MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY BETWEEN CONTACT, CO NCURRENCE AND ACCOMMODATION

In order to understand multiculturalism it is necessary to be aware of the different meanings and concepts of culture. During the last centu ries culture was more and more connected with nation. Nowadays nation and multicultural society are often in conflict with one another. The nation state, which kept strangers from rights of participation is con fronted with the problem that stangers are an increasingly common phen omenon. Multicultural society first of all concerns the question wheth er this is only an intermediate stage to global monoculture or if ther e is (over time) a possibility of different cultures existing peaceful ly side by side (polyculture). There are different models of multicult uralism (models of equality and models of dominance), all of them have to answer the question about how much difference is possible without threatening a basic consensus. Looking at the European Union one can e asily see the number of difficulties coming along with multicultural s ociety.