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Conference: Sustainable pluralism: Linguistic and cultural resilience in multiethnic societies

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September 4 - September 6, 2014
4:30 pm - 1:00 pm
Room 120, Mershon Center for International Security Studies (1501 Neil Ave.)

The colloquium "Sustainable Pluralism: Linguistic and Cultural Resilience in Multiethnic Societies," will take place from 4:30 Thursday, September 4th, through lunchtime on Saturday, September 6th.
 
Turning away from policy discourses of preservation, protection, and heritage, we look at the grassroots strategies by which minority languages and cultural practices are sustained in plural societies. Weak actors defend themselves and pursue their goals through the arts of accommodation, avoidance, and nichemaking. But cultural flourishing is not identical with human flourishing. How do the two intersect and diverge over time? Our international case studies come from Tibet, New Orleans, Mongolia, the Philippines, Greenland, Jewish Krakow, Russian Alaska, indigenous Honduras, Kyrgyzstan, the Lake Michigan Potawatomi, the Senegambian borderland, western China, and beyond. 
 
Keynote speakers Lenore Grenoble (U of Chicago), Camiel Hamans (European Union), and Salikoko Mukfwene (U of Chicago) will offer us views on the question from the Arctic, Brussels, and subsaharan Africa. 
 
The conference is presented by the Mershon Research Network in Cultural Resilience, a collaboration of the Center for Folklore Studies, the Department of Linguistics, and the Mershon Center. For more details:
 

http://cfs.osu.edu/events/sustainable-pluralism-linguistic-and-cultural-resilience-multiethnic-societies

Conference organizers:
Dorothy Noyes (English, Comparative Studies)
Brian Joseph (Linguistics, Slavic)