This collection seeks to contribute to the many long-standing discussions on modernity, but also and more specifically to the more recent debates over trends to pluralize modernity. These debates are current in many different academic disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, literature and postcolonial studies. Hitherto, most engagements with modernity in the plural have remained conspicuously confined to one or other intra-disciplinary notion of modernities, such as that of Shmuel Eisenstadts multiple modernities which has triggered a host of conference papers and publications largely within sociology: all the while, it seems that the literatures, for instance, of multiple modernities and alternative modernities are each distinguished by the fact that one ignores the other. It is the principal aim of this edited volume to subject these disciplinary discussions to a more encompassing view, assembling contributions from different scholars who not only work in different disciplines and regional settings, but who also engage with their research topics in a variety of approaches and at different levels of analysis. The volume thus transcends the sometimes narrow boundaries of the debates over modernities within the established academic disciplines and seeks to turn the unavoidable friction brought about by this interdisciplinary setting into most original and insightful scholarship.

This collection contributes to the many long-standing discussions on modernity, particularly to the more recent debates over trends to pluralize modernity in sociology, anthropology, historical and cultural studies. It transcends the sometimes narrow boundaries of the debates over modernities within the established academic disciplines and seeks to turn the unavoidable friction brought about by this interdisciplinary setting into most original and insightful scholarship.

Part I. Globalization and the Rethinking of ModernityChapter 1: Of Other Worlds to Come,'Pheng CheahChapter 2: What is Modernities a Plural of? A Rhetorical Analysis of Some Recent Uses,Ralph WeberChapter 3: Varieties of Modernity? Conceptual Prerequisites and Empirical Observations,Volker H. SchmidtChapter 4: The Origins of the Social Sciences and the Problem of Conceptualizing Modernity/Modernities,Wolfgang KnöblPart II. Sites of Revision, Ways of RevisioningChapter 5: Waiting for the Simorgh: Comparisons, Connections, and the Early Modern,Sanjay SubrahmanyamChapter 6: Early Modernity as Cosmopolis: Some Suggestions from Southeast Asia,Anthony ReidChapter 7: Revisioning Modernity: Modernity in Eurasian Perspectives,Arif DirlikChapter 8: New Historicism and Chinese Modernity: Multiple Mythologies Revisited,Andrea RiemenschnitterChapter 9: Making Modern Muslims: Islamic Reform, Hasan al-Banna, and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood,Gudrun KrämerChapter 10: Dilemmas of Development: Dr. Krisana Kraisintus Praxis in Asia and Africa, Tamara Loos