For over at least 40 years, globalization has been a watchword that people have used to characterize the contemporary era, and particularly the expansion of capitalism and the establishment of a global economic order. Anthropology has a complex relationship to this idea. On the one hand, as popular discourse drew attention to economic globalization, anthropologists used the topic to highlight their critique of classical models of societies as static, bounded, and isolated systems. This critique was not new but the idea of an era of globalization renewed its impetus. On the other hand, anthropologists regarded popular discussions of globalization skeptically. After all, this want the first time that societies interacted across long distances or adapted in response. Furthermore, if one took a truly global perspective on the expansion of Western capitalism, one could see that its effects were uneven.
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