Home | Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity

Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity

The Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity is one of the foremost centers for the multi-disciplinary study of diversity, in its multiple forms, in today’s globalizing world. The Institute consists of three thematically-focused departments: the Department of Religious Diversity, the Department of Socio-Cultural Diversity and the Department of Ethics, Law and Politics.

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Fieldwork Photo Gallery

The collection of photographs on our website represents the fieldwork activities of our researchers. All social-science research at the Institute, particularly that requiring informed consent and involving visual materials, is designed to follow the ethical guidelines formulated by the American Anthropological Association.

click here to link to our photo gallery

(Congregational singing in the dedication of Shimen’gen Church, Fugong County, 27 July 2014. Photo: Ying Diao)

The DATARAMA

A Multimedia-Tool for Research, Teaching and Presentation

For scientists who rely on visual data or data visualizations, the limitations of monitors, multiple monitor spans or projection facilities can present serious limitations for data gathering and the analysis and presentation of findings. Arising from MPI-MMG’s ‘GlobaldiverCities’ project, the Datarama is a unique research and presentation tool that provides a significant solution to the limitations of working with visual data.

News & Updates

New Issue

Event

The latest special issue on "Thinking Beyond Boundaries: Researching Ethnoheterogenesis in Contexts of Diversities and Social Change" is now out! Fully open access, do read and share: https://newdiversities.mmg.mpg.de/?page_id=4785

Muslim-Jewish encounter, diversity & distance in urban Europe: Religion, culture and social model (ENCOUNTERS)

ORA Joint Research Project

Funded by the Open Research Area (ORA) for the Social Sciences, this joint research project studies intercultural, interethnic and interreligious encounters as exemplified by Jews and Muslims in urban Europe.

New Podcast Series

Podcast

The City show is a podcast about complexity and how people live and adapt to life in fast-changing cities across Africa, Latin America and Asia. It's made by Dhashen Moddley, Tau Tavengwa, Freddie Boswell, Michael Rahfaldt, and Jo Jackson. It's a collaboration between Cityscapes Magazine, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity and African Centre for Cities. It's a Cityscapes/Radio Workshop production. Music by 23rd Parallel.

Rethinking Markets in Modern India: Embedded Exchange and Contested Jurisdiction

Podcast

An interview with A. Gandhi and S. Schwecke, conducted by Saronik Basu, New Books Network NBN

Wir haben das geschafft – und uns verändert

In this research report, the researchers of the Max Planck Society's science initiative "Challenges of Migration, Integration and Exclusion" (WiMi) take stock of the "long summer of migration 2015" and derive eight recommendations from the findings, which they have summarized in a position paper. [in German]

Irfan Ahmad on Islam today

Los Angeles Review of Books publishes review essay by Mustafa Akyol on Irfan Ahmad's book Religion as Critique.

Religion, Magic, Secularity, and Spirituality

Youtube-Video

In this sixth conversation in the Global Religious and Secular Dynamics Discussion Series, Peter van der Veer joined Berkley Center Senior Fellow José Casanova to talk about his comparative work linking India, China, and the West, as well as his training of the next generation of anthropologists, social scientists, historians, and religious studies scholars working on religion in Asian global cities. Van der Veer also discussed his forthcoming co-edited volume, Refugees and Religion: Ethnographic Studies of Global Trajectories (2021), and the COVID-19 pandemic and its current geopolitical dynamics and trends.

Urban Diversity, Diversification and Complexity

Video

Keynote Lecture by Steven Vervovec at the Twentieth International Conference on "Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations", University of Milan, Italy, 10-12 June 2020.

Scapegoating in times of Corona

Video

Institute Director Steven Vertovec gave a live television interview on Deutsche Welle and PBS America to comment on the coronavirus pandemic, xenophobia and group stigmas.

DWnews TV Interview Thursday, 7th May 2020 with Steven Vertovec, conducted by Anchor Brent Goff

Events

Forthcoming Events

No events

June 2021

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“Mirrors of Habsburg Memory”

from 16:00 to 17:30

Pamela Ballinger (University of Michigan)

“The Memory-Activism Nexus”

from 15:30 to 17:00

Ann Rigney (Utrecht University)

Vulnerability and Care: an anthropology of the good, the bad, and the ugly?

from 15:00 to 16:15

Jason Danely (Oxford Brookes University)

all events

Career

Job Offers

No Vacancies

Call for Special Issue Papers

The editors of Global Networks invite you to submit papers for a special issue on 'Covid-19 and Global Networks: reframing our understanding of globalization and transnationalism '

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14710374

Recent MMG Publications

Books and Edited Volumes

Working Papers

WP 20-04
Steven Vertovec:
Considering the work of ‘integration’
download pdf

WP 20-05
Paul Bramadat (University of Victoria):
Religion and Bioregionalism in Cascadia: The Trouble with Categories
download pdf

Issues

Goossaert, V., & van der Veer, P. (Eds.). (2021). Réguler les pluralités religieuses: Mondes indiens et chinois comparés [Special Issue]. Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions, 193 Link

Schönwälder, K. (ed). (2020). Special Issue: Diversity in local political practice. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 43(11). Link

Dorman, B., & Korom, F.J. (eds). (2020). "Intangible Cultural Heritage in Asia", in Asian Ethnology, 79(1). Link

Hänsch, V., Stasik, M., & Bekele Debele, S. (eds). (2020). "Temporalities of Waiting in Africa", in Critical African Studies, 12(1). Link

Journal Articles

Ngo, T. (2021). Bones of contention: Situating the dead of the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese border war. American Ethnologist (AE) doi:10.1111/amet.13015.

