Introduction: Difference, culture, society, class

Almost thirty years ago, Margaret Thatcher infamously declared that there is no such thing as society. She was followed, a few years later, by anthropologists eager to dismantle the concept of society, albeit for really quite different reasons. Maybe this time the anthro- pologists got there ahead of the politicians. Some twenty-five years after anthropologists seriously started to question their particular multiculturalism, politicians of quite some influence have declared it defunct.