Living with Difference ─ How to Build Community in a Divided World

Whether looking at divided cities or working with populations on the margins of society, a growing number of engaged academics has reached out to communities around the world to address the practical problems of living with difference. This text explores the challenges and necessities of accommodating difference, however difficult and uncomfortable such accommodation may be.Living with Difference draws on fourteen years of the theoretical insights and unique pedagogy developed by CEDARCommunities Engaging with Difference and Religion. CEDAR has worked internationally with community leaders, activists, and other partners to take the insights of anthropology out of the classroom and into the world. Rather than mitigating conflict by emphasizing what is shared, this work argues for the centrality of difference in creating community: it seeks ways not to overcome or deny differences, but to live with and within them in a self-reflective space and practice. Living with Difference also includes an organizer’s manual for implementing CEDAR's strategies in one’s own community.

Adam B. Seligman is Professor of Religion at Boston University and the Director of CEDAR.

Rahel R. Wasserfall is a resident scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University and Director of Training and Evaluation for CEDAR.

David W. Montgomery is a research associate with the department of Anthropology and the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and Director of Program Development for CEDAR.