How do anthropologists define the phenomenon of globalization

London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Mittelstrass, Juergen. The Future of Science. A Welcome Address. Rack, J. Rhode, P. The Global Economy in the s. A Long-Run Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Roberts, J. Bellone Hite eds. The Globalization and Development Reader. Perspectives on Development and Global Change. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, Click Enter. Login Profile. Es En. Economy Humanities Science Technology.

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Start A Negative Anthropology of Globalization. Humanities Sociology. Culture Demography Globalization Humanities Politics. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht. Estimated reading time Time 24 to read. Bibliography Arendt, H. The Human Condition. Chicago: Chicago University Press, Beynon, J. Dunkerley eds. Globalization: the Reader. New York: Routledge, In Praise of Athletic Beauty. Harrison, R. Forests—the Shadow of Civilization.

The Dominion of the Dead. An Esssay on the Human Condition. Lechner, F. The Globalization Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, Michie, J. The Handbook of Globalization. Sassen, S. Globalization and its Discontents. New York: The New Press, Sloterdijk, P. Du musst Dein Leben aendern. Download Kindle Download EPUB Download PDF See book The Multiple Faces of Globalization.

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Cultural Globalization Reconsidered. Comments on this publication Login to comment Log in Subscribe. Historiographically, this alignment with anthropological themes and topics represents a novel orientation. It completes the representation and analysis of the dynamic of historical events and of socio-economic conditions effected by structural and social history.

In this vein, elementary types of human behavior and basic situations are analyzed. Quite opposed to those hypotheses which insist that these basic situations be rooted in a character common to all human beings, the practitioners of historical studies with an anthropological orientation inquire into the specifically historical and cultural character of each of these phenomena.

Paris: Armand Colin, Montaillou: Cathars and Catholics in a French village, London: Scolar Press, The cheese and the worms: the cosmos of a sixteenth-century miller. New York: Penguin Books, The research into fundamental human experiences or into the history of mentalities, which has been undertaken in connection with this historical turn, is inevitably less rich in detail.

Often, this is due to the limits which the insufficiency of sources imposes upon the possibilities of historical knowledge, which is born of the tension between event and account, reality and fiction, structural history and narrative historiography Le Goff, LE GOFF, J. The medieval world.

London: Collins Brown, A precise delimitation of narrative and description is impossible: historiography represents both controlled fiction and controlled construction. Historical anthropology investigates elementary situations and basic experiences of being human.

Stuttgart: Kroener, Interest and emotion: essays on the study of family and kinship. New York: Cambridge University Press, Although it could be understood otherwise, these classifications are not concerned with making statements about humans in general but with gaining an understanding of the multi-dimensional conditions of life and experiences of real people in their respective historical contexts.

These anthropological studies are oriented towards investigating the multitude of ways in which the different ways of human life are expressed and presented. This diversity of phenomena is paralleled by the multi-dimensionality and open-endedness of anthropological definitions and research paradigms. In this research it is necessary to develop a feeling for the difference between the historical world under investigation and the current frame of reference of the research.

Since, for example, linguistic metaphors and terms have different meanings in different times and in different contexts, these differences in meaning must be taken into account. The same applies with regard to research into basic human behaviors, experiences and fundamental situations.

From the point of view of the historical sciences, the feelings, actions and events under investigation can only be understood in terms of their historic uniqueness. It is this that lends them their dynamic nature and makes them subject to historical change.

Even though anthropology is the result of a process of philosophical and scientific evolution, it can no longer pretend, these days, that at the end of the day only Europeans exist as human beings and act as though these putative European humans were the only possible yardstick. It is obvious, even in an era of globalization deeply marked in its content and form by Western culture, that different forms of human life exist today, influenced by various local, regional and national cultures.

The Anglo-American tradition of cultural and social anthropology has turned its attention to this situation. Within this framework, the accent lies on the social and cultural diversity of human life. Its research explains both to what extent cultural evolutions are heterogeneous and to what extent the profound diversity of human life remains disregarded. It is precisely the analysis of foreign cultures which makes it plain to us how limited and troublesome this understanding is.

Comparing human expressions and manifestations across several cultures has demonstrated to what great extent the study of cultural phenomena brings forth new uncertainties and questions. Thanks to the analysis of cultural manifestations drawn from heterogeneous cultures, anthropological inquiries make an important contribution to the elaboration and development of anthropology; while its ethnographical methods oblige practitioners to draw upon historical sources.

