medical care, a sincerely gentle and caring approach tocare with sensitivity rather than routine politenessbeing the order of the day combined with evidence-based practice. It is apparent that while we have longrecognized the importance of providing respectfultreatment and care and have gone far in introducingsystems which encourage such approaches, we are stillgrappling with the effective application of this fun-damental tenant in many parts of the world, bothdeveloped and developing.

See also: Ecology and Health; Health Education andHealth Promotion; Health in Developing Countries:Cultural Concerns

Bibliography

Chalmers B 1990 African Birth: Childbirth in Cultural Transition.Berev Publications, River Club, South Africa

Chalmers B, Levin A 2001 Humane Perinatal Care. TeaPublishers, Tallinn, Estonia

Chalmers B E, McIntyre J A 1993 Integrating psychology andobstetrics for medical students: Shared labour ward teaching.Medical Teaching 15: 35–40

Cochrane Collaboration 2000 The Cochrane Library. UpdateSoftware, Oxford, UK

Enkin M, Kierse M, Renfrew M, Neilson J 1996 A Guide toEffecti�e Care in Pregnancy and Childbirth. Oxford UniversityPress, Oxford, UK

World Health Organization 1948 Constitution of the WorldHealth Organization. World Health Organization, Geneva,Switzerland

B. Chalmers

Globalization and World Culture

1. Globalization and the Construction of WorldCulture

Globalization involves expanding worldwide flows ofmaterial objects and symbols, and the proliferation oforganizations and institutions of global reach thatstructure those flows. World culture refers to thecultural complex of foundational assumptions, formsof knowledge, and prescriptions for action that under-lie globalized flows, organizations, and institutions. Itencompasses webs of significance that span the globe,conceptions of world society and world order, andmodels and methods of organizing social life that areassumed to have worldwide significance or appli-cability.

While many types of global flows have been risingcyclically for centuries, it was only in the second half ofthe nineteenth century that a transnational cultural

complex took a sufficiently organized form to con-stitute an emerging world culture. The primary locusof this nascent world culture was Europe, particularlythe powerful Western European countries whoseempires extended to most corners of the globe.Europeans promoted political and philosophical prin-ciples, societal and individual goals, modes of organiz-ing, and ways of conceiving and manipulating realitythat they deemed universally applicable. Epitomizedabove all by technical and scientific principles andpractical knowledge presumed to be invariant acrosstime and space, emerging world culture also includedmore historically bound constructs and ideologies,such as nationalism, citizenship, and individualism.This early version of world culture, more properlycalled ‘transeuropean’ culture, was carried far andwide by missionaries, traders, military expeditions,colonialists, intellectuals, and travelers.

In this same period, transnational organizationsand global structures emerged with increasing fre-quency, eventually to form a structural backbone orframework for world culture. The vast majority ofthese transnational organizations were products ofinternational or global ‘civil society’—voluntary asso-ciations founded and operated by individuals frommany countries to pursue specific goals throughdemocratically coordinated action. Typical early ex-amples include the International Charity Association(1855), the International Sugar Union (1864), theScandinavian Dental Association (1866), the Perma-nent International Committee of Architects (1867),and the International Meteorological Organization(1873). By the 1890s, such international nongovern-mental organizations (INGOs) were appearing at therate of more than 10 per year, across a wide range ofsocial sectors, drawing participants mainly fromEurope and North America but also from LatinAmerican and some Asian countries, particularlyIndia. These bodies defined themselves as global actorsand sponsored periodic conferences at which univer-salistic issues, problems, methods, and solutions wereproposed and debated. They came to constitute aformalized global public realm in which world culturewas defined, documented, elaborated, and propagatedto what the growing number of participants in thispublic realm were beginning to think of as a singleworld society.

