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Modernity today is global and multiple and no longer has a Western "governing center" to accompany it. The essays in Alternative Modernities, 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. Without abandoning the Western discourse on modernity, the contributors to this volume write from the standpoint that modernity is not one, but many. Believing that the language and lessons of Western modernity must be submitted to a comparative study of its global receptions, they focus on such sites as China, Russia, India, Trinidad, and Mexico. Other essays treat more theoretical aspects of modernity, such as its self-understanding and the potential reconcilability of cosmopolitanism and diversity.This issue initiates an important dialogue to be continued in a four-part series, the Millennial Quartet, whose remaining three issues, which will appear in the year 2000, will focus on the thematics of globalization, millennial capitalism, and cosmopolitanism.