Introduction: Depicting Diversity

Studying depictions of diversity – their processes of production and reproduction, their effects and transformations – should be an essential task in social science and cultural studies today. Identities, human differences, social structures and patterns of inequality cannot be assumed to be of one kind: they are contextually conceived and enacted. Further research and theory is required in order to understand better the relationships betweenhow diversities (and the groups within a varied social array) are imagined, how they related to social, economic and geographical characteristics, how such depictions reflect or influence social interactions, and how political systems of diversity governance themselves utilise or create depictions of diversity.