The calamitous world wars of the twentieth centuryseverely interrupted world-cultural structuration,but after each war the process rebounded quickly.States became increasingly engaged in transnationalcooperative relationships through intergovernmentalorganizations (IGOs, which were rare before 1920).After World War II, the IGO population burgeonedto a total of several hundred organizations, whilethe number of INGOs soared into the thousands.This expanding complex of global organizations cameto center on the United Nations, whose agenciesand programs became axes of global governance

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regimes in such major institutional areas as education,health, and development.

Until the 1970s, the content of world cultureremained primarily Anglo-European, increasinglydominated by the USA. American popular culture andproducts proliferated throughout the globe—rockmusic, soap operas, bluejeans, Coca-Cola, fast foods,Hollywood movies. The globalization of tastes infood, dress, and music also promoted a global identitymodel, that of the freely choosing, pleasure-seekingconsumer. At a deeper level, the plethora of globalorganizations, both nongovernmental and intergov-ernmental, produced a range of standardized prin-ciples, models, and methods for the organization ofsocial life. For example, a basic world model of themodern nation-state crystallized, stipulating that thestate was to be responsible not only for internal orderand external defense but also for building a modernsociety and promoting citizen welfare and civic en-gagement. States were therefore expected to generatenational educational systems, health care programs,retirement and unemployment insurance schemes, andcultural promotion programs, among many otherduties. In particular sectors, globally legitimatedmodels emerged to guide states in meeting theseresponsibilities, such as the standardized educationalmodels that took shape under UNESCO’s aegis incollaboration with a range of educational INGOs.Despite enormous variation in national circumstancesand resources, states have implemented these modelsin remarkably uniform ways.

By the 1980s, world-cultural structuration hadproduced largely standardized global models for anenormous range of activities—in science, medicine,health, business, technology, even recreation andleisure (sports, tourism, entertainment). Pushed by thecarriers of these models, including INGOs and IGOsbut also business consultants, technical advisers, andacademic consultants who explain and interpret themodels, states, local governments, corporations, socialmovement organizations, and many other types ofsocial units go to considerable lengths to keep up withthe leading edges of world-cultural development. Thenet result is a tremendous force for the homogeni-zation of the world.

2. Globalization and Cultural Differentiation

World culture is not only a homogenizing force; it alsoengenders and supports diversity and differentiation.Recognition of this feature of world culture was slowin coming; through the 1970s, most analysts inter-preted globalization as essentially equivalent to homo-genizing Americanization. Five factors are importantfor understanding world culture’s promotion ofheterogeneity; ironically, several of these are alsoimportant elements of world culture’s homogenizingcapacity.

(a) Success of the nation-state political form. Rapiddecolonization after 1945 produced a world organizedalmost entirely as independent states. Most new stateshave eagerly joined global governance organizations,debating and helping to shape agreements expressingworld-culture principles and prescriptions. Citizens ofthe new countries became avid joiners of INGOs,expanding the range of their memberships much fasterthan citizens of older countries. Thus, the voices andviews of the Third World are increasingly prominentin world-cultural development, and debates aboutproper social organization and action are often lessconsensual than in the past. Cultural controversy hasbeen especially acute in such domains as women’srights, environmentalism, and human rights.

(b) Cultural relati�ism and the ideology of culturalauthenticity. Intellectual movements in the socialsciences and humanities, coupled with the ideologiesof nationalism and national self-determination, havemade the principle of the fundamentally equal value ofall human cultures a central assumption of worldculture. Ethnocentrism has come to be seen as bothtrap and injustice; tolerance and, indeed, the cham-pioning of difference occupy the moral high ground.Of particular moral virtue in contemporary worldculture are the poor, the excluded, the oppressed—marginal peoples whose right to their own cultures hasbeen violated by the onslaught of globalization (somesee this as a return of ‘noble savage’ idealization). Thisuniversalistic form of particularism impels peoples toemphasize or invent tradition and distinctiveness incounterpoint to universalistic world-cultural prin-ciples that are supposed to operate uniformly in allplaces. In Western societies, such particularism isstimulated by cosmopolitan connoisseurs seekingauthentically exotic cuisine or ethnically distinct‘world’ music, as the genre is known. At the same time,politically astute groups understand the power ofpurported cultural authenticity as a fulcrum for pryingrewards from global systems, so distinction anddifference have become strategic resources for col-lective mobilization. In consequence, ethnonationalistmovements of many sorts (Basques, Biafrans, Bretons,Croats, Eritreans, Quebecois, Scots, Tamils, etc.) andmulculturalist restructuring by states, churches,schools, and other organizations have become theorder of the day.

