Based on long-term ethnographic research in China, Thailand, Nigeria, Chile, and other areas, the contributors explore the intersection of "gender" and "modernity" in the lives of diverse individuals and groups. How are the messages of modernity/tradition gendered? How are the material practices and cultural meanings of modernity shaped by local ideas of gender and "progress"? They argue that the ideas of "modernity," progress, rationality, order, and development are profoundly gendered, whether conveyed by media images of consumption, agendas of nation-building, or legal discourse.