To think in terms of alternative modernities is to admit that modernity is inescapable and to desist from speculations about modernity s end. Modernity today is global and multiple and no longer has a Western governing center to accompany it. The essays in this collection, therefore, approach the dilemmas of modernity from transnational and transcultural perspectives.

The idea of alternative modernities holds that modernity always unfolds within specific cultures or civilizations and that different starting points of the transition to modernity lead to different outcomes....