The Last Act: A Guide for the Perplexed—Concluding Insights on Managing Diversity in Places and Times of Political Tensions

Abstract

The final chapter combines insights emerging from the three cases on managing diversity in places and times of political tensions. It draws on interfaced social psychological and critical perspectives and a real-life praxis-based approach. The integrated framework suggests that the capacity of rival groups to engage with the paradox of managing diversity and political tensions ensues from a complex web of relations at three levels: macro (social constructions of power, global migration trends, and the rise of populist leaders); meso (diversity culture and nature of intergroup contacts); and individual levels (motivation, affect, cognition, and behaviour). Promoting meaningful constructive transformation of relations between ‘adversaries’ in the light of the complex legacies of active and accumulative intergroup political tensions requires combined and joint efforts of all the protagonists and stakeholders directed at multiple levels and modalities of human experience.