The Anthropology of Global Systems

A super-modern building looms overhead. An elderly woman, sitting on the ground, back against the building, palm forward, begs. A red Ferrari passes. Business folk come and go talking of branding Michelangelo. A drunk man leans over and vomits on the sidewalk. This postmodern, Dickensian world is our world, and such a world needs explanation. Since the 1970s Kajsa Ekholm Friedman and Jonathan Friedman have been explaining this, and other, social worlds in their project to create a global systemic anthropology. The two volumes of The Anthropology of Global Systems report on the project's discoveries. -- Stephen Reyna, University of Manchester