ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the conceptualisation of hybridity and its relationship to the discourse of multiracialism and multiculturalism in Singapore and Australia respectively. It brings to this discussion a critical realist or post-positivist approach to understanding cultural and racial identity. Drawing on some representative studies on multiculturalism and hybridity within Singapore and Australia, the chapter demonstrates the tendency of some scholars towards a radical contextualist position overemphasising specificity. The chapter examines how studies concerned with multi-culturalism in Asia and the West have been conceptualised with foundationalist and anti-foundationalist frames. It argues that critical realist ideas can be instructive for rethinking contextualist frames. For example, underlying Australia's and Singapore's response to difference are what critical realists categorise as 'deep structures'. The chapter examines the scholarship on hybridity in Australia and Singapore, identifying different hybrid discourses that move from viewing the world as independent of human consciousness to one that is socially constructed.
