Contesting Culture: Discourses of Identity in Multi-ethnic London

In a vivid, ethnographic account of immigrant groups living in West London, Gerd Baumann breaks with the conventional discourse of community studies to explore their mutual interaction. By treating Southall—the most densely populated, multi-ethnic ghetto in the London area—as a social field, he considers how people from different backgrounds come to terms with one another and with the dominant, host culture, while at the same time affirming their own ethnic distinctiveness.