Hall offers a wide-ranging exploration of the issues surrounding cultural identity. He outlines the reasons why the question of identity is so compelling and yet so problematic. Outstanding contributors then interrogate different dimensions of the crisis of identity providing both theoretical and substantive insights into different approaches to understanding identity.

Introduction - Stuart Hall Who Needs `Identity′? From Pilgrim to Tourist - or a Short History of Identity - Zygmunt Bauman Enabling Identity? - Marilyn Strathern Biology, Choice and the New Reproductive Technologies Culture′s In-Between - Homi K Bhabha Interrupting Identities - Kevin Robins Turkey/Europe Identity and Cultural Studies - Is That All There Is? - Lawrence Grossberg Music and Identity - Simon Frith Identity, Genealogy, History - Nikolas Rose Organizing Identity - Paul du Gay Entrepreneurial Governance and Public Management The Citizen and the Man about Town - James Donald

`This impressive and timely collection of essays addresses the significance of cultural identity as social phenomenon and provides an insight into a number of new approaches for unfolding its complexity.... This is not only a collection of some of the most respected thinkers in the social sciences but reveals the variety of paths that can be followed in pursuit of the question of cultural identity′ - Sociology `This collection of essays brings together contributions from different disciplines and theoretical traditions in an effort to illuminate and advance the debate about cultural identity and its meaning in contemporary social formations. It is of value to those engaged in social and cultural theory, the social sciences, cultural studies, and the humanities′ - Sociological Abstracts `Hall′s opening essay is wide-ranging about theorisations of identities... Ten essay cover many different types of ground, often stimulatingly and at times surprisingly.... As a whole, though dispersed, the book well fulfills its aim to ask why "questions of cultural identity have acquired visibility and salience" across fields of research′ - The Times Higher Education Supplement