Deep diversities and widening chasms of inequality.

This article assesses the arguments of the authors in terms of the challenge that diversity poses to polities. Appreciating the comparative, contextual and iterative method of the authors that entwines the normative and the empirical, this article suggests that the arguments of the book may be weakened by an overlooking of how diversity fares in the face of widening material inequalities and the workings of the neoliberal market. This article questions the use of the term “governance” of diversity and suggests that it inadvertently suggests a technocratic and managerial approach to diversity on account of the neoliberal underpinnings of the term. Finally, it welcomes the case for religion as public good that the authors make but suggests that this can only flourish with an accompaniment of public goods such as health, housing and education, publicly provisioned by the exchequer for all citizens and not subject to commoditization for individual consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]