Centre for Culture, Conflict, and Inequalities (C3I)

Culture is not a frivolous side issue. A major source of social cohesion and solidarity, it doubles as a major source of exclusion, inequality, and conflict. Cultural beliefs about superiority continue to spark horrendous human rights violations, fanned by ethnic, religious, or political hatred. Culture kills, literally. Such understandings of superiority also feed into the insensitivities to cultural difference that give rise to the everyday evils of racism, (hetero)sexism and classism – inequalities that trigger protest and resistance by movements, groups, or individuals inspired by ideals about a more inclusive and just society.
The Center for Culture, Conflict, and Inequality (C3I) studies both types of processes, either separately or in combination: 1) the role of culture in creating and sustaining social inequalities and 2) its role in critiquing, resisting, and fighting these inequalities. C3I boasts a marked empirical focus on these issues and prides itself on its theoretical and methodological openness, refusing to commit itself to a particular type of theory or method. It defines the two as strictly secondary, as tools rather than meaningful ends in and off themselves. So as the research problem at hand demands, its members should feel free to mobilize either classical, modern or more critical postmodern or poststructuralist theories, and either qualitative or quantitative methods, ranging from ethnography to experimental research.
Substantively C3I feels no urge to limit itself to definite manifestations of culture, conflict, or inequality. All that matters is the ways in which variegated manifestations of culture give rise to (resistance to) structures of inequality and institutional orders that sustain and reproduce them. Culture may thus refer, for instance, to political ideologies or religious doctrines; to gender, ethnic, or sexual identities; to apparently innocent aesthetic standards and tastes that play out in everyday life and popular culture (e.g., humor styles, fashion, obsessions with authenticity); and indeed, to much more.
C3I holds monthly seminars that are aimed at fostering dialogue, collaboration, and creative thinking among its members. These are organized around both presentation and discussion of members’ ongoing work, as well as inviting external scholars to learn from their vibrant research. We view these seminars as crucial democratic and horizontal spaces where new ideas can emerge, and practices of (un)knowing unfold.