(c) Regionalism. Roughly half of the internationalorganizations founded since 1950 have been regionalin scope, activating European, Latin American, Asian,francophone, Islamic, Andean, and many other sub-global identities. Like ethnonationalism, regionalismhas flourished in the wake of world-cultural intensi-fication. Global structures, ideologies, principles, andmodels provide an overarching framework of com-monality and shared meaning for disparate socialunits. With the framework well in place, diverseregional organizations and movements have expandedto implement, modify, and argue about the frame-

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work’s content and implications. We see the sameprocess at work within international organizationsand global corporations. For example, Cable NewsNetwork International (CNNI) began as a unitaryorganization bringing a standardized English-lan-guage product to televisions around the world, but iteventually established numerous regional centers pro-ducing local-language broadcasting adapted to specifictarget audiences.

(d) Consumerism as adapti�e interpretation. Whileglobal popular culture contains products and symbolsthat penetrate most local markets, its accompanyingideology of economic freedom and consumer choiceencourages varied uses and interpretations of stand-ardized consumption patterns. For instance, con-sumers in Hong Kong might appreciate a McDonald’srestaurant as much for its clean facilities as for its food.They expect fast, not smiling, service, and reserve theright to eat at their leisure. In a city pressed for space,the restaurant can become a gathering spot for youthor a favored locale for birthday parties. By adaptingmarketing to local attitudes, McDonald’s has lost itsforeign aura, blending into Hong Kong’s diverse,cosmopolitan culinary scene. In Beijing, meanwhile,McDonald’s American origins can be attractive toupwardly mobile Chinese as a symbol of participationin global society, but among many Koreans in Seoulthose same origins evoke criticism. While not denyingthe power of multinational corporations to fosteracceptance of their products and logos, recent researchsuggests that they must take into account the dis-tinctive tastes of potentially fickle consumers. Popularculture increasingly creates global tastes, but it alsocreates critical consumers who keep this culture frombecoming entirely uniform.

(e) Creolization. In many domains, the homogen-izing force of world culture encounters ingrained localtastes and traditions, which may in turn be the residueof earlier such encounters with neighbors or coloni-zers. Due to creative interaction processes, commonelements take different forms in different places. Thespread of world culture therefore produces not homo-geneity but new cultural melanges, each ‘creolized’ inits own way. A case in point is West-African popularmusic. Popular styles that themselves are blends ofvariegated traditions (Brazilian, blues, British rock)become the ingredients of new and distinctive styles.Adapting indigenous instruments or rhythms, Africanmusicians participate in a global musical movement.Cultural flows come from many directions, intersect inunpredictable ways, and continue on in new forms toyet other places. How they continue, and the publicsthey eventually reach, depend in part on the globalcommercial media system’s marketing and genre-promotion efforts, but that system is only one factorshaping local aesthetic orientations. Moreover, com-mercial interests have much to gain from promotingdiversity. Thus, as new musical or other fads maketheir way across the globe, they produce new forms of

localized diversity and unforeseen local reactions andinterpretations. In the expressive realm, the variedforms of local–global interaction are not inexorablyyielding to a standardized, stifling, hegemonic worldculture.

