Beyond the Rhetoric of Recognition or Separation: Two Swiss Cantons’ Attempts at Governing Religious Superdiversity

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting and hyper detailed examination of the process of religious registration and and the estabishment of the norms for religious groups in two neighboring cantons in Switzerland

I was at times overwhelmed by detail (some suggestions for simplifying the presentation are below)   despite surface differences in the approach taken the two cantons  they are unified by the fact that both offer schemes for registration and control (hence the many references to Foucault) I was even more struck by how much of what we are shown is not just the results of efforts to classify and control but also efforts b y the religious groups to colonize the political sphere in search of resources 

The presentation of detail is dense, almost numbing to the non expert reader

One simple solution would be to break up what are really very long descriptive paragraphs into more digestible chunnks.

to be honest one of my reactions to all the detail was: These are Swiss, they are orderly and they like  rules 

But we all know there is more

 

the content of the diversity is interesting

some examples from public debate (beyond detail of the regulations) would be good

 

the english prose is good with a few lapses   it should be espouse, not spouse (line 499) 

it should also read without losing sight of, not without losing out of sight (141-42) 

Author Response

Thanks for the very useful comments and hints:

- I did break up some long descriptive paragraphs into more digestible chunnks.

- I added some references to public debates

- I corrected the english prose

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear author,

Thanks for this very informative contribution to the field. Have you checked Casanova's work? This might be of interest to you.

I like the Foucauldian approach of the piece - and in general the comparison of the two cantons, so close together, is a great case.

Just some minor spelling and language points which might benefit you to bring to your attention:

• l 134: were --> where
• the word superdiversity is usually reserved for a situation in which no group has the majority (if less then 50% of the population belongs to the largest group); not just a high number of different religious groups; this might still be the case for the cantons of Vaud and Geneva, but needs to be specified
• Please rephrase l 233-238; unclear English / presentation of some facts
• l 338-340 weird sentence, rewrite
• Foucaultian or Foucauldian?
• 377: check - to check
• 402-404: rewrite
• 496: regnition --> recognition
• Ulrich Beck comes to late in the text - should appear earlier

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thanks for the very useful comments: I added a reference to Casanova's and Beck's work in the introductive part and have corrected the spelling and language points.