I conducted anthropological research on interfaith couples and marriages in Indonesia in 2010, and have continued to investigate interfaith dialogue practices, religious diversity management and inter...Read More
My research on interfaith dialogue is driven by questions about people’s individual capacities for transformation and cohabitation with other humans. In previous articles (here and here) I demonstra...Read More
Anyone who has embarked upon the study of religion immediately runs into a debate of the meaning of the very word religion. Definitions abound and debates rage about whether a general definition of re...Read More
What happens when a social scientist uses a camera as a tool in ethnographic fieldwork? For a decade prior to pursuing graduate school, I worked as a composer, film editor and documentary filmmaker. W...Read More
When I set out on my dissertation research, my main question was whether and how interfaith dialogue functions to transform people. I had a hypothesis that people do interfaith dialogue because when d...Read More
Notwithstanding the prizing of diversity, there IS some unified bottom line to interfaith dialogue. Nonviolent behavior is the basis for “unity in diversity.” Behavior is a category about which a...Read More
Read Part I here, and Part II here. When I ate lunch with the rabbi he inveighed against interfaith dialogue and its inability to reach or transform the minds of those who are closed to dialogue. He s...Read More
What do tolerant people do with the intolerant? We tolerate them. We ignore them. We insult them. We try to change them: By explaining. By demonstrating. By oppressin...Read More
“You can’t teach me anything about Europeans,” once commented the deputy mayor of Jerusalem. Europeans had killed his father. “You can’t teach me anything about Palestinians.” Palestinians...Read More
Dhesheh Refugee Camp houses 17,000 people in less than 1 square kilometer. It was established for two waves of refugees in 1948 and 1967 by the United Nations, which is still in charge of providing me...Read More