An excess of alterity? Debating difference in a multicultural society

Debates about the incompatibility of different ways of living are occurring in the UK as in most multicultural societies. These debates, which include diverse voices among both majority and minority ethnic populations, may be observed in public policies, the speeches of politicians and religious leaders, printed media, radio, television, the Internet, in novels, plays and films, and ethnographically in everyday conversations. One point of view, now widely expressed in Europe, is that multicultural countries have become 'too diverse', and the presence of communities adhering to values at odds with those of 'Western' secular society threaten cohesion. Focusing on the UK, the article examines what has been called a 'cultural-diversity skeptical turn' or 'backlash against difference', emphasizes the 'fuzziness' of the concepts involved, and proposes that the backlash should be understood inter alia in terms of the problems of the governability of what are, in a neo-liberal, transnationalized ecumene, increasingly fragmented societies.