Quite apart from creating a sensitivity for the strange and foreign character of other cultures, it also creates a sensitivity for that which is strange and foreign in its own culture. A history of anthropological thought. London: Faber and Faber, The rise of anthropological theory: a history of theories of cultures. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, Tristes tropiques. Structural anthropology. New York: Basic Books, Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Sex and temperament in three primitive societies.

New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks, Culture and practical reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Being confronted with philosophical reflection has given rise to a critique of anthropology which is constitutive for anthropology in the field of the humanities, and which focuses on the objects, themes and methods of research-based knowledge acquisition.

Instead, manifold historical and cultural inquiries focus on studying and understanding the cultural diversity of social life. A particular and very pronounced interest in the study of current phenomena is noticeable. In my understanding, the research undertaken by historical anthropology is no longer the exclusive preserve of the historian, as was still the case within the framework of the Annales School.

In the continuity of this broader conception, historical cultural anthropology means an orientation towards the humanities and the social sciences. It touches upon the historical and cultural determination of culture and its manifestations, and demands that their study and reflection take into account ethnological and philosophical perspectives and questions.

Committed to this task, historical cultural anthropology makes an important contribution to the self-comprehension and self-interpretation of cultures and societies today. In this process of cultural understanding, research efforts rapidly run the risk of being unable to move beyond the level of their own initial insights.

To safeguard against this risk, historical cultural anthropology needs to reflect upon its relation to power and knowledge, as well as to make efforts specifically aimed at bringing to light the involuntary and often unacknowledged normative implications of its own research. Within this frame of reference, reflexive historical cultural anthropology designates the multiform trans-disciplinary and trans-national efforts to follow up on the universal idea of an abstract anthropological norm and to continue analyzing other human phenomena.

Historical cultural anthropology is the common denominator of history and the humanities. Nevertheless, it does not exhaust itself either in a history of anthropology as a discipline nor in making a contribution to history from the perspective of an anthropological sub-discipline. It attempts, rather, to bring into an accord the historical and cultural determination of its perspectives and methods with the historical and cultural determination of its object of study.

As a consequence, historical cultural anthropology can harness insights gleaned in the humanities with those yielded by a critique of anthropology based on the history of philosophy, and bring both to fruition in order to create new perspectives and lines of inquiry out of a new consciousness for methodological problems. At the heart of these efforts, an inimitable and voracious agitation of thought and research holds sway.

Historical anthropology is limited neither to certain spatial frames nor to particular epochs. Reflecting on its own historicity and its own cultural condition, it succeeds both in leaving behind the eurocentrism of the humanities and the interest in history antiquarian in the final analysis as well as in giving precedence to current and future problems Wulf, WULF, C.

In the second part of this article I will present the findings of a German Japanese ethnographic study on family wellbeing with some transcultural findings which demonstrate the attempt to combine particular ethnographic findings with the perspective on what we as human beings have in common. Leading a happy life is the object of all people. How is wellbeing and happiness to be understood?

How are family and wellbeing interrelated? How do people lead a happy life and what contribution does the family make to this? The number of self-help books, newspaper articles, television programs, and Internet platforms in which answers to these questions are sought has become enormous. What role the family plays for well-being and happiness is at the focus of the following considerations. I did not investigate what happiness is, but instead ask more cautiously how families stage their wellbeing and happiness, how they perform it, how they create it.

What a fulfilled life looks like and how it is brought about are among the central questions of religion and philosophy, sociology, psychology, pedagogy, and anthropology. The answers differ from each other, contradict each other in part, and are often so complex that they cannot be comprehended without the historical and cultural context in which they were given. The objective of this study is to describe and analyze in six case studies how families create their well-being and happiness.

Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, Weinheim: Juventa, In the process, I wanted to find out the forms in which these families celebrate their important family celebration in order that their members are satisfied and happy. I was interested in the question regarding which similarities and which differences can be identified in such culturally diverse families using mixed research teams.

With participatory and video-supported observation, with interviews and group discussions, with photos and videos, and with historical and cultural analyses, I work out the various stagings and performances of family rituals and show how their performative character contributes to the creation of family happiness on these holidays.

