Contesting Culture: Discourses of Identity in Multi-ethnic London: 100 (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology, Series Number 100) - Tapa dura

"...provides an important...view of identity formation, stressing its instrumental function over other aspects of identity production and negotiation." Kathleen Hall, Religious Studies Review

"...this book provides one of the better starting points for discussions of ethnicity in contemporary Europe." David Beriss, H-Net Reviews

This innovative 1996 study presents an account of the interaction of people from different ethnic backgrounds who live in Southall, the most densely populated, multi-ethnic ghetto in the London area. Breaking with the tradition of studying a single ethnic community, Gerhard Baumann treats Southall as a social field, in which various immigrant groups come to terms with one another and with the dominant, if distant, host culture. The people of Southall affirm ethnic distinctiveness in some contexts, but they are also engaged in rethinking their identities and in debating the meaning of their cultural heritage. This book is at once a vivid ethnographic account of an aspect of contemporary British life, and a challenge to the conventional discourse of community studies.