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The Righteous of the Transnation: Jews, Muslims, and a Politics of Friendship in Berlin

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The Courage for Civil Repair

Part of the book series: Cultural Sociology ((CULTSOC))

Abstract

Building on Jeffrey Alexander’s conception of civil repair, this chapter outlines and contextualizes the story of the Salaam-Shalom Initiative, which emerged in late 2013 in Berlin around a small group of Jewish residents who were later joined by Muslims and others. During the refugee crisis, Salaam-Shalom made headlines through a series of interventions aimed at combining a politics of openness toward the unexpected wave of asylum seekers with its broader agenda of improving the relations among migrant minorities in Germany. The central point is that Salaam-Shalom, like other multicultural solidarity movements, is engaged in an affective politics of civil repair that complicates Alexander’s dichotomy of “brotherhood and otherhood” by breaking down the umbrella categories of Germans and foreigners, Jews and Muslims.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

    Volker M. Heins

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  1. Volker M. Heins
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Correspondence to Volker M. Heins .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University, Arlington, VA, USA

    Carlo Tognato

  2. Department of Sociology, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

    Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky

  3. Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Jeffrey C. Alexander

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Heins, V.M. (2020). The Righteous of the Transnation: Jews, Muslims, and a Politics of Friendship in Berlin. In: Tognato, C., Jaworsky, B., Alexander, J. (eds) The Courage for Civil Repair. Cultural Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44590-4_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44590-4_2

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-44589-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-44590-4

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