The aim of this volume is to shed some light on the essentially hybrid nature, the complexity and the flexibility of "culture" and identity, their potential openness as well as their closures. Starting from the reality that postmodern personal identities are multicultural identities, it tries to define the limits of cultural hybridity. Why is it so difficult to negotiate differences across cultures? In what ways does racism strike at the foundations of multiculturalism? The contributors, UK and European social scientists and anthropologists, deconstruct established approaches and disclose why anti-racism and multiculturalism are hard roads to travel.