ABSTRACT
Arjun Appadurai’s Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization is a collection of essays that he wrote over six years. The book brings together many recurring themes from his academic career, such as consumption, colonization, and migration. In Appadurai’s life, as a student in the United States, he was wary of theories that made modernity sound like a universal goal or that associated modernity with certain places. As he continued his studies in anthropology and area studies, he grew critical of the tendency in the fields to locate culture in a single place or region. Appadurai’s work addresses thre observations and concerns. He attempts to define modernity as a fragmented set of different perspectives. He recognizes that new theories and methods are required to account for cultural change and human agency within globalization. Appadurai’s interventions in the fields have ensured that Modernity at Large will be a classic of late twentieth-century anthropology.