Grounded Theory: Strategien qualitativer Forschung. Bern: Huber, These families belong to the milieu of the middle class, within which the selected families comprise a broad spectrum. In my culturally mixed teams, a methodologically interesting overlap between a variety of cultural perspectives occurred in regard to the perception and interpretation of family rituals. This led to a new form of communicative validation, which presented me with a great number of methodological problems due to the complexity of the study and its associated open questions Kraus et al.

With the study of happiness in heterogeneous families, this ethnographic study also makes a contribution to the biographical study of emotions. Through the research into two very different cultures, I investigated a broad spectrum of cultural differences, within which the diversity of the ritual creation of family happiness becomes very clear.

With a consciousness of these differences that extend down to the deep structures of the family and their members, several transcultural elements which contribute to the creation of family wellbeing and happiness can be identified and are later described. The great differences in the way that happiness is understood is shown by the variety of terms that have arisen in the European cultures and in Japan, terms whose semantic and contextual reconstruction requires their own analysis not to carried out here.

The terms contribute to making the diversity of relevant aspects visible. In contrast to this, beatitudo denotes the state of being happy, something to which people can definitely contribute.

This differentiation can also be found in other European languages. For example, in English one speaks of luck and happiness, while French has the words chance and bonheur. The U. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, For Socrates, the happy life, the eudaimonia , consists of a reason-based life that is virtuously led, within the framework of which it is better to suffer injustice than to do injustice. For Plato, a happy life is made possible by the individual looking at the ideas and being able to bring about the good and the beautiful, the kalokagathia as the unity of the good, the beautiful, and the just.

Aristotle later develops a stage model of happiness in which bliss is placed on a higher level than the other human ambitions such as honor, desire, and reason. For the Epicureans, it is ataraxia , emotional tranquility, and for the Stoics apatheia , lack of passion, that are the decisive conditions of a happy life Horn, HORN, C.

Epistulae morales ad Lucilium. In Japan and Germany, there are different notions of happiness. These are also associated with differences in the social and cultural practices for bringing forth happiness. These practices are an important part of the intangible cultural heritage. They and the emotions and conceptions associated with them play a considerable role in the development, preservation, and change of cultural identity.

These practices with which families create their family happiness also contribute to bringing forth a cultural identity that differs in Japan and Germany. Here, cultural identity designates a conjunction of characteristics that can be used to differentiate individuals and groups from others. Within these characteristics, the broad spectrum of symbolizations and practices plays an important role. In view of the tendency toward homogenization and uniformization of the world due to globalization, the significance of diversity received ever greater emphasis over the last decade, with the objective of preservation and promotion of cultural identity.

Convention for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage. Paris, Convention on the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expression.

In the face of the tendency toward standardization, both conventions underscore the necessity of cultural difference and identity Wulf, b WULF, C. Crucial points in the transmission and learning of intangible heritage. Anthropologie kultureller Vielfalt. Bielefeld: Transcript, Rituals are among the most important forms of intangible cultural heritage.

Among them, day-to-day and celebratory rituals play a central role. They contribute to creating a feeling of community and coherence, thus generating familial well-being and happiness. In this way they have an important influence on the cultural identity of family members. It can be shown here how familial rituals contribute to the development of a social and cultural identity of family members. In the staging of German and Japanese family rituals, it becomes clear how similar and at the same time different the practices are for bringing forth well-being and happiness of the family.

With the intention of providing examples, five structural elements are described here that play a central role in the design of the rituals belonging to the intangible cultural heritage, the generation of emotions of happiness, and the development of cultural identity. Recent research on emotions has made it clear how important it is from a cultural studies perspective not to ontologize emotions of happiness.

Emotions are not isolatable substances, but rather always linked with other characteristics of the individual. In many cases, it is language that contributes to the ability of emotions of happiness to arise and be felt. An example of this is the rhetoric of romantic love. Without it, these notions of love and the expectations of happiness associated with them would not have been able to develop. If a culture has a term with which a certain aspect of happiness is denoted, it is probable that forms of expression for this emotion can also be found in this culture.

If this word is missing in another culture, it is probably also difficult to identify the aspect of happiness referred to with this word. The Japanese word amae is an example of this. This word that cannot be translated into German is nevertheless of central importance for understanding the Japanese mentality. The question is now the extent to which the emotion of happiness and love referred to with this word can be understood by people from other cultures.

