The rest of Asia and Africa will almost never be seen, and, for most of us, Latin America south of Mexico will be irrelevant. Indeed, much of the time, the globe will turn out to be the U.S. and Western Europe with shadowy addenda. Cultural Identities and Global Political Economy from an Anthropological Vantage Point by Davydd J. Greenwood. Analyzing the relationships between cultural identities and global political economy in an anthropologically meaningful way is to step beyond the normal boundaries of anthropological analysis. The complexity of multi-layered and dynamic cultural identities, the local and ethnographic focus of anthropology, and the abstractness of formulations of global political economy all militate against such an endeavor.
Academic discourse finds comfort in a division of labor that makes such difficult topics disappear.
Yet there are good reasons to address these issues. The world is now interconnected by a greater multiplicity of rapid communication technologies than ever before. Gradually, the global economy is reconfiguring itself into a number of powerful trading blocs. More ominously, the world is experiencing increased levels of ethnic and racial conflict and human rights violations. The hope for world peace and harmony that many expected with the fall of the Iron Curtain has given way to public despair over Bosnia and Somalia and a sense of fear about the future of civil strife in countries in every world region.