ABSTRACT
Hybridity became a fashionable concept in the social sciences where it was used to challenge ethnocentric views of cultures, and to reject essentialism. To view things as natural/cultural hybrids is today widely accepted as the correct ontology to study relationships between humans and their environment. But in fact, the concept of hybridity still sustains essentialist views. Hybrids are new discrete entities created by combining pre-existing entities whose essential features are not disputed. Continua, rather than hybrids, need to be considered in order to produce non-essentialist representations capable of guiding us through the shifting, fuzzy world we live in.