Several answers are possible here. One position proceeds on the assumption that this emotion can also be understood by people from other cultures with the aid of linguistic descriptions. Another position points out that this only possible to a very unsatisfactory extent, and that what is needed is not just linguistic knowledge, but also the incorporated ideas, emotional relationships, and performative actions referred to with this word. While the first position places more emphasis on the similarity in the emotional endowment of people, the second position refers to cultural differences that can hardly be overcome.

Many emotions of happiness arise in interactions with other people, in ritual communication between them, and in mimetic self-reference. They can be described as fluid. Such a characterization implies that emotions of happiness change in the practices of everyday life.

They overlap with previous emotional experiences and form ensembles of emotions. In this process, emotional dispositions are selected and updated. A special characteristic of human emotionality consists of the fact that they are influenced by moods that persist over a long period of time.

Emotions determine our relationships to other people and to the world that surrounds us. They are evaluative, that is, they evaluate the events that happen to us and allow us to act in accordance with this evaluation. This emotional evaluation of actions of other people often takes place unconsciously or semiconsciously and is only accessible to the conscious mind in a limited manner.

This evaluative side of emotions supports us in orienting ourselves in the world and with respect to other people. It helps us make distinctions and grasp the meaning of social situations, actions, and contexts. Emotions: a social science reader. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, a. Paragrana, Berlin, v. Emotions: a cultural studies reader. Gunter Gebauer und Christoph Wulf Hrsg. Christoph Wulf Hrsg. Ritual and identity: the staging and performing of rituals in the lives of young people.

London: Tufnell, The emotions: a cultural reader. New York: Berg, If you accentuate the performative character of the creation of happiness, there is a shift in the focus of attention. Interest is directed to a lesser extent toward understanding how notions of happiness are to be understood and interpreted and more toward grasping how people express, represent, modify, and control the various feelings of happiness.

In this case it is essential to study the process in which being happy is staged and performed. Emotions in the human face. New York: Pergamon, Physicality, habitualization, and dramaturgy of emotions become important.

Happy people often make other people happy as well. One reason for this is in the mimetic processes in which people become more similar to each other.

As in the case with laughter, emotions of happiness also involve a sensuous transfer in which our body is infected with the joy and happiness of other people. Without us becoming aware of it, we assimilate bodily movements and mimetic forms of expression. We become a sounding box of the emotions of happiness of other people. Their happiness affects us, and our affects strengthen their emotions.

An assimilation to the emotions of happiness of other people causes us to be able become happy ourselves, namely in a way that we are not happy like the others, but instead happy in our own way.

We reflect the happiness of other people back at them and intensify their emotions. Mimesis: culture, art, society. Berkeley: California University Press, Spiel, Ritual, Geste: mimetisches Handeln in der sozialen Welt. Reinbek: Rowohlt, Mimese na cultura.

Mimesis, poiesis, performativity in education. Muenster: Waxmann, Bielefeld: Transcript, a. Die neue Kraft der Rituale. Heidelberg: Winter, Images of the body in India. They lead the involved persons to relate to each other.

They are of central importance for the creation of familial happiness. Their performativity creates social forms of happiness. In this process, the movements of the body play an important role. In common action, they create social emotions of proximity, affection, and trust. The dynamics of familial rituals ensure that a ritual action is not a mere copy of a previous action. Rituals are similar to each other, to be sure, but they also create new practices with reference to that which has preceded them.

If this is not the case, they lose their vitality and degenerate into stereotypes. Rituals are social practices in which people learn how to create familial stagings and performances that make other people and themselves happy. In ritual action, all involved acquire the practical knowledge that is required for it Wulf et al. Opladen: Leske und Budrich, In the context of rituals, gestures play an important role. Gestures are actions such as the offering of a sacrifice in a sacred ritual in front of a Buddhist family altar.

The ringing of a small bell at the beginning of the handing out of presents on Christmas Eve can also be understood as a meaningful gesture in the Christmas ritual. In family rituals, gestures are performative to a great extent; they are mimetically learned. The widely shared patterning of movement to music in this dance genre does not, however, ne-gate the very real differences between local iterations.

Learning to dance to music that plays in every building on the street is different from learning in a setting with entirely different local instruments. Learning to dance is different when everyone comes from the same general socioeconomic and ethnic background compared to learning in extremely heterogeneous urban settings. This set of comparisons could continue for quite some time. The point is that even global forms take on local shapes. Lifestyle, Taste, and Conspicuous Consumption.

