Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology, World Cultures and Globalization

Baylor University

Anthropologists have contributed significantly to understanding the multifaceted impacts that globalization has had on human populations, both large and small. During the second half of the 20th century all of the world's societies were integrated into a single market within which culture change was shaped increasingly by economic forces. Modernization theory of the mid-20th century, holding that all societies were undergoing development towards pluralistic, liberal democracy, as this was produced in Europe and North America by industrial capitalism, was supplanted by the end of the century with skepticism and confusion as the dynamics of the system increasingly suggested fundamentalist resistance to modernization and westernization, and shifts in the flow of capital from the core nations of the mid-century post-colonial world to many peripheral nations where labor was cheap and where new consumer markets were emerging. This ''outsourcing'' created consternation and economic decline for the working class in the core nations.

College of Arts and Sciences