Table of Contents
PUBLIC WORLDS
Dilip Gaonkar and Benjamin Lee
Series Editors
VOLUME 1
Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization
The Public Worlds series is a product of Public Works Publications, which includes Public Planet Books and the journal Public Culture.
Copyright 1996 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
Chapter 2 is reprinted in revised form from Public Culture 2.2 (1990): 1-24. Copyright 1990 Center for Transnational Cultural Studies. Chapter 3 is reprinted in revised form from Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present, ed. Richard G. Fox. School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series, 191-210. Copyright 1991 School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Chapter 4 is reprinted in revised form from Stanford Literature Review 10.1-2 (1993): 11-23. Copyright 1993 Arjun Appadurai. Chapter 5 is reprinted in revised form from Consuming Modernity: Public Culture in a South Asian World, ed. Carol A. Breckenridge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 23-48. Copyright 1995 the Regents of the University of Minnesota. Chapter 6 is reprinted in revised form from Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia, ed. Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 31439. Copyright 1993 University of Pennsylvania Press. Chapter 8 is reprinted in revised form from Public Culture 5.3 (1993): 411-29. Copyright 1993 by The University of Chicago. Chapter 9 is reprinted in revised form from Counterworks: Managing the Diversity of Knowledge, ed. Richard Fardon (London and New York: Routledge, 1995). Copyright 1995 Arjun Appadurai.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
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Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
Seventh printing 2005
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Appadurai, Arjun, 1949-
Modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalization / Arjun Appadurai.
p. cm.(Public worlds; v. 1)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-452-91580-7
ISBN 0-8166-2793-2 (pbk.)
1. Culture. 2. Civilization, Modern1950- 3. Ethnicity. 4. Mass mediaSocial aspects. I. Title. II. Series.
HM101.A644 1996
306dc20
96-9276
The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.
For my son Alok,
My home in the world
Acknowledgments
This book was written over a period of six years, and during that time I have benefited from contact with many persons and institutions. The idea for the book took shape during 198990, when I was a MacArthur Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Parts of it were written while I was at the University of Pennsylvania, as codirector of the Center for Transnational Cultural Studies. It was completed at the University of Chicago, where I have enjoyed a great range of cross-disciplinary conversations at the Chicago Humanities Institute, and where I have benefited from the energies of the Globalization Project. Also, in Chicago during this period, conversations and debates at the Center for Transcultural Studies (previously the Center for Psycho-Social Studies) provided national and international perspectives that were invaluable.
The following individuals have given me valuable criticisms and suggestions in regard to various parts and versions of the chapters in this book: Lila Abu-Lughod, Shahid Amin, Talal Asad, Fredrik Barth, Sanjiv Baruah, Lauren Berlant, John Brewer, Partha Chatterjee, Fernando Coronil, Valentine Daniel, Micaela di Leonardo, Nicholas Dirks, Virginia Dominguez, Richard Fardon, Michael Fischer, Richard Fox, Sandria Freitag, Susan Gal, Clifford Geertz, Peter Geschiere, Michael Geyer, Akhil Gupta, Michael Hanchard, Miriam Hansen, Marilyn Ivy, Orvar Lofgren, David Ludden, John MacAloon, Achille Mbembe, Ashis Nandy, Gyanendra Pandey, Peter Pels, Roy Porter, Moishe Postone, Paul Rabinow, Bruce Robbins, Roger Rouse, Marshall Sahlins, Lee Schlesinger, Terry Smith, Stanley J. Tambiah, Charles Taylor, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Greg Urban, Ashutosh Varshney, Toby Volkman, Myron Weiner, and Geoffrey White. To those I have inadvertently overlooked, my sincere apologies.
A few persons deserve special mention for their more general and generous support. My teacher, friend, and colleague Bernard S. Cohn started me on a journey involving anthropology and history in 1970 and has been a steadfast source of ideas, friendship, and critical realism ever since. Nancy Farriss kept me always alert to the challenges of historical comparison and to the meanings of fidelity to the archive. Ulf Hannerz has been my partner in the study of things global since 1984, when we spent a year together at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Palo Alto). Peter van der Veer, in both Philadelphia and Amsterdam, has been a steadfast source of friendship, wit, and engaged debate. John and Jean Comaroff, through both their scholarship and their stimulating presence in the department of anthropology at the University of Chicago, contributed in many ways to the shaping of this book. Sherry Ortner encouraged the project from the start and provided one of two careful, suggestive readings of the manuscript for the University of Minnesota Press. I am grateful to the second, anonymous reader as well. Dilip Gaonkar and Benjamin Lee (coeditors of the series in which this book appears) have been friends, colleagues, and interlocutors in more ways that I can easily describe. Homi Bhabha, Jacqueline Bhabha, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Steven Collins, Prasenjit Duara, and Sheldon Pollock provided a community of ideas which, even as it forms, has helped me complete this book and imagine many futures.
Lisa Freeman, the director of the University of Minnesota Press, and Janaki Bakhle (previously at the Press) stayed with me, combining patience and prodding, critical suggestions and editorial wisdom.
Many students, both at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago, have been a source of inspiration and energy. I must make special mention of those whose work has enriched the ideas contained in this book: Brian Axel, William Bissell, Caroline Cleaves, Nicholas De Genova, Victoria Farmer, Gautam Ghosh, Manu Goswami, Mark Liechty, Anne Lorimer, Caitrin Lynch, Jacqui McGibbon, Vyjayanthi Rao, Frank Romagosa, Philip Scher, Awadendhra Sharan, Sarah Strauss, Rachel Tolen, Amy Trubek, and Miklos Voros. Eve Darian-Smith, Ritty Lukose, and Janelle Taylor deserve special mention for both their intellectual contributions to this book and for their practical assistance. Caitrin Lynch did a splendid job on the index. Others who have helped in the complex process of producing this text include Namita Gupta Wiggers and Lisa McNair.
My family has lived with this book, always generously and sometimes without knowing it. My wife and colleague, Carol A. Breckenridge, is present in some way on every page: this book is one more document of our life adventure. My son Alok, to whom the book is dedicated, has grown to adulthood with it. His talent for love and his passion for life have been a steady reminder that books are not the world: they are about it.
