ABSTRACT
Globalization, driven by an integrated global economy based on incentives and integration and propelled by multinational corporations and international banks, has raised fears all over the world that the market could destroy the social fabric of societies. According to Robert J. Samuelson (2000), globalization is a double-edged sword. While it creates new markets and wealth, it also causes widespread suffering, disorder and unrest. For billions of the world’s people, business-driven globalization means uprooting old ways of life and threatening their livelihoods and cultures. The tidal wave of global culture is sweeping away indigenous cultures all over the world. As a result, many of the world’s tribal societies have been decimated, their cultures devastated and their members enslaved. This chapter is a critique of globalization and its impact on the lives of tribal people, especially the tribal women of Kerala, whose ‘economic and cultural survival is at stake’ (Joshi 1998: 279).
