The introduction opens with a personal episode that hastened my motivation for writing this book. I was a visiting lecturer at the University of Warsaw in AprilâMay 2018, a period coinciding with the commemoration events explicating the sources, progression, and consequences of the 1968 anti-Semitic campaign fifty years after its occurrence. The main event was a temporary exhibition in the course of MarchâMay 2018 at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews entitled âStrangers in Their Homeâ. One of the displays featured a quotation by Zygmunt Bauman, an internationally renowned sociologist, who emigrated from Poland in 1969: âIn a world where nobody can ever feel completely, fully at home, perhaps even the fate of the Other can turn around? Perhaps we are capable of seeing the Other as a human being just like us?â
The exhibition and Baumanâs quote not only echo my work in general and this book in particular, but also intimately connect and intersect with my biography. I grew up in Warsaw in communist Poland, experiencing that country as my home. The Jewish component of my identity was shaped in the course of my childhood through commemoration of the Holocaust, mainly by attending the annual Memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Later on, I participated in Jewish youth camps organised by the Jewish Association for Social and Cultural Affairs, where we learned experientially about some aspects of Jewish and Israeli culture, such as Yiddish songs and folk dances. Thus, my knowledge of Judaism and Jewish heritage was rather limited, largely confined to the above events, occasional exposure to books in Yiddish that my parents read, and my own reading of literature related to Jewish heritage and ancient history, such as Thomas Mannâs âJoseph and His Brothersâ. My mother cooked Jewish food along with some Polish dishes. My family maintained close contact with a few similar, largely assimilated, Jewish families, including spending summer vacations together on the Baltic coast or around the Tatra Mountains.
Importantly, in parallel, the local elements of my identity (Polish, communist?) crystalised very significantly by means of a socialisation process in the Polish elementary education school system, and through symbolic events, such as participating in the annual May Day Parade since very early childhood. My family did not mark the main Jewish holidays, such as the Jewish New Year, the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), and Passover, but we did partially celebrate Christmas and New Yearâs Eve.
Immigrating to Israel in September 1968 as an adolescent with my family due to the anti-Semitic campaign was a formative life event for me, both personally and professionally. It uprooted me from the environment where I grew up, geographically and physically, but primarily socially, since it isolated me from my Polish childhood friends. I vividly remember our departure from Poland, particularly the farewell scene at Warszawa GdaĆska railway station, from which we left heading to Vienna. I parted from two childhood friends, with whom I could not communicate until the fall of the Iron Curtain due to potential adverse consequences for their families should they maintain connections with Israel.
The taxing experience continued with crossing the Polish border into Czechoslovakia, where our Polish citizenship was revoked, thus actually turning us into exiles. In my memory, our migrant status was further accentuated by a short stay in a temporary locale near Vienna operated by the Jewish Agency for Israel, where I experienced alienation in a cold and mouldy physical setting. Despite the warm welcome of close relatives, who had emigrated from Poland to Israel about a decade prior to our emigration, becoming a new immigrant in Israel ironically shaped my identity as a stranger in the Jewish homeland for many years afterwards, which continued into my doctoral studies âexpeditionâ to the United States.
The personal experience of traversing different societies and cultures in the course of individual and societal transformations, while enacting the part of a wandering Jew, a visitor, a stranger, at times âlost in translationâ (Hoffman, 1989), has presumably inadvertently spurred an interest in the fate of âstrangersâ, âothersâ, and the âdifferentâ dwelling alongside mainstream residents. In fact, it has been a major motivator for embarking on this book project.
This personal thread has coincided with the dramatic developments of the past few decades.
The contemporary epoch has presented a complex reality, characterised by extensive transformations and exposure to phenomena such as unprecedented migration from Africa and Asia into Europe, economic and political crises, consequently mounting social divisions, and exacerbation of protracted intergroup conflicts (Dhanani, Beus, & Joseph, 2018; Geiger & Jordan, 2014; Jones, 2014).
The present era has also featured declining democratic processes in established Western democracies, which, as expressed by some scholars, face imminent danger (Kashima, 2019; MĂŒller, 2016). These adverse developments hinder the fundamental premise of democratic regimes, where citizenship entails active participation in policymaking through deliberation (doing citizenship), as ardently advocated in the early twentieth century by Mary Parker Follett, and later by Hannah Arendt. In a similar vein, Kristeva (1991) has argued that the direct involvement of all stakeholders facilitates âcoordinated diversityâ without ostracism, but which is also devoid of levelling and smoothing over differences. Clair, Humberd, Caruso, and Morgan Roberts (2012) concur, claiming that the active participation of all parties prevents especially marginalised individuals and groups from losing some of the deeper facets of their self in daily encounters with dominant counterparts.
Concomitantly with social, political, and economic changes, there have been significant technological advances that enable transfer of global knowledge on an unprecedented scale. The dynamics indicated above have increased the prevalence of encounters between diverse social groups, albeit meeting and interacting with the âotherâ have often stemmed from necessity rather than deliberate free choice. Encounters between diverse individuals and groups have been taking place in workplaces, educational institutions, mixed neighbourhoods, healthcare organisations, commercial settings, and public/government service-providing organisations.
How have diverse individuals and groups engaged these inevitable encounters? What have been the bright sides of these experiences? What have been the harmful forces and dark shadows of such interactions? What mechanisms underlie the dynamics of these encounters? Studies attempting to respond to these queries have bourgeoned in recent years (Ali, 2019; Mutsaers & Trux, 2015; Swan, 2017; Van Laer & Janssens, 2011; Verkuyten, Yogeeswaran, & Adelman, 2019; Zanoni, 2011). Yet, research on diversity management in deeply divided societies ridden by protracted intergroup conflicts has been scarce. Baumanâs contemplation, cited above, echoes a perplexing query: How can people dwelling in such complex environments cope with the paradoxical realityâupholding democratic values, engendering social justice, equality, humane relations, and cooperative interactions at âhomeââin workplaces, communities, and public spaces in the face of intractable asymmetric national conflict? (Desivilya et al., 2017; Desivilya & Raz, 2015).
The main thrust of this book is to illuminate the interface of organisational diversity and political tensions, that is engaging diversity associated with the legacies and daily reminders of protracted political conflict. What can protagonists in these perplexing settings tell us about their precarious encounte...