ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book emphasises on globalization, viewing Niumi's relations with world-systems and the change its residents experienced through the centuries. The Gambia River flows into the Atlantic Ocean 115 miles below Cape Verde, the western tip of continental Africa. On the north bank of the Gambia, at its mouth, lies a territory known locally as Niumi. The book discusses life in Niumi since the mid-1990s, when the most recent wave of globalization came breaking onto the Gambia's shores. Meanwhile, historians' thinking on globalization had coalesced to a greater degree than before, making it an appropriate time to integrate world-systems theory more thoroughly into a grander schematic for understanding the effects of a larger world on local living. Global communications networks have led to such thorough change that we encounter others having different ways less frequently.
