Paradox of Difference

Neriko Musha Doerr is Adjunct Professor at Ramapo College. Her publications include Fairies, Ghosts, and Santa Claus (Berghhahn, 2022), Transforming Study Abroad: A Handbook (Berghahn, 2020), The Global Education Effect and Japan: Constructing New Borders and Identification Practices (Routledge, 2020).

“True to its title, The Paradox of Difference offers fresh ways of thinking about how variances among places and groups of people are constructed and rendered meaningful and with what consequences. It is a highly considerate text; the author uses clear, precise language throughout each chapter and distills dense theoretical concepts well.” • Cori Jakubiak, Grinnell College

• Introduction: The Paradox of DifferenceChapter 1. The Paradox of Mixing and Border Crossing: A Necessary Reliance on Unit ThinkingChapter 2. The Paradox of Standardization: Normative Unit Thinking and Its Simultaneous Homogenization and Hierarchical DifferentiationChapter 3. The Paradox of Narrative: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of the New and the DifferentChapter 4. The Paradox of Proximity: Subject Position Proximity and the Oppositional Articulation of DifferenceChapter 5. The Paradox of Tolerance: Cultural Relativism, Othering, and “Seeing Difference in Similarity”Conclusion: Challenging Paradoxes of Difference toward Post-Unit ThinkingGlossaryReferencesIndex