Introduction: contextualizing, researching and debating patterns of standardization and diversity

When diversity and standardization are viewed as the opposite extremes of a continuum, most contemporary people will express a preference for diversity. Diversity seems colourful, while the standardized appears as monochrome or sadly grey. The hyperbole of Theophile Gautier's prediction is dandyesque, yet fear of standardization and its consequences was widespread at the time he wrote. An endogenous source of diversity can be the process of individualization, growing individual autonomy as described by authors such as Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck. Language, as Pierre Bourdieu illustrates, is not at all natural in that sense, but rather highly conventional, the result of past efforts to create a standardized language with uniform rules of grammar, orthography and phonetics. The acceptance of the rights guaranteed by the European or Universal declarations does, of course, limit diversity. Female genital mutilation is a custom of various African societies and some of the members of those societies continue to practise it when they migrate to Europe.