Economic Anthropology in Global Issues Social Sciences Research Paper (Research Paper Sample)

Economic Anthropology in Understanding the Impact of Globalization on Local Communities
Name
Institution
The impact of globalization on local cultures and modes of production is an issue that continues to be ignored as public discourses tend to focus on international trade trends and capitalist production. The consequence of this situation is that the place of local communities in the global capitalist economy is often overlooked as inconsequential largely because of the localized nature of the proceeds of domestic production. For instance, local communities typically engage in subsistence forms of production such as farming, whose proceeds are consumed by the family with little of it getting to the market. Thus, the absence of commerce-oriented economic activities has the impact of both isolating local communities from the global capitalist market and downplaying how it impacts and is itself impacted by the forces of globalization. Mary Kenny challenges this observation in Deeply Rooted in the Present, in which she examines local communities through the lens of economic anthropology to demonstrate that while local communities’ contribution to the pace of globalization is negligible, they are severely impacted by globalization via the economic activities of multinational corporations, and their governments’ efforts to integrate their economies into the global market. These observations are supported by other course readings that link globalization to environmental degradation, resource scarcity and other unsustainable and exploitative corporate practices that negatively impact local communities’ sources of livelihood.