This book is a collection of selected essays presented at the International Symposium on
Contemporary Asian Modernities: Transnationality Interculturality and Hybridity hosted by the
Humanities Programme of Hong Kong Baptist University in September 2006. As modernity has been
used to describe the cultural economic and socio-political conditions in the Western worlds
the time in which we now live and the Asian countries where capitalistic transformation is
extensively carried out are already articulating their own descriptions. The essays collected
here discuss the notions of contemporary Asia and modernities as they relate to the global
trend of adopting capitalism. They probe into questions related to modernity as well as global
modernity ranging from China in particular to Asia in general. As reflected in the pluriversal
meanings in the title the book endeavours to make critical inquiries into the concept of
modernity modernities from different perspectives.
