Global Challenges,
Local Responses, and
the Role of Anthropology
Part I
The Role of Anthropology:

Many anthropologists have a special
concern with the future and the changes it
may bring.
– When traditional peoples are exposed to
intense contact with technologically
empowered Western peoples, their cultures
typically change with unprecedented speed,
often for the worse, becoming both less
supportive and less adaptive.
The Cultural Future of Humanity:
 First: rarely do futurists look more than about fifty
years ahead, and more often than not the trends
they project are those of recent history.
 Second: a tendency to treat subjects in isolation,
without reference to pertinent trends outside an
expert’s field of competence.
 Third: the tendency to project the hopes and
expectations of one’s own social group or culture
into the future interferes with the scientific
objectivity necessary to see and address emerging
problems.
Global Culture:

A popular belief since the mid-1990s has
been that the future world will see the
development of a single homogenous
world culture.
– This idea is based largely on the observation
that technological developments in
communication, transportation and trade are
causing peoples of the world to homogenize
Is the World Coming Together or
Coming Apart:

Looking back over the past 5,000 years of
human history, we see that political units
have tended to become larger, more allencompassing, and fewer in number.
– The threat of political collapse is ever-present
in multi-ethnic states, especially when these
countries are large, difficult to travel in, and
lack major unifying cultural forces such as a
common national language.
Is the World Coming Together or
Coming Apart:

The tendency of multi-ethnic states to
break apart has been especially
noteworthy since the end of the Cold War
between the United States and the former
Soviet Union around 1990.
– Today, about 35 million people in almost half
of the world’s countries are either internally
displaced of have crossed international
borders as refugees.
Global Culture:

The idea of a shared global culture may have a
degree of popular appeal, in that it might
diminish chances for the kinds of
misunderstandings and conflicting viewpoints
that so often in the past few hundred years have
led to violent clashes and even full-scale wars.
– One might argue that the change for conflicting
viewpoints actually increases, given the intensified
interactions among people in the world today.
Global Culture:

Some have argued that perhaps a generalized
world culture would be desirable in the future,
because some traditional cultures may be too
specialized to adjust to a changed environment.
– A problem with this argument is that traditional peoples
have been robbed repeatedly of the opportunity to work
out their own adaptations based on their own agendas.
– They are driven from their homelands and abruptly
deprived of their means of survival so that more acreage
can be devoted to the raising of beef cattle.
Ethnic Resurgence:

Despite ever-growing pressures on traditional
cultures to disappear, it is clear that cultural
differences are still with us in the world today.
– We see evidence of this in repeated public protests
around the globe against policies of the Genevabased World Trade Organization (WTO).
– In addition, Greenpeace and a whole host of less
radical environmental groups can be found
demonstrating worldwide against such practices as
French nuclear testing in the Pacific or Japanese
commercial whaling.
Ethnic Resurgence:

During the 1970s the world’s indigenous
peoples began to organize self-determination
movements. Joining together across
international borders, they established the
World Council of Indigenous Peoples in 1975.
– Representing 5% of the world’s population,
indigenous peoples gained important symbolic
ground in 1992 when Rigoberta Menchu, a Maya
Indian woman from Guatemala, won the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1992 for her activism on behalf of
indigenous rights.
Ethnic Resurgence:

In 1993, representatives of some 124
indigenous groups and organizations agreed to
a draft Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples that had taken a decade to produce.
– Presented to the UN General Assembly, it contains
some 150 articles urging respect for indigenous
cultural heritages, calling for:
 rights of self-determination
 recognition of indigenous land titles
 demanding an end to all forms of oppression and
discrimination as a principle of international law.
Ethnic Resurgence:

The struggle by indigenous groups against
domination and discrimination by more
powerful peoples with different cultures is not
only in defense of their human rights, but
also resistance against imposed cultural
values and foreign ethnocentrism.
– In the globalizing world dominated by the United
States, Japan, and a handful of European
capitalist states today, whole countries that once
valued Western ways are now drawing the line or
even turning against many of these ideas, trends,
and practices.
Cultural Pluralism and
Multiculturalism:
Some predict a world in which ethnic groups will
become more nationalistic in response to
globalization, each group stressing its unique
cultural heritage and emphasizing differences
with neighboring groups.
 Because pluralistic societies lack a common
cultural identity and heritage, and often do not
share the same language or religion, political
relationships between them can be fraught with
tension.

