Anthropology of Globalization

Students explore the increasing interconnectedness of cultures across time and space through dynamic cross-border global flows of digital information, media images, capital, workers, as well as transnational immigrants, refugees, and tourists. They will assess cross-cultural ethnographies and case studies to examine the impact of modernization and liberalization resulting in global networks of knowledge and capital, accompanied by poverty-alleviating technological, structural, and economic development, and multicultural cosmopolitan centers. Students will also examine the numerous unsustainable development projects, environmental deterioration, economic inequities, weakening of the nation-state, loss of indigenous lifeways, and irreversible cultural change in both Western and non-Western societies.