The International Studies Public Forum, Institute for International, Global and Regional Studies (IIGaRS), Department of Sociology, and Department of Political Science present

“Linguistic and Religious Pluralism: Between Difference and Inequality”
with Rogers Brubaker, Professor of Sociology and UCLA Foundation Chair

Thursday, May 29, 2014
5:00-6:20 p.m.
Social Science Plaza A, Room 1100

Through what political, economic, and cultural processes is difference transformed into inequality? Specifically, how are linguistic and religious pluralism implicated in the production and reproduction of inequality? Brubaker considers the political rules that privilege some languages and religions and dis-privilege others; the processes that confer differential economic value on particular languages and religions; and the discursive and symbolic processes that confer prestige, honor, and stigma on particular languages and religions. He argues that political and economic forces generate deeper and more consequential forms of inequality between languages than between religions in contemporary liberal societies, while discursive and symbolic processes generate more profound forms of inequality between religions. The major sources of religious inequality derive from religion’s thicker cultural, normative, and political content; while the major sources of linguistic inequality come from the pervasiveness of language, and from the increasingly and inescapably "language” nature of political, economic, and cultural life in the modern world.

For further information, please contact Gloria Simpson, simpsong@uci.edu or 949-824-8687.