Peter van der Veer is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity at Göttingen, Germany and Distinguished University Professor at Utrecht University. He is the author of several books, including The Modern Spirit of Asia: The Spiritual and the Secular in China and India.

Foreword / Thomas Gibson  vii
Acknowledgments  xi
Introduction  1
Part I. The Fragment and the Whole
1. The Comparative Advantage of Anthropology  25
2. Market and Money: A Critique of Rational Choice Theory  48
Part II. Civilization and Comparison
3. Keeping the Muslims Out: Concepts of Civilization, Civility, and Civil Society in India, China, and Western Europe  61
4. The Afterlife of Images  80
Part III. Comparing Exclusion
5. Lost in the Mountains: Notes on Diversity in the Southeast Asian Mainland Massif  107
6. Who Cares? Care Arrangements and Sanitation for the Poor in India and Elsewhere  130
A Short Conclusion  147
Notes  155
Bibliography  171
Index  183