3. Dimensions of World Culture

Most discussions of world culture focus on its ex-pressive or normative dimensions. Expressive (popu-lar) culture includes media products, consumablegoods that assume iconic status as symbols of mod-ernity or avant-gardism, foods and clothing stylesoriginating in particular cultures that become world-wide fads, and so on. Normative culture comprises thevalues and goals promoted by global corporations andorganizations—fetishistic consumerism and capitalaccumulation, individualism and human rights, demo-cracy and political participation, gender and racialequality. The expressive dimension has received thegreatest attention, particularly with respect to theglobal popularity of American films, television shows,sports figures, and lifestyle elements. Some scholarsdecry the obliteration of local cultures; others argue infavor of creative interpretation and adaptation, aslocal cultures integrate new cultural elements whileretaining their basic identities (hybridization or creoli-zation). Similarly, analysts decry some aspects ofnormative cultural globalization and praise others,often sharply disagreeing about the desirability ofparticular global norms and values and disagreeing aswell about the extent to which a global normativeconsensus is emerging or even possible.

Less attention has been paid to the ontological andcognitive dimensions of world culture. At the onto-logical level, the reorganization of social life inaccordance with dominant world-cultural models en-genders increasing individualism, the disenchantmentof nature, reliance on rationalized images of society,and an action-oriented model of the individual. Putanother way, world-cultural penetration changes pre-vailing views of ‘the nature of things,’ promoting theworldview that underlies such major modern insti-tutions as formal education, experimental science,national accounting and statistical systems, and ad-vanced-technology engineering. These and similarinstitutional complexes bring with them broad bodiesof knowledge and distinctive cognitive styles, but thedepth of cultural reconstruction they engender re-mains largely unexamined because few attempts havebeen made to come to grips with their culturalimplications. Science, mathematics, bookkeeping,organizational structure, technology, tools, construc-tion materials, land surveying—all these have achievedthe status of almost unassailably universalistic ac-tivities, uninteresting because they are mundane,routine, matter-of-fact. Thus, these highly formalizedarenas seldom become the focus of ideological debate,

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with the notable exceptions of such issues as nuclearpower, genetically modified organisms, global warm-ing, and large dams. The most highly institutionalizedforms of cultural globalization remain largely in-visible.

4. Globalization and Cultural Conflict

World culture engenders conflict in world societythrough a process that has, as it were, turned the Westagainst itself. By the 1970s, when scores of new stateshad formed in Africa and Asia, vociferous oppositionto continued economic and cultural domination byWestern countries (labeled neocolonialism and cul-tural imperialism, originally formulated in the West)began to penetrate global organizations, especiallyUN bodies. Various associations of less developedcountries called for a restructuring of world society—aNew World Economic Order and a New WorldInformation Order that would put restraints on theoperations of transnational corporations and shiftresources to the poorer countries. Former coloniesbegan assertively invoking world-cultural principles ofequality and development as basic human rights.Further tensions arose as the global human rightssector (itself increasingly involving individuals andgroups from outside the West) turned its scrutiny onthe new states, decrying their selective championing ofcertain global universals while ignoring or severelyviolating others, especially those relating to the in-tegrity and political participation of citizens. Thus,both the particularism of world culture (the morallegitimacy attributed to national or ethnic units) andits universalism (the insistence that all units abide bybasic principles and values) yield forms of disagree-ment and conflict that would not emerge in a lessglobalized world.

As non-Western cultures and regions have becomemore prominent in the world polity, it makes in-creasing sense to speak of world cultures (in the plural)rather than a singular world culture. DominantWesternmodels have penetrated deeply inmost places,but they have also evoked resistance as well as effortsto revivify and globalize alternative models. Mostnotable in this regard is the assertiveness of Islamiccultural carriers, particularly since the 1970s. ManyMuslim leaders and organizations promote a societalmodel that infuses the state with religious precepts andrecasts the relationship between state and citizen(codified in 1981 as the Universal Islamic Declarationof Human Rights). African and Asian models of socialorganization and development have also emerged, andsome observers argue that conflict in the twenty-firstcentury will revolve primarily around grand civiliza-tional axes rather than the nation-state clashes thathave dominated in recent centuries.

