Critically Modern

<p>Critically Modern makes a critical intervention in one of the great debates of the moment. It offers a variety of rich and fascinating empirical analyses of 'modern' phenomena from diverse societies and contributes a powerful (and largely missing) voice to the growing literature on globalization and modernity outside anthropology.<br /> --Charles Piot<br /><br />In these essays theory and ethnography are presented in ways that make them mutually enriching. The volume should appeal to scholars across the entire range of disciplines that deal with modernity and/or globalization.<br /> --Edward LiPuma<br /><br />Are there multiple ways of being modern in the world today? How do people in various parts of the world become modern in their own distinct ways? Does the current focus on modernity in the social sciences resurrect a series of dichotomies (traditional and modern the West and the Rest developed and undeveloped) that social theorists have sought to move beyond in recent years? Or do inflections of modernity capture key features of ideology and influence in the contemporary world? Combining rich ethnographic analysis with incisive theoretical critiques this timely volume is certain to make an important mark in anthropology and in all related fields in which modernity is a central problematic.<br /><br />Contributors: Donald L. Donham Robert J. Foster Jonathan Friedman Ivan Karp John D. Kelly Bruce M. Knauft Lisa B. Rofel Debra A. Spitulnik Michel-Rolph Trouillot and Holly Wardlow.</p>