ZAA 52.4 (2004): 409-422 © GISELA WELZ Transnational Cultures and Multiple Modernities: Anthropology’s Encounter with Globalization Abstract: In the 1970s, anthropology began to examine its role in the establishment and expansion of colonial rule in non-Western societies and its continuation in new forms of economic and political domination exerted by the West after the disbanding of colonial administrations. Said’s book Orientalism (1978) proved to be immensely influential in this context. Today, globalization has emerged as the domain in which anthropologists critically recast their relationship to the post-colonial field. Anthro- pologists increasingly study the cultural effects of the worldwide diffusion of com- modities, technologies and media products, as well as the increase of immigration and other forms of transnational mobility. Faced with a surge of greatly increasing cultural diversity worldwide as a consequence of these intensified exchanges, anthropology has been forced to revise its earlier notion that globalization would inevitably bring about a culturally homogenized world. This article addresses the concept of the plurali- zation of modernities, explores its potential for interdisciplinary research agendas, and also inquires into problematic assumptions underlying this new theoretical approach. 1 Anthropology emerged as a scholarly enterprise inquiring into pre-modern socie- ties. Historically, the discipline of anthropology emerged as a systematic attempt to learn about traditional cultures which often did not possess written records of their history and cultural heritage. The specific methodology of ethnographic re- search – fieldwork and participant observation – was developed to meet this chal- lenge. Throughout much of the 19th and 20th century, anthropologists were in- tent on recording and salvaging traditional cultures before they crumbled under the onslaught of modernization. Edward W. Said claimed that anthropology “has been historically constituted in its point of origin during an ethnographic encoun- ter between a sovereign European observer and a non-European native” (Said 1989, 211). It was not until the 1960s that anthropology started to critically examine its role in the establishment and expansion of colonial rule in non-Western societies and its continuation in new forms of economic and political domination exerted by the West after the disbanding of colonial administrations. Said’s book Orientalism (1978) proved to be immensely influential in this context, feeding into the grow- ing discomfort among anthropologists with their complicity, real or imagined, with colonial powers. More so, with its poignant analysis of Western hegemonic ————— 1 This essay is based on a paper presented at the conference “Transcultural English Studies,” Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe University Frankfurt, May 19-23, 2004.