While some aspects of globalization are best studied at the societal level, others are best examined at smaller scales such as the trends visible within specific socio-economic strata or even at the level of individual decision-making. Chaney argues that people only feel the need to differentiate themselves when confronted with an array of available styles of living.

Within this framework, the rise of a consumerist economy enables individuals to exhibit their identities through the purchase and conspicuous use of various goods. Critics have argued that a consequence of globalization is the homogenization of culture. Along similar lines, some have worried that the rapid expansion of the leisure market would decrease the diversity of cultural products e.

The disappearance of small-scale shops and restaurants has certainly been an outcome of the rise of global conglomerates, but the homogenization of culture is not a foregone conclusion. At times these are at the expense of existing options, but it is also important to acknowledge that people make choices and can select the options or opportunities that most resonate with them. The concept of lifestyle thus highlights the degree of decision-making available to individual actors who can pick and choose from global commodities, ideas, and activities.

At the same time as individual choices are involved, the decisions made and the assemblages selected are far from random. Participating in a lifestyle implies knowledge about consumption; knowing how to distinguish between goods is a form of symbolic capital that further enhances the standing of the individual.

For example, children who have been raised in upper-class homes are able to more seamlessly integrate into elite boarding schools than classmates on scholarships who might find norms of dining, dress, and overall comportment to be unfamiliar. Recall the vignette that opened this chapter. The fact that the students of this prestigious liberal arts college are in the position to critique the ethical implications of specific recipes suggests that their life experiences are far different from the roughly one in seven households totaling Once a commodity becomes part of these global flows, it is theoretically available to all people regardless of where they live.

In actual practice, however, there are additional gatekeeping devices that ensure continued differentiation between social classes. Price will prevent many people from enjoying globally traded goods. While a Coca-Cola may seem commonplace to the average college student in the U. Likewise, although Kobe steaks which come from the Japanese wagyu cattle are available in the U.

In truth though, globalization has had both positive and negative impacts. In his book on the global garment industry, Kelsey Timmerman highlights the efforts undertaken by activists in the U. Globalization has also facilitated the rise of solidarity movements that would not have been likely in an earlier era. To take a recent example, within hours of the terrorist attacks in Paris, individ-uals from different nations and walks of life had changed their Facebook profile pictures to include the image of the French flag.

This movement was criticized because of its Eurocentrism; the victims of a bombing in Beirut just the day before received far less international support than did the French victims.

Shortcomings aside, it still stands as a testament to how quickly solidarity movements can gain momentum thanks to technological innovations like social media. Micro-loan programs and crowd-source fundraising are yet more ways in which individuals from disparate circumstances are becoming linked in the global era. The recipient must then repay the loan to Kiva with interest. Crowd-source fundraising follows a similar principle, though without the requirement that money be paid back to the donors.

One small-scale example involves funds gathered in this way for a faculty led applied visual research class in Dangriga, Belize in As a result, the team was able to over-deliver on what had been promised to the community.

The Austin Rodriguez Drum Shop—a cultural resource center, and producer of traditional Garifuna drums—had wanted help updating their educational poster see Figure 2a and 2b. Advances in transportation technologies, combined with an increased awareness of humanitarian crises abroad an awareness that is largely facilitated by advances in communication technologies also create new ethnoscapes. Programs like the Peace Corps have a relatively long history of sending Westerners into foreign nations to assist with humanitarian efforts on a regular basis.

Other volunteers are mobilized in times of crisis. Medical professionals may volunteer their ser-vices during a disease epidemic, flock-ing to the regions others are trying to flee. Engineers may volunteer their time to help rebuild cities in the wake of natural disasters. In , a devastating, 7. Thanks to widespread coverage of the crisis, the international response was immediate and intense with more than twenty countries contributing resources and personnel to assist in the recovery efforts.

Clearly, then, there are also benefits facilitated by globalization. Disadvantages of the Intensification of Globalization. In the previous section, we concluded by noting how the intensification of globalization can bring benefits to people in times of crisis. Yet it bears remembering and reiterating that sometimes such crises are themselves brought about by globalization. The decimation of indigenous tribes in the Americas, who had little to no resistance to the diseases carried by European explorers and settlers, is but one early example of this.

