In this concise and accessible introduction, Steve Fenton navigates the reader through 100 years of literature on ethnicity. Drawing on a wider range of theorists and illustrations from around the world, Fenton explores and clarifies the core meanings and the shifting ground of this contested concept. He shows how race, ethnicity and nation must be regarded as distinguishable at the margins but otherwise representing a closely related set of images and realities. From here he raises the question of the centrality of ethnic difference: Does it matter? When does it matter? Is it as important as many have assumed? The answer is that its importance can only be understood within a wider context of the culturally and socially subversive consequences of late modernity and a triumphant capitalist world order. In this way, this book re-connects the discourse of ethnicity to a series of other discourses from which it has become detached. Ethnicity will be an invaluable text for students of sociology, politics and international relations coming to the subject for the first time. It will also be enjoyed by the interested general reader, and its innovative and challenging approach will appeal to more advanced scholars of race and ethnicity.