ABSTRACT
This chapter centers on the contemporary flow of people and goods, and technology and production, across national boundaries, in what is known as globalization. After reviewing some debates on the economic and cultural dimensions of globalization, attention turns to ethnic tourism as an important cultural phenomenon and its potential transformative effects at the local level. Globalization also entails a continuous flow of investments and production, and an ever-tighter integration between countries. The cultural effects of such transnational linkages are taken up in the third section, which focuses on how the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has spurred and intensified migration between Mexico and North America, and on cultural and gendered outcomes of the proliferation of maquiladora assembly and manufacturing plants. The chapter then turns to the relationship between global economic interests and deforestation. The controversies surrounding how some anthropologists represent Amazonian peoples, and how these representations may be endangering their livelihoods and resources, is the focus of the fifth section. Finally, this chapter provides a look into the lives of Hispanic/Latino domestic workers in the United States.
