Globalization and Indigeneity

This chapter looks at globalization and its effects on non-state societies, local traditions and associated languages. It examines the emerging concept of Indigeneity, which refers to a special kind of ethnicity, one that includes a belief in Aboriginality or a primordial association with a place or region. Cultural anthropologists went off to study them, coming back to the Western world to write ethnographies. Hohn and Sorensen originally defined globalization as “the intensification of economic, political, social and cultural relations across borders.” The colonial and postcolonial world systems that developed after the Middle Ages involved the transfer of commodities from the periphery to the core, or colonial centers of power. Money has now fully penetrated most of the even nonindustrial, acephalous, egalitarian societies. The Nuer traditionally did not have money. All-purpose money, along with political and economic developments and new technologies, facilitated the expansion of a widespread network of trade, culture, language, and personal encounters.