Difficulties distinguishing the ethnographic object and the ethnographer's analysis can pose a challenge to the conduct and dissemination of ethnographic work. The close distance between ethnographic observation and the ethnographer's interpretation elides the boundary between considerations of theory and method. In his book, Interpretation and Social Knowledge, Reed describes interpretivism as an epistemological approach aimed at harnessing the potential of social explanations developed in ethnography's interstitial position – the space between theory and social reality. This issue ofEthnographyc provides a forum for ethnographers coming from different theoretical positions and working in different empirical areas to reflect upon on the value and limitations of interpretivism in ethnography.

I lay out a scheme for understanding immigrant incorporation as social solidarity achieved through the application of widely shared meanings, categories of perception, moral distinctions and manners of speech pertaining to social membership. The inclusion of immigrants is accomplished through the symbolic construction of community boundaries that include newcomers, the reification of symbolic distinctions in identifiable practices, and the censure and exclusion of problematic elements of diversity. This cultural sociology of immigrant incorporation draws upon Alexander's work on the multicultural mode of incorporation in the civil sphere, Bakhtin's thinking regarding centripetal and centrifugal forces in language, and Foucault's conception of discipline. Empirical material from Sweden and the United States supports the theory.

The city of Lewiston, Maine, has struggled since its mills began closing in the 1950s. Historically recognized for its large French-speaking population descended from the Canadians who staffed the city's mills, in the new millennium Lewiston acquired a new identity as "Maine's Mogadishu." Beginning in 2001, substantial Somali immigrant settlement gave Lewiston the largest per capita Somali population in the United States and sparked controversies and collaborations that redefined the city. In Strangers and Neighbors, Andrea M. Voyer shares five years of observations in the city of Lewiston. She shows how long-time city residents and immigrant newcomers worked to develop an understanding of the inclusive and caring community in which they could all take part. Yet the sense of community developed in Lewiston was built on the appreciation of diversity in the abstract rather than by fostering close and caring relationships across the boundaries of class, race, culture, and religion. Through her sensitive depictions of the experiences of Somalis, Lewiston city leadership, anti-racism activists, and even racists, Voyer reveals both the promise of and the obstacles to achieving community in the face of diversity.

This study shows that contemporary multiculturalism is a cultural referent used in the construction of modern and socially-acceptable selves. By analysing the practices of diversity training, I consider one of the ways in which multiculturalism moves from abstract philosophical idea and fodder for policy formation to adoption as a cultural and moral framework that individuals use in establishing their identities, discerning meaning and engaging others. Demonstrating that people must acquire competence in the use of a particular multicultural vocabulary and rules of interaction, I challenge the perspective that both bigotry and acceptance are organic to individuals. Properly multicultural selves are not merely the natural extension of interior individual qualities. Instead, people produce modern identities vis-à-vis diversity through the use of language and the negotiation of its meaning.