The present cumulative habilitation theses focus on the social processes that come to light in the standardization and deconstruction of sociocultural differences. The focus is on how different concepts of diversity and otherness are (de-)constructed in the curatorial practice at global music and performing arts festivals. Through a transcultural lens, the politics of power in the field of global performing arts are discussed. These go hand in hand with complex social processes of standardization and conventionalization as well as with countermeasures, decolonization efforts and structuring conditions. In this way, the complex interplay of discourses (or symbols and narratives) and performances (or practices and social relationships) as well as representations (or politics and structures) of diversity and otherness is examined. In doing so, this postcolonial-oriented study refers both to the contingencies of human coexistence, to their symbolic routinization, to social inequalities, to ambivalent and conflictual negotiation processes as well as to the underlying power relations.