Cultural Pluralism and
Multiculturalism:

Multiculturalism: public policy for
managing cultural diversity in a multiethnic society, officially stressing mutual
respect and tolerance for cultural
differences within a country’s borders.
– Examples of long-established multiculturalism
may be seen in states such as Switzerland
and Canada.
Cultural Pluralism and
Multiculturalism:

Although cultural pluralism is still more common
than multiculturalism, several multi-ethnic
countries have recently changed their official
melting pot ideology and associated policies of
assimilating.
– One example of a country that is moving toward
multiculturalism is the United States, which now has
over 120 different ethnic groups within it borders (in
addition to the hundreds of federally recognized
American Indian groups).
Cultural Pluralism and
Multiculturalism:
Nearly all state debt in Africa and nearly half of
all other debt in ‘underdeveloped’ countries
comes from the cost of weapons purchased by
states to fight their own citizens.
 The more divergent cultural traditions are, the
more difficult it is to make pluralism work.

– States as political constructs are products of human
imagination, and nothing prevents us from imagining
in ways that are more tolerant of cultural pluralism or
multiculturalism.
The Rise of Global Corporations:

The resistance of the world to political
integration might seem to be offset to
some extent by the rise and ongoing
growth of global corporations.
– Because these cut across the international
boundaries between states, they are a force
for worldwide integration despite the political,
linguistic, religious, and other cultural
differences that separate people.
The Rise of Global Corporations:

So great is the power of large businesses
operating all across the globe that they
increasingly thwart the wishes of national
governments or international organizations
such as the United Nations, Red Cross,
International Court Justice, or the World
Council of Churches.
– Global corporations have repeatedly shown
they can overrule foreign policy decisions.
The Rise of Global Corporations:

If the ability of global corporations to
ignore the wishes of sovereign
governments is cause for concern, so is
their ability to act in concert with such
governments.
– After a 1964 military coup Brazil a partnership
emerged between the new government,
which was anxious to proceed as rapidly as
possible with development of the Amazon
rainforest, and a number of global
corporations and international lending
institutions.
The Rise of Global Corporations:

Far more shocking, however, has been the
practice of uprooting whole human societies
because they were seen as obstacles to
economic growth.
– Eager to alleviate acute land shortages in the
country’s impoverished northeastern region, but
unwilling to break up the huge rural estates owned by
a powerful elite and embark on much-needed land
reform, government officials launched massive
resettlement schemes.
– The disease, death, and human suffering that such
schemes and policies unleashed upon the native
Indians can only be described as massive.
The Rise of Global Corporations:

Megacorporations are changing the shape
of the world and the lives of individuals
from every walk of life, including those
they employ.
– Workers become fearful that, if they ask too
much of the company, it simply may shift its
operations to another part of the world where
it can find cheaper, more submissive
personnel.
The Rise of Global Corporations:

Corporate officials, for their part, assume
female workers are strictly temporary, and
high turnover means that wages can be
kept low.
– Higher-paying jobs, or at least those that
require special skills, are generally held by
men, whose workday may be shorter since
they do not have additional domestic tasks to
perform.
The Rise of Global Corporations:

In recent years, the power of corporations
has become all the greater through media
expansion.
– Having control of television and other media,
as well as the advertising industry, gives
global corporations such as GE and Disney
enormous influence on the ideas and behavior
of hundreds of millions of ordinary people
across the world in ways most people little
suspect and can hardly imagine.
Question

Most people plan for the future by
looking at trends in _______________.
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
ancient history
hemlines
third-world countries
food supplies
recent history
Answer: E

Most people plan for the future by looking
at trends in recent history.
Question

Anthropologists are trained to develop effective
predictions of the future because they
_______________.
A. are holistic in perspective
B. are good at seeking how parts fit together into a
larger whole
C. are trained to have an evolutionary perspective
D. are able to see short-term trends in longer-term
perspective
E. all of the above
Answer: E

Anthropologists are trained to develop
effective predictions of the future
because they
– are holistic in perspective
– are good at seeking how parts fit together
into a larger whole
– are trained to have an evolutionary
perspective
– are able to see short-term trends in longerterm perspective
Question

Over the past 5,000 years, political units
have _______________.
A. grown steadily smaller in size
B. grown steadily larger in size and fewer in
number
C. eliminated multinational corporations
D. promoted individual freedoms
E. eliminated slavery
Answer: B

Over the past 5,000 years, political units
have grown steadily larger in size and
fewer in number.
Question

In their search for cheap labor, global
corporations have tended to favor
_______________ for low skilled
assembly jobs.
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
Women
Children
North Americans
third-world males
non-human primates
Answer: A

In their search for cheap labor, global
corporations have tended to favor women
for low skilled assembly jobs.