Public opinion in recent years has soured on multiculturalism, due in large part to fears of radical Islam. In Multiculturalism without Culture, Anne Phillips contends that critics misrepresent culture as the explanation of everything individuals from minority and non-Western groups do. She puts forward a defense of multiculturalism that dispenses with notions of culture, instead placing individuals themselves at its core. Multiculturalism has been blamed for encouraging the oppression of women--forced marriages, female genital cutting, school girls wearing the hijab. Many critics opportunistically deploy gender equality to justify the retreat from multiculturalism, hijacking the equality agenda to perpetuate cultural stereotypes.

Solidarity--the reciprocal relations of trust and obligation between citizens that are essential for a thriving polity--is a basic goal of all political communities. Yet it is extremely difficult to achieve, especially in multiracial societies. In an era of increasing global migration and democratization, that issue is more pressing than perhaps ever before. In the past few decades, the valence of multiracialism as a social and political issue has risen dramatically throughout the world. It features prominently nearly everywhere, from the United States, where it has been a perennial social problem, to Europe, which has experienced an unprecedented influx of Muslim and African immigrants, to Latin America, where rapid urbanization has intensified interracial contact.

Para los antropólogos, un concepto básico y central de su disciplina es el de cultura. El tér- mino cultura utilizado en un contexto antropo- lógico tiene un sentido mucho más amplio que el que abarca en el habla ordinaria.