In our day to day lives a more than ever, we're coming in contact with difference. And so as a result of that, you have a lot of people who believe that conflict is a near inevitability. So on the one hand, these encounters with difference are an everyday reality. But on the other hand, we have this way of thinking that isn't just sort of culturally imbedded but embedded in our set of democratic structures which treats difference as this threat. It creates a sort of increasingly volatile situation when when you bring those things together. The book is trying to trace how that story developed, and again, how it got imbedded in the way in which we approach democracy
In an increasingly polarised world, it’s not often we get books saying that difference is our greatest strength. But Farhan Samanani is a Canadian social anthropologist, whose recent book, How to Live with Each Other, does just that. It looks at how communities thrive when embracing their diversity. Farhan’s work and studies have taken him around the world but it’s the local, yet no less global, streets of Kilburn, a neighbourhood in northwest London, which informs much of his work. He's joined in conversation by Dipo Faloyin, senior editor and writer at VICE, and author of the book Africa is Not a Country, which focuses on issues of diversity and identity across the African continent.
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