Inequality and anthropology's role today
Global change creates winners and losers, and anthropology asks how people experience and respond to both.
Uneven effects
Globalisation brings jobs and goods to some places and job losses or environmental damage to others. Colonial histories still shape who is wealthy and who is poor. Anthropologists study conditions on the margins, such as informal workers in growing cities, and harmful practices such as human trafficking and forced labour.
Indigenous rights and the ethnosphere
Indigenous peoples are often most affected by mining, logging, and dam projects on their lands. Many have organised to defend land and cultural rights, sometimes partnering with anthropologists. Some writers use the word ethnosphere for the whole of the world's cultures, ideas, and languages, and warn that its diversity is being lost as fast as biodiversity.
Why anthropology matters
Anthropological skills are widely useful: listening carefully, understanding other viewpoints, avoiding ethnocentrism, and seeing how parts of life connect. Anthropologists work in public health, technology design, disaster relief, business, and policy. In a globalised world, these skills help people cooperate across cultural differences.
Flashcard
Money migrants send to family in their home country
Check your understanding
Workers abroad send money home each month to support their parents. This money is called: