Anthropologies and geographies of globalization

Anthropologists and geographers are increasingly turning to one another for tools to analyze the present global political-economic conjuncture. Yet to date there has been no adequate accounting of the comparative advantages each field brings to studies of globalization - Anthropology with its emphasis on the role of culture in anchoring (or resisting) globalizing processes within particular societies and Geography with its more comparative emphasis on the politics of place and scale. This paper is intended to contribute to interdisciplinary exchange through such an accounting and argues for a constructive synthesis geared toward understanding how 'local' cultural systems articulate with political-economic currents operating at wider spatial scales.