As epidemic after epidemic wreaked havoc on the indigenous peoples of the Americas, death rates in some tribes reached as high as 95 percent. Addressing a current instance, the research program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security CCAFS coordinated by the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, has called attention to the role of human-caused climate change in creating the current Syrian refugee crisis see case study by Laurie King below.

Similarly, a current example of how globalization can spell disaster from a public health standpoint would be the concern in about infected airplane passengers bringing the Ebola virus from Af-rica to the U. In March , the country of Guinea experienced an outbreak of the Ebola virus.

From there, it spread into many countries in the western part of Africa. Medical professionals from the U. Several health workers in the U. In response to this outbreak, the CDC increased screening efforts at the major ports of entry to the U. The debates about travel bans to and from West Africa were a reminder of the xenophobic at-titudes held by many Americans even in this age of globalization. There are many reasons for this. In some ways, these fears have been heightened by globalization rather than diminished.

Especially after the global recession of , some nation-states have become fearful for their economic security and have found it easy to use marginalized populations as scapegoats. While advances in commu-nication technology have enabled social justice focused solidarity movements as discussed above , unfortunately the same media have been used as a platform for hate-mongering by others. Social me-dia enables those who had previously only been schoolyard bullies to broadcast their taunts further than ever before.

Terrorists post videos of unspeakable violence online and individuals whose hateful attitudes might have been curbed through the informal sanctions of gossip and marginalization in a smaller-scale society can now find communities of like-minded bigots in online chat rooms.

This has been most apparent in the successful campaigns for the British Brexit vote on June 23, and the election of Donald Trump as President in the United States. Headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, the European Union is an economic and political union of 28 nation-states founded on November 1, in Maastricht, Netherlands. Both this and the election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the U. At the world scale, the Global North continues to extract wealth from the Global South.

In other words, eight men now have just as much money as 3. So, while globalization has facilitated advantages for some, more and more people are being left behind. While this impulse is understandable, many of these people are susceptible to the rhetoric of scapegoating: being told some other group is at fault for the problems they are facing.

This is the double-edged sword of globalization. Additionally, in some cases globalization is forced on already marginal populations in peripheral nations through institutions like the IMF and World Bank. In these instances, globalization facilitates and amplifies the reach and impact of neoliberalism , a multi-faceted political and economic philosophy that em-phasizes privatization and unregulated markets see below.

Latin America provides a good example of how the shift from colonialism to neoliberalism has been disseminated through and exacerbated by globalization. During this period, citizens individually and collectively en-deavored to establish a new national identity.

Internal divisions ran deep in many Latin American countries, with the supporters or clients of rival elites periodically drawn into violent contests for rule on behalf of their patrons. In the last decade of the s and the first decade of the s, people in Latin America began to question the right of the elites to rule, as well as the hidden costs of modernization. Peasant uprisings, like the one that took place at Canudus in Brazil in , were evidence of the shifting political framework.

People also saw the imperialistic tendencies of the U. Together, this led to a situation in which people in Latin America sought a national identity that resonated with their sense of self. During this same period there was a slight but significant change in the economic structure of the region. The economy was still based on exports of agriculture and natural resources like minerals, and the profits remained in the hands of the elite.

What was new, however, was the introduction and modest growth of manufacturing in the cities, which created new job opportunities. Economic diversification led to a more complex class structure and an emerging middle class. Unfortunately, this period of relative prosperity and stability soon ended. The privileged position of Latin American landowner compared to European farmers led to widespread poverty among farmers in Europe, which led to out-migration and political instability in Europe.

As locally born Latin American peasants migrated from the countryside to the cities and the cities filled with European immigrants, the landowning elite began to lose control, or at least the kind of power they used to hold over the farmers who worked their land and had no other work options. While city living provided certain opportunities, it also introduced new challenges. In the city, for instance, people rarely had access to land for subsistence agriculture.

This made them far more vulnerable to economic fluctuations, and the vulnerability of city living necessitated the adoption of new political philosophies. Urban poverty and desperation created a climate in which many peo-ple found socialist philosophies appealing, starting as early as the s in some places like Brazil. Initially, union leaders and European immigrants who spread socialist ideas among the urban poor were punished by the state and often deported.

Eventually such repressive tactics proved insufficient to curtail the swelling disruptions caused by strikes and related actions by the unions. Faced with a new political reality, the elite co-opted the public rhetoric of the urban masses. Realizing the need to cast themselves as allies to the urban workforce, the elites ushered in a period of modest reform with more protection for workers.

