Globalization and the making of a global imaginary

The ultimate aim of this chapter is to suggest if not demonstrate, first, that much of the current received understanding of globalization is the product of a larger cosmological transformation of Western modernity and second, that this transformation can only be properly understood from a global systemic perspective. This latter perspective has significant implications for the way anthropology is carried out, from the field to the production of theory. The argument begins with globalization as "reality" in its current historical context and contrasts this to an array of contemporary interpretations of the phenomenon. It covers both the economic, political and geographical, as well as the culturally oriented literatures on the subject. Following this, the cultural discourses are the principal focus of the discussion. While, it might be argued, anthropology ought to have a contribution to make to understanding this globality, it has, primarily in the U.S., been increasingly sucked into the globalization process itself, reconditioned and remodeled after discourses such as those to be found in post-colonial cultural studies. The global processes that are transforming the lives of peoples in all parts of the world are not simply a question of the diffusion of Coca-cola, sitcoms and internet, but of ethnic and religious warfare, slummification/yuppification, social disintegration, cultural movements, as well as the formation of globalizing hybridizing elites who produce transnationalist ideologies that are the subject of this discussion.