By the same token, more fine-grained analyses ofworld culture(s) identify multiple models of central

world-cultural constructs. For example, derived fromthe Western tradition are liberal, socialist, corporate,and welfare models of the state; from Asian sources,quasifamilial and state-led development models. Mul-tiple models of the individual, the business enterprise,and the national polity are further examples. World-cultural complexity has increased rapidly in recentdecades, perhaps most sharply since the collapse ofCommunism and the end of the Cold War, as evermore cultural centers generate more alternative cul-tural constructions. Poorer and more peripheral soci-eties are less able to bring their cultural models to theworld-cultural table, but many participants in theglobal arena from richer societies have become strongadvocates of the poor and peripheral, helping toensure that world culture becomes yet more complexand incoherent but also more significant for nationaland local structuration and change.

5. Religion and World Culture

Since the early period of European expansion, manyof the symbolic flows, organizing institutions, andfoundational assumptions that constitute world cul-ture have been religious in origin. Through conquest,evangelization, and migration, Europeans made muchof the world ‘safe for Christianity,’ giving emergingworld culture a distinctively Christian cast eventhough most of the world did not become Christian. Inthe current phase of cultural globalization, the overallrole of religious institutions may have diminished butvarious religious actors on the global stage vitallyaffect world culture in new ways, notably by providingalternative worldviews. Religious globalization hasbeen important in constructing world culture, con-tributing to its heterogeneity, and producing newforms of conflict, as explained below.

Religion played a distinctive role in the constructionof world culture, providing motivation for someglobalizers and legitimating the actions of others. Italso contributed to the foundations of contemporaryworld culture. The conception of societal progress thatprevails almost everywhere stems in part from theChristian legitimation of rational world mastery; theglobal view of the individual as agent and citizensimilarly has roots in Christian views of the person; theglobal script for organizing society in a rational-legalmanner and legitimating authority voluntaristicallyderives indirectly from Christian precedents. Moreconcretely, missionaries not only spread their faith,they also provided education and health care in far-flung places, diffusing secular commitments that sincehave become globally entrenched. Their actions pre-figured the efforts of later movements in global civilsociety referred to above. Today distinctly religiousviews are less obviously influential in world culture,yet they still shape its evolution. According to some, avigorous Pentecostal movement, successfully expand-

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ing to Latin America, Asia, and Africa, carries with itthe ‘American’ gospel of material success and in-dividual well-being, thus supporting global corporateculture. The World Council of Churches, others argue,contributed centrally to global environmental con-cerns with its initiative on ‘Justice, Peace, and theIntegrity of Creation,’ launched in 1983.

Religion’s promotion of world-cultural heterogen-eity reflects in part the increasing prominence of ThirdWorld voices in global religious organizations. PopeJohn Paul II has appointed a record number ofnon-Western bishops and cardinals. In the AnglicanChurch, non-Westerners significantly aid oppositionto gay rights. Non-Western Pentecostals have not onlygrown dramatically in numbers, they have also devisedtheir own spiritual practices to suit local circum-stances. Cho Yong-Gi, pastor of the large Yoido FullGospel Church in Seoul, initiated a world missionprogram that has sent hundreds of missionaries andestablished seminaries in several developed countries,including the USA.

Religion’s relation to cultural relativism, anotheraspect of heterogeneity, varies greatly by tradition andis therefore more complex. In some cases, such as thatof Hindu nationalism, religion becomes the primaryvehicle for expressions of national distinctiveness.While few Christian churches accept the equal value ofall cultures, many have in fact accommodated majorcultural differences within loose doctrinal parameters.In Korea and Brazil, for instance, Pentecostalchurches incorporate elements of traditional non-Christian spirituality. Islamic fundamentalism pre-sents yet another variant, claiming global legitimacyfor its defense of ‘authentic’ Islam while rejecting thevalue of other traditions. Finally, religion helps topromote heterogeneity through the creolization pro-cess mentioned earlier. Pentecostalism is once again acase in point. An American-inspired movement with acore evangelical message and a secular commitment tomaterial progress has become a mosaic of styles andpractices as local congregations have adapted globalmodels to their own needs without direct outsidecontrol. As new global movements make inroads in‘national’ religious traditions, they produce new juxta-positions that creolize religious cultures. Of course,this process is not unprecedented. Many successfulreligious traditions have balanced universal ambitionwith local creativity to produce hybrid religiosity ‘onthe ground’ in counterpoint to unification at thedoctrinal level.

