Introduction / Augustine Agwuele -- Part 1. Modernism-modernity: socio-cultural transformation: Between delayed modernity and deferred democracy: Africa's troubled take-off / Ali A. Mazrui -- A critique of Cornel West's "Race and modernity" / Hetty ter Haar -- Chieftaincy, collective interests...

This study shows how goods and consumption embodied modernity in the time of Porfirio Díaz. Through case studies of tobacco marketing, department stores, advertising, shoplifting, and a famous jewelry robbery and homicide, he provides a tour of daily life in Porfirian Mexico City, overturning...