ABSTRACT
If events during the fi rst half of the century profoundly disturbed previously established sociopolitical boundaries, the second half hosted passionate discussions in the arena of identity politics in an attempt to give shape to our abilities and inabilities in dealing with difference. Grappling with a long history of silencing, rejecting, or exoticizing what is not familiar to us, we devise and revise ways of negotiating difference in daily life; and in the process, we often are confused by the fact that borders considered legitimate by one group are in no time rejected by another. Without a clear central reference, new emerging identities and the boundaries circumscribing them are inevitably unstable, and thus demand a constant reassessment of what either is desirable or forbidden, ethical or unethical in cultural relations. Because a group’s identity is defi ned not only through commonality but greatly by contrast to its outsiders, difference-as much as familiarity-becomes crucial in defi ning one’s own cultural location. In our daily lives, it is irrefutable that difference is now a major part of the social actor’s script.
