The Atlas of Religious or Belief Minority Rights is an online tool to map and measure the rights of religious or belief minorities (RBMs) in the European Union countries. Mapping will illuminate what rights RBMs have in each country, and measuring is essential for developing evidence-based policy making. To this end, the Atlas makes use of three indices that measure the promotion of RBM rights (P-index), equal treatment (E-index) and the distance between religious majority and minorities (G-index). The indices have been constructed on the basis of the answers given by national legal experts in response to four questionnaires; their answers have been evaluated using a methodology built with respect to the international standards concerning RBM rights. The Atlas currently covers 12 countries and 13 RBMs. The Atlas’ currently available data focuses on examining and measuring legal systems and soon be supplement with a sociological analysis of the data. Collectively, the Atlas provides new information and data that can help the work scholars, journalists, diplomats, NGOs, and others interested in promoting minority rights.
Category Archives: CEDAR News
“Building Pluralism in Central Asia: Outlining an Experiential Approach in Kyrgyzstan”, by David W. Montgomery
Montgomery, David W. 2021. “Building Pluralism in Central Asia: Outlining an Experiential Approach in Kyrgyzstan.” The Review of Faith & International Affairs 19 (4):98-110.
Pluralism recognizes diversity and aims to facilitate peaceful coexistence across a variety of interests and convictions. Across Central Asia, states have become increasingly authoritarian and in turn less favorable to implementing political and legal structures commonly seen as necessary for pluralism. The question about the potential for pluralism in Central Asia, however, is different from one on how to build pluralism. In this article, I argue that despite the less-than-sanguine prospects for pluralism to emerge across the region, pluralism can be built through programming that engages difference and creates new solidarities around shared experience, without the insistence on shared meaning.
“Trust, Experience and Embodied Knowledge or Lessons from John Dewey on the Dangers of Abstraction”, by Adam Seligman
Seligman, Adam. 2021. “Trust, Experience and Embodied Knowledge or Lessons from John Dewey on the Dangers of Abstraction.” Journal of Trust Research:1-17. doi: 10.1080/21515581.2021.1946821.
This paper explores the connection between trust and confidence on the one hand and different forms of knowledge (abstract and general viz. particular and concrete) on the other. While the distinction between trust and confidence was first made by Niklas Luhmann their connection to forms of knowledge and so attitudes towards difference is new. Making use of insights afforded to us by John Dewey, I argue here for the dependence of trust on an ability to abide with ambiguity and the loss of control that the eschewal of generalised categories of knowledge implies. Finally, I draw social and political implications from these insights in terms of the ability to live with differences, with the stranger and with those ‘others’ who cannot be known and so contained within abstract categories.
Webinar on “Living with Different Cultures” (CEDAR-Japan)
On March 8, 2021, the Research Center for Diversity and Inclusion at Hiroshima University in Japan hosted a webinar in Japanese and English on “Living with Different Cultures”. The webinar was led by CEDAR fellow Tinka Delakorda Kawashima (Hiroshima University) and Adam Seligman (CEDAR).
In addition to the public webinar, a smaller audience of educators–Hiroshima University faculty and others whose work focuses on both childhood education and intercultural competence–participated in a closed meeting to discuss the CEDAR pedagogy and its uses in the Japanese context.
The event was recorded and can be viewed here.
NSD Host on Rebuilding Solidarity from Anywhere
Rebuilding Solidarity from Anywhere: A COVID Response from the Nusantara School of Difference Network
During the COVID-19 pandemic, most Institute for Resource Governance and Social Change (IRGSC) activities switched to working remotely from home and using an online platform to interact, managing nonetheless to build a solidarity movement at the time Indonesia declared its first COVID-19 case in March 2020. (IRGSC is the host organization of the Nusantara School of Difference.)
In the whole province, there was no facility to do COVID-19 swab- testing until the fourth week of April 2020. While such a laboratory is now operating, the test capacity receives very limited use and is expensive; the current cost per person is 1,500,000 rupiah per test, which is about three times the salary of a contract teacher in rural areas. The cost makes it unaffordable for most people in the East Nusa Tenggara province.
Our contribution to coping with the pandemic started in the second week of March 2020, when a friend from Jakarta requested us to translate a government handbook to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and to take care of those infected. We did this in two days, for free. It was the work of more than 20 people with different backgrounds including medical doctors, sociologists, and others. We understood that during the crisis we need to work together to rebuild solidarity from anywhere. Anywhere may mean help from someone in Iowa (United States) or Yogyakarta (Indonesia), or Tasmania (Australia).
What was unique in this case was that rather than working with people we know or with whom we had established contacts, here we simply worked with others who shared our goal, even without knowing one another. From the shared experience of the work itself, we got to know one another better and overcome the limitations of physical distance.
We worked with others to collect ideas, to share our anxiety, and to execute planning on a daily basis- during the pandemic. We continued for four months, until the 15th of July 2020, when the government lifted its internal travel restriction. We have produced several things out of this, including the COVID-19 handbook translation, face masks, sterilization boxes for N-95 medical masks, and swab chambers. Moreover, we coordinated and connected the district leaders and heads of provincial offices to communicate with each other and the general public. In short, we assisted and supported the government’s role through an effort of mass solidarity.
