1 Any situation in which no particular political, cultural, ethnic, or ideological group is dominant (R. Dahl 1961). When individuals affected by a given issue in the same way band together, the group empowers the individual by aggregating resources. ‘Each group competes, negotiates, and compromises with other groups for influence, resources, such as money, or public support’ (Eisenberg (1996) Soc. Sci. Info. 35, 2).

2 The cultural diversity of a plural society. Clifford (2006) Area 38, 4 speaks of ‘pluralism, which has been much talked about but rarely practised’, and Smith (2005) Antipode 37, 5 has a merry tilt at pluralism. Ethington and Meeker in M. Dear and S. Flusty (2002) suggest that the urban is itself plural, such that ‘any attempt to view the city other than through a tolerance of multiple views cannot suffice’ (Moore et al. (2003) Area 35, 2). R. Eversole and J. Martin (2005) observe the underlying assumption in Australia that ‘a recognition of pluralism may be able to overcome potentially conflicting political interests in the regions, or actually sustain some communities that may be becoming economically and environmentally non-viable or socially dysfunctional’. See Nash (2005) Antipode 37, 2 on pluralism in Northern Ireland. Mouffe uses agonistic pluralism—in which the political refers to the antagonism that is constitutive of society and politics refers to practices, discourses, and institutions that order and organize society but that are always open to the possibility of antagonisms because they are embedded in the political (Mouffe (2000) IHS). M. Kenny (2004) discusses the new pluralism, finding that the preservation of difference tends to become a condition of any group’s inclusion in the political community in a way that ‘dethrones the principles of democratic citizenship’.

3 An academic stance that does not focus on one approach only; see Clare and Siemiatycki (2014) Prof. Geogr. 66, 1, 4.