Religion also contributes to world-cultural plural-ism and conflict. Religious traditions contain diverseviews of the good society, leading to varying interpre-tations of seemingly shared global values. Some viewthe dominant form of world culture as a coercive,Christian-biased Western force that threatens theintegrity of their own traditions. Islamic fundamen-talists oppose what they perceive as a godless con-sumer culture that undermines people’s faith and

serves the political interests of the West. Pope JohnPaul II has critized an amoral, neoliberal world orderthat puts profits ahead of the needs of the poor.

Specific elements of world culture also provokedistinctly religious opposition. In recent decades, forexample, the principle that women are citizens—individuals to be granted equal rights and oppor-tunities—has been institutionalized in world culture.Within many traditions, however, equality for womenis problematic. The result is severe contestation ofwomen’s equality in some places, most notably by theTaliban in Afghanistan. These religiously inspiredactors have helped generate a more general backlashagainst globalization, even while they accept manybasic elements of world culture. Religion becomes avantage point from which to oppose the threatrepresented by globalization as such. The struggle, assome groups see it, is between globalization and theircultural survival.

In sum, religion is a central aspect of culturalglobalization, as traditions spread, transnational net-works expand, national cultures become more mixed,and new ways of experiencing the world emerge. Inmany countries, religion mediates the pluralizing effectof world culture. It plays an important role in theintense contest concerning global values and worldorder. Yet the construction of world culture hasbecome a mainly secular process; it has no tran-scendent content in the conventional sense. Culturalheterogeneity and conflict themselves take manyforms, only some of them religious. While worldreligion is intimately connected with globalization andinvolved in the latter’s dynamics, it is by no means adominant force. Whether it can, or should, take on agreater role in defining the desirable world order islikely to be a central issue in future global culturalcontestation.

See also: Capitalism: Global; Globality; Global-ization, Anthropology of; Imperialism: PoliticalAspects; United Nations: Political Aspects; Values,Anthropology of

Bibliography

Appadurai A 1996 Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions ofGlobalization. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis,MN

Boli J, Thomas G M (eds.) 1999 Constructing World Culture:International Nongo�ernmental Organizations Since 1875.Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA

Brouwer S, Gifford P, Rose S D 1996 Exporting the AmericanGospel: Global Christian Fundamentalism. Routledge, NewYork

Featherstone M (ed.) 1990 Global Culture: Nationalism, Globali-zation and Modernity. Sage, London and Newbury Park, CA,in association with Theory, Culture and Society

Friedman J 1994 Cultural Identity and Global Process. Sage,London

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Hannerz U 1996 Transnational Connections: Culture, People,Places. Routledge, London

Huntington S P 1996 The Clash of Ci�ilizations and the Remakingof World Order. Simon & Schuster, New York

Jameson F, Miyoshi M (eds.) 1998 The Cultures of Globalization.Duke University Press, Durham, NC

King A D 1997 Culture, Globalization and the World-System:Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity,Reprint edn. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis,MN

Lechner F 1992 Global fundamentalism. In: Swatos W H Jr.(ed.) A Future for Religion? New Paradigms for Social Analysis.Sage, Newbury Park, CA, pp. 19–36

McLuhan M 1994 Understanding Media: The Extensions ofMan, 1st MIT Press edn. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

Robertson R 1992 Globalization: Social Theory and GlobalCulture. Sage, London

Smith A 1980 The Geopolitics of Information: How WesternCulture Dominates the World. Oxford University Press, NewYork