Boudou, B. (2021). Beyond the welcoming rhetoric: Hospitality as a principle of care for the displaced. Essays in Philosophy, 22(1-2), 85-101. doi:10.5840eip20212225.

Drouhot, L. G., & Garip, F. (2021). What’s behind a racial category? Uncovering heterogeneity among Asian Americans through a data-driven typology. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 7(2), 22-45. doi:10.7758/RSF.2021.7.2.02.

van der Veer, P. (2021). Minority rights and Hindu nationalism in India. Asian Journal of Law and Society. doi:10.1017/als.2020.51

Goossaert, V., & van der Veer, P. (2021). Introduction. Archives de sciences sociales des religions, 193, 11-24.

Vertovec, S. (2021). The social organization of difference. Ethnic and Racial Studies. doi:10.1080/01419870.2021.1884733.

Bhasi, S. (2021). Remembered and forgotten gods: Caste and the transnational worship of ancestral deities among Malaysian Hindus. Archives de sciences sociales des religions, 193, 55-78.

Drouhot, L. G. (2021). Cracks in the melting pot? Religiosity and assimilation among the diverse Muslim population in France. American Journal of Sociology, 126(4), 795-851. doi:10.1086/712804.

Chimbidzikai, T. (2021). “It’s a Big Umbrella”: Uncertainty, Pentecostalism, and the integration of Zimbabwe exemption permit immigrants in Johannesburg, South Africa. Migration and Society, 4(1), 163-171. doi:10.3167/arms.2021.040115.

Contributions to a collected Edition

van der Veer, P. (2021). Introduction: Refugees and religion. In B. Meyer, & P. van der Veer (Eds.), Refugees and religion: Ethnographic studies of global trajectories (pp. 1-11). London: Bloomsbury Academic. Link

van der Veer, P.(2021). German refugees and refugees in Germany. In B. Meyer, & P. van der Veer (Eds.), Refugees and religion: Ethnographic studies of global trajectories (pp. 34-47). London: Bloomsbury Academic. Link

Ngo, T., & Mai, N. T. T. (2021). In search of a Vietnamese Buddhist space in Germany. In B. Meyer, & P. van der Veer (Eds.), Refugees and religion: Ethnographic studies of global trajectories (pp. 105-122). London: Bloomsbury Academic. Link

Punathil, S. (2021). Between hope and fear: Migrant “illegality” and camp life in Assam, India. In B. Meyer, & P. van der Veer (Eds.), Refugees and religion: Ethnographic studies of global trajectories (pp. 198-216). London: Bloomsbury Academic. Link

Koenig, M. (2021). Religion. In B. Hollstein, R. Greshoff, U. Schimank, & A. Weiß (Eds.), Soziologie: Sociology in the German-Speaking World: Special Issue Soziologische Revue 2020 (pp. 331-343). Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg. Link

Castro Varela, MdM., & Mohamed, S. (2021). Bodies on the outside: Artistic imagination in Afrofuturism. In D. Neugebauer (Ed.), Counter_Readings of the Body (pp. 57-64). Leipzig: Spector Books. Link

Mohamed, S., & Castro Varela, MdM. (2021). Intersektionalität und postkoloniale soziale Arbeit. In A. Biele Mefebue, A. Bührmann, & S. Grenz (Eds.), Handbuch Intersektionalitätsforschung. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien. Link

Kang, J. (2021). Chinese Christian community in Germany: Home-making and Chineseness. In N. Cao, G. Giordan, & F. Yang (Eds.), Chinese religions going global (pp. 97-114). Leiden: Brill. Link

Online Lectures

Here you will find videos from lectures given by distinguished researchers at the MPI MMG.

Blogs

Researchers from the institute describe the development of their projects and the challenges, delights and frustrations of conducting social scientific research.

Diversity Interviews

Here you will find transcripts of interviews with distinguished scientists, led by staff members of the MMG.

MPI-MMG linked Journals

NEW DIVERSITIES

New Diversities is an international, peer reviewed, scholarly and professional journal, published by the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity.

Global Networks

Global Networks publishes high quality, peer-reviewed research on global networks, transnational affairs and practices, and their relation to wider theories of globalization. The journal provides a forum for discussion, debate and the refinement of key ideas in this emerging field.

CityScapes

CityScapes is a 144 page biannual print publication. It is a hybrid of forms, simultaneously invested in scholarly discourse around contemporary urbanism in Africa and the global south, as much as individual everyday experiences and activities of the multitude of actors that are actively involved in shaping cities across the continent and the rest of the developing world.

MAX, the Max Planck Network

All social scientific research at the Institute, particularly concerning informed consent and involving visual materials, is designed to follow the ethical guidelines formulated by the American Anthropological Association (see http://www.aaanet.org/... ).

All material on the Institute’s website is protected by copyright. If you wish to use material from the website, please contact our Research Coordinator, Dr. Norbert Winnige (winnige(at)mmg.mpg.de).