At present, we are running a fundraising campaign to build something we call a “People’s Laboratory” to provide not only the best care for COVID-19, but for other contagious diseases as well (something the government does not provide). This is our long term goal and we have raised funds for the training of lab operators and now waiting for the first laboratory provided by the government to do a mass test for COVID-19. This is a response to the public demand for the urgent need of a biomolecular-based-surveillance laboratory. We aim to set up at least one laboratory on each big island in the province (a total of four), in order to support the surveillance task on a large scale.
Reach out to IRGSC or Forum Academia NTT for more information on ways to support their ongoing efforts.
Reset Dialogues on Human Rights and Belonging
Between May–July 2020, Reset Dialogues published a Dossier project collectively titled “A World Without Human Rights?” The project brought together a dozen scholars from across Europe to engage with Adam Seligman and David Montgomery’s 2019 article on “The Tragedy of Human Rights: Liberalism and the Loss of Belonging.” Commentators included Silvio Ferrari and John Holmwood, who have participated in past CEDAR programs. In their response, Seligman and Montgomery both touch upon the CEDAR pedagogy as a way forward.
From the introduction to the special Dossier:
“These arguments touch on some central issues of contemporary philosophical and political debate, from the role of law in the development of civil society to the interaction between the universality of rights and the particularities of cultural and religious affiliations. The relationship between the rights due to the individual and those that must be recognized to groups (primarily minorities) and the conflict between rights and policies of freedom on the one hand and equality on the other are further questions that are raised by the Seligman-Montgomery article.
“No one can miss how topical these issues are and how important for the future of liberal democracies. Populist and nationalist movements have understood that globalisation has not erased but rather accentuated the need for roots, tradition, belonging and have used this need to challenge policies of rights based on equality and inclusion. On the one hand there is growing regret for (and the desire to rebuild) boundaries that include and exclude, warm the hearts of those inside but leave those outside in the cold. On the other hand, one wonders where this desire to rediscover the value of differences can lead. Won’t it end up justifying the new walls that are rising up everywhere, making us forget that each person is part of the same human family and disavowing rights (laboriously) recognized to each individual precisely on the basis of this universal belonging?”
Culture for Peace, Development and Rights (CPDR) established in Kenya
It is evident from lived experience that cultures are distinct from each other; each culture has unique elements. However, attempts to address human problems—conflicts, violence, poverty, etc.—tend to propose generalized solutions that create tensions among local cultures. Solutions, after all, cannot always be generalized. When standardized approaches to peace, development, and rights programs ignore the local context, resistance often emerges. It is considering this background that the Culture for Peace, Development and Rights (CPDR) non-profit organization was created in Kenya. CPDR seeks to create spaces for engaging international visions of generalized peace, development, and rights with the lived experiences of specific communities to promote ownership, dialogue, tolerance, inclusivity, respect, and dignity. When local visions of culture play an active role in peace and development processes, community ownership of the process becomes real and stability more secure.
In its approach, CPDR has borrowed from the CEDAR pedagogy. This has allowed the organization to be more effective in facilitating communities working to better integrate gender, local-value systems, and cultural practices into international peace, development, and rights programs to facilitate respectful engagement with the local cultural realities.
Adam Seligman receives the prestigious 2020 Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize
We are pleased to announce that Adam Seligman is a recipient of the 2020 Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize. Founded in 1972 by Franz D. Lucas on the 100th birthday of his father, Rabbi Leopold Lucas, who died in Theresienstadt, the Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize is awarded annually by the Faculty of Theology on behalf of the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen. The award, endowed with 50,000 euros, recognizes outstanding achievements in the field of theology, intellectual history, historical research, and philosophy, as well as a commitment to international understanding and tolerance.
Seligman is the founding director of CEDAR—Communities Engaging with Difference and Religion, a non-governmental organization that for 20 years has run programs around the world on the topic of “living with difference”, and a professor of religion at Boston University. His work revolves around the importance of religion in a plural society. His writing combines different fields including religious studies, from more classical competences in the areas of ritual, tradition, authority, and trust to the need for mutual respect in multi-religious and plural societies. Against this background, he is actively involved in current debates and initiatives around religion and tolerance. The jury cited the contribution of his work to advance the idea of tolerance.
Seligman shares the prize this year with Linda Woodhead of the University of Lancaster, UK. The award ceremony will not take place this year due to the coronavirus pandemic but will be linked to the 2021 award ceremony.
CEDAR receives 2017 Praxis Award honorable mention
On December 1, CEDAR received an honorable mention for the 2017 Praxis Award given by the Washington Association of Professional Anthropologists (WAPA) at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association. As one Praxis Award juror noted:
Longitudinal survey data indicate that participants carried the CEDAR experience forward in their careers. And CEDAR team members have published extensively on their theory, method, and experience. That is potentially a huge impact multiplier, insofar as they are producing resources to help other conflict-reduction interventions to understand and implement the CEDAR approach. Helping individuals, groups, and communities recognize and accept difference as an inescapable, inevitable, and, most importantly, acceptable part of our social experience has to be one of the most important projects anyone can pursue these days. I really admire this team’s dedication to what must sometimes feel like an overwhelming problem.
The biennial Praxis Award is a competition for excellence and achievement in translating anthropological knowledge into action and is one of the most competitive awards in anthropology.
“Yoga at the Nusantara School of Difference”, by Rahel Wasserfall
“Yoga at the Nusantara School of Difference”, by Rahel Wasserfall. 2017.
Yoga practice at the Nusantara School of Difference in Indonesia is among the many group activities fellows engage in during a typical program….