Globalization is often seen as a process of universal standardization under the auspices of market economics, technology, and hegemonic power. Resisting this process without endorsing parochial self-enclosure, Fred Dallmayr explores alternative visions that are rooted in distinct vernacular traditions and facilitate cross-cultural learning in an open-ended global arena. Dallmayr charts a "grassroots" approach to the global village, an approach that relies on ethical and religious traditions and popular beliefs as launching pads for cross-cultural learning, dialogue, and self-transformation. Truly interdisciplinary in nature, Alternative Visions combines general philosophy, the philosophy of religion, and political, cultural, and post-colonial theory. It is an important book for students and scholars in all of these areas of study.

A very mature work, learned, sophisticated, and thoughtful, and yet full of youthful energy and openness for new questions and orientations. It does not simply deal with or speak about non-Western traditions and perspectives. It listens to them, learns from them, and takes them seriously as 'alternative visions.' The 'global village,' our multicultural and multipolar world with all its hopes, tensions, and ambiguities, is not just an object of study in this book: it is a living presence and challenge. -- Wilhelm Halbfass, University of Pennsylvania
Dallmayr's book is not just cutting edge, but cuts with a different edge, an edge honed by an easy familiarity with those who have thought hard and deep about modernity, nationalism, globalism, and development, but are little known or appreciated in the Anglo-American world. It is therefore especially welcome. -- Hans Oberdiek, Swarthmore College

Fred Dallmayr is Packey J. Dee Professor of Political Theory at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of numerous books, including Beyond Orientalism: Essays on Cross-Cultural Encounter, The Other Heidegger, and G. W. F. Hegel: Modernity and Politics.