During this period, and as an extension of their work-related activism, the middle class also clam-ored for expansions of the social services provided by the state. Pressure from the middle class for more social services for citizens unfortunately played into growing xenophobia fear of foreigners resulting from the immigration of so many foreigners and faulty ideas about racial superiority com-municated through a growing discourse of nationalism.

In some places, the elites aligned with the middle classes if they saw it as politically advantageous. While emerging leaders from the middle class continued relying on the export economic model, they directed a greater percentage of the profits back into social programs. Only after the stock market crash of the s—and the resulting global recession—did those in power start to question the export model.

In the early part of the s, Latin American countries largely supported free trade because they believed they had a competitive advantage. However, changing world circumstances meant that Latin American countries soon lost their advantage; average family size in industrialized countries began to decrease, lowering demand for Latin American commodities.

Be-fore the war, Great Britain and Latin America had enjoyed a stable exchange relationship with Latin America sending agricultural goods to Great Britain and the British sending manufactured goods to Latin America. As the U. In contrast to Great Britain though, the U. Even if a consumer wanted to buy Latin American commodities, the commodities would be more expensive than domestic ones—even if actual costs were lower.

Overall, Latin America sold its agricultural goods to Europe, including Great Britain, but Latin American exporters had to accept lower prices than ever before. For those commodities that could not be produced in the U.

This same process also happened with mining interests like tin and copper; U. American companies were in a position to exploit the natural resources of these countries because the U.

This pattern curtailed the rate of economic growth throughout Latin America as well as in other regions where similar patterns developed. The late s through the s saw many Latin American countries turning to nationalism— often through force—as both a cultural movement and an economic strategy. The middle classes were in a favor of curtailing the export economy that had been preferred by the elites, but did not have the political clout to win elections. Indeed, their agenda was regularly blocked by the elites who used their influence i.

With time, however, middle class men increasingly came to occupy military officer positions and used their newfound authority to put nationalist leaders in the presidencies. They hoped to start producing the goods that they had been importing from the U.

Their goal: industrial self-sufficiency. The state was instrumental in this economic reorganization, both helping people buy local goods and discouraging them from buying foreign goods. Doing this was far from as easy as it may sound. The state imposed high duties on goods destined for the export market in order to entice producers to sell their goods at home.

At the same time, the state imposed high tariffs on the imports they wanted to replace with local products. With time and struggle these measures had their intended effects, making the locally produced goods comparatively more affordable—and therefore appealing—to local consumers. As already noted, developing factories required capital and technological expertise from abroad, which in turn made the goods produced much more expensive.

To help people afford such expensive goods, the state printed more money, generating massive inflation. In some places this inflation would eventually reach 2, percent! The combination of chronic inflation with high foreign debt emerged as an enduring problem in Latin America and other parts of the Global South. Countries crippled by high inflation and debt have turned to international institutions like the IMF and WB for relief and while the intentions may be good, borrowing money from these global institutions always comes with strings attached.

Borrowing countries are also required to adopt a number of policies intended to encourage free trade, such as the reduction or elimination of tariffs on imported goods and subsidies for domestically pro-duced goods. Policies are put into place to encourage foreign investment.

Transnational corporations have now reached the point that many of them rival nations in terms of revenue. Although the IMF and WB measures are intended to spark economic growth, the populace often winds up suffering in the wake of these changes.

Co-lonialism has given way to a neocolonialism in which economic force achieves what used to require military force with transnational corporations benefiting from the exploitation of poorer nations.

In , Bolivians in the city of Cochambamba took to the streets to protest the exploitative practices of a transnational company that had won the right to provide water services in the city. Water is one of the most essential elements on this planet. So how is it that a foreign company was given the right to determine who would have access to Bolivian water sup-plies and what the water would cost?

The answer serves to highlight the fact that many former colonies like Bolivia have existed in a perpetual state of subordination to global superpowers. Like many countries in the Global South, Bolivia is deep in debt. A failed program of social reforms, coupled with government corruption, was worsened by a severe drought affecting Bolivian agriculture.

One of the mandates of these loans was privatization of state- run enterprises like the water system. Proponents of privatizing such resources argue that the efficiency associated with for-profit businesses will also serve to conserve precious natural resources. Some have gone so far as to suggest that increases in water prices would help customers better grasp the preciousness of water and thereby encourage conservation.