Textures of diversity: Socio-material arrangements, atmosphere, and social inclusion in a multi-ethnic neighbourhood

Abstract

Research within literatures on multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism has moved beyond studying the institutional basis and discursive negotiations of differences towards an understanding of the embodied and practical dimensions of everyday social interactions. An emergent literature has also started to consider the role of vibrant material agents, atmosphere, and their environmental contexts in understanding diversity spaces. We wish to contribute to this literature through a visual and material ethnographic approach, taking two cafes in Copenhagen, Denmark as emblematic cases. We locate these sites in the particular socio-cultural space of Nørrebro – a neighbourhood characterised by the ethnic diversity of its inhabitants, but also by political tensions, government-supported gentrification, and community-driven restructuring and rebuilding. Taking an ecological approach to these spaces, we argue that socio-material arrangements may serve to solve or express diversity through the aesthetic organisation of human and non-human actors. We interpret such material forms as co-constitutive agents of diversity politics.