Since its inception, anthropology's authority has been based on the assumption that it is a unified discipline emanating from the West.

Can a planetary anthropology cope with both the "provincial cosmopolitanism" of alternative anthropologies and the "metropolitan provincialism" of hegemonic schools? How might the resulting "world anthropologies" challenge the current panorama in which certain allegedly national anthropological traditions have more paradigmatic weight--and hence more power--than others? Critically examining the international dissemination of anthropology within and across national power fields, contributors address these questions and many others.

Given anthropology's long-standing attention to relatively powerless groups and to the relationships between the researcher and the research subjects, we are particularly beholden to query the paradoxical effects of globalisation on our own production of knowledge. This book, and the larger project of which it is part, is to be lauded for raising these issues.