We are all familiar with a culture and society dedicated to the idea of consumption as the ultimate source of well-being. Its technology, wealth, and power are monuments to its success. But its spread around the globe has been accompanied by growing social and economic inequality, environmental destruction, mass starvation, and social unrest. Though most members of this society and culture perceive these problems as distant, it may well be that they are intrinsic to the culture itself. This course explores global problems such as the population explosion, famine and hunger, environmental destruction, the emergence and spread of new diseases, ethnic conflict and genocides, terrorism and social protest. It examines the links between these problems and the broad emergence of the culture of consumption. It also explores how the emergence of this culture has led, not to a single concept of “modernity” shared by everyone, but to many different “modernities” produced when capitalism is filtered through the “traditional” ways of looking at the world in other societies.