Global Diversities Book Series Launch
On April 8, the 'Global Diversities' Book Series was launched to a distinguished gathering of scholars that participated in the Academy of Urban Super-Diversity taking place from 8-10 April at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of
Philippa Grand, head of Social Sciences in the Scholarly & Reference Division at Palgrave Macmillan, kicked-off the launch with a description of the series that will publish first class works on the contemporary meanings and dynamics of diversity across a variety of contexts and disciplinary fields. In addition to publishing monographs of conventional form and length, the series will also contain so called 'Palgrave Pivot Books', which are shorter (typically from 25 – 50 000 words), open access e-books that can be printed on demand, and are published within three months of manuscript submission! Before passing on to the authors of the first two books published in the series, Grand invited the scholars present to approach her with their publication ideas and submit proposals either directly to herself or to the series editors.
Susanne Wessendorf followed to introduce her book "COMMONPLACE DIVERSITY. Social Relations in a Super-Diverse Context", which is the first to be published in the series. She described the monograph that looks at social relations in Hackney, one of Britain's most diverse areas. She described the normalisation of diversity there, which is conceptualised in the book as 'commonplace diversity', as being an integral part of life in a 'super-diverse' context. Wessendorf thanked the professional teams at Palgrave and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity for their support in publishing her work.
The second book to be published in the series "DIVERSITIES OLD AND NEW. Migration and Socio-Spatial Patterns in New York, Singapore and Johannesburg" was then presented by Sofya Aptekar and Laavanya Kathiravelu, two of the authors of the edited volume. They described the book and some of the challenges and adventures of collaborative writing in a group of seven that included the editor Steven Vertovec and the other authors Anna Cieslik, Junjia Ye, Rajohane Matshedisho and Alex Wafer. The book looks at the changing nature of diversity and its socio-spatial patterns in the neighborhoods of Astoria in New York, Jurong West in Singapore, and Hillbrow in Johannesburg.
Following the formal launch of the series, the scholars gathered went on to engage in informal conversation while enjoying the sparkling wine and nibbles that were offered on behalf of Palgrave.
Global Diversities Book Series Editors
Steven Vertovec
Director at the MPI-MMG and Honorary Joint Professor of Sociology and Ethnology, University of Gottingen, Germany
Director at the MPI-MMG
Peter van der Veer
Director at the MPI-MMG and Professor-at-Large, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Publications Manager MPI-MMG
Christiane Kofri
kofri(at)mmg.mpg.de