contemporary society in a previously unknown variety, mixing and situational contingency. In doing so, categorisations of "human material" (Georg Simmel) compete according to nation, ethnicity, gender, "race", age, class, language and religion, but also according to performance and attractiveness classes, political and sexual orientation, body volume, dialects or consumption preferences. These differentiations work in interactions, institutions, and discourses partly in conjunction with each other, partly in displacement competition with other distinctions. The 'doing' – the practical or discursive execution, the institutional construction – therefore always corresponds to an 'undoing' - a neutralisation, superposition and overriding of human differentiations. Under what conditions do which differentiations prevail and when are they displaced into the background and treated as irrelevant or incidental? What determines the conjunctures of human differencing? To answer these questions, the volume gathers theoretical analysis and empirical research contributions from three continents and from five subjects: sociology, ethnology, American studies, linguistics, and theatrical studies. With contributions by: Peter Auer, Mita Banerjee, Timo Heimerdinger, Bettina Heintz, Stefan Hirschauer, Herbert Kalthoff, Friedemann Kreuder, Matthias Krings, Carola Lentz, Marion Müller, Armin Nassehi, Damaris Nübling, Andreas Reckwitz, Richard Rottenburg and Oliver Scheiding.