Thomas G M, Meyer J W, Ramirez F O, Boli J 1987 InstitutionalStructure: Constituting State, Society, and the Indi�idual. Sage,Newbury Park, CA

Tomlinson J 1991 Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction.Pinter, London

Van Vucht Tijssen L, Berting J, Lechner F J (eds.) 1995 TheSearch for Fundamentals: The Process of Modernisationand the Quest for Meaning. Kluwer Academic Publishers,Dordrecht, The Netherlands, and Boston, MA

Watson J L (ed.) 1997 Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in EastAsia. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA

J. Boli and F. J. Lechner

Globalization, Anthropology of

1. The Disciplinary Context

Anthropological interest in globalization is difficult totrace precisely but can be recognized as early asAppadurai’s work on the global cultural economy(1990, 1996),Hannerz’s analysis of cultural complexityand creolization (1987, 1992), and Friedman’s worklinking global capitalism and cultural processes (1988,1994), all of which built on earlier anthropologicalinterest in cultural exchange and world systems. Fromthe start, such work has been part of two sets ofscholarly exchanges and debates. The first linksanthropology with a wider debate about globalizationin other social science fields, notably geography,political science, and sociology. The other is internalto anthropology and links it to longstanding concernswith diffusion, comparison, ethnography, and thestudy of large-scale historical change. A brief look ateach of these contexts might help to frame theanthropological perspective on globalization.

As regards the social sciences in general, anthro-pologists in the late 1980s found themselves, like many

other scholars, trying to understand the processes thatled to the breakdown of the Soviet world and to guessat the shape of things to come. They soon foundthemselves having to engage powerful perspectives onthe emergent world order, which came out of theMarxist tradition in geography (exemplified byHarvey1989), by a renewed interest in global political culture,exemplified by the polemical and much discussed workof Samuel Huntington (1996), and some prescientstudies of the new forms being taken by globalcapitalism in the last decades of the twentieth century(Lash and Urry 1987). In addition, anthropologistsfound themselves in a rich, sometimes competitivedialogue with scholars in literary and cultural studies,notably those influenced by British cultural Marxism,and most powerfully represented by Stuart Hall(1986). In addition, the publication of BenedictAnderson’s landmark study of nationalism (1983)provoked a strikingly wide debate about the linksbetween politics, the imagination, and nationalidentification. These stimuli helped to shape anthro-pological research on globalization, which in manyways is marked by the ongoing effort to link broadstructures and processes in the world economy to thesubtletiesof communication, interpretation, and trans-lation that govern everyday life in all societies.

Within anthropology, the study of globalizationbuilt on several well-established currents of interest. Inthe United States, the study of globalization fit wellwith Boasian traditions in the study of diffusion,cultural change, and culture contact and with alongstanding interest in urban settings and complexsocieties. In Europe, anthropologists were slower totake an interest in globalization, but here too long-standing interests in problems of scale, social cohesion,and structural change made globalization a subject ofgrowing interest after 1990. In other parts of theworld, such as Latin America, Africa, and India, theanthropological interest in globalization was moreclosely linked to problems of ethics, development, andinequality.

In spite of these various currents of research andtheorization within which the anthropological interestin globalization has developed, from the beginningthere were serious doubts about whether globalizationby its nature was a topic suitable to the specialstrengths of anthropology in the study of intimatesocial relations and of societies governed by non-market social principles. Many of these anxieties havebeen translated into methodological concerns, re-flected in a significant body of methodological workabout how anthropology ought to address the emerg-entworld of globalization (e.g., Fox 1991). There is stilla considerable body of opinion among professionalanthropologists that globalization may well be a meretrend, an artifact of academic fashion, and that in anycase, it is not an ideal subject for anthropologicalresearch because of its conceptual and social scale. Butthis rearguard anxiety, not always easy to distinguish

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Copyright # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences ISBN: 0-08-043076-7