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certainly not treated in the same way as anti-Semitism, is considered as an important element of religion-based prejudices.
We cannot claim that the decisions about which kinds of prejudices are explicitly included are beyond criticism. But we can claim that the way the priorities were set is in itself consistent. As anti-Semitism is directly related to the horrors of the Holocaust, prejudices directed against Christians (or Jesuits), against Chinese (or Japanese), even if not included explicitly in the chapters dealing with religious and ethnic prejudices, are part of the general picture. It is our understanding that by learning about the structures and functions of one specific prejudice, we are able to comprehend other forms of prejudices also.
We can neither claim that the explicit inclusion (or exclusion) of a specific academic discipline in the chapters dealing with academic disciplines is the only thinkable, the only possible solution. It can be argued that treating philosophy as the “mother of all humanities” and therefore expecting that it will be dealt with sufficiently in all the other chapters is not the best way and does not provide an adequate treatment of philosophy. It can be argued that integrating different disciplines in a group of “normative” approaches tends to play down specific differences among these disciplines—but it was not our intention to provide a substitute for a book on prejudices in criminal law or in Catholic theology. Our intention was to integrate different disciplines in the interest of a general discourse.
To permit the best possible recruitment of authors, a peer-review method was used: scholars from different disciplines, known to the editorial team as academic experts in the field of prejudice research, were asked, as a kind of advisory board, to name a group of internationally recognised scholars best qualified to write articles on particular prejudices or particular disciplines. The scholars named were put into a ranking order according to the frequency with which they were named. This ranking order was used to invite specific authors.
It was not always possible to recruit the author at the top of the twelve different lists. But every author who has accepted our invitation and has written for this handbook was on the peers’ lists. The choice of authors