National Diversity and the Crisis of Globalisation from the Perspective of Historical Anthropology

Abstract

This chapter discusses globalisation from a historical and anthropological viewpoint. The discussion is about the deeper forces—education, mobility, culture and family systems—that explain the inferior economic choices made today. I first discuss the idea that free trade, as promoted by globalisation, leads to inequality and demand insufficiency, which in turn leads to economic crises. I then discuss how acceptance of the expanding economic disparities in developed countries may be explained by the spread of educational stratification and by population aging in developed countries. Developed countries, rather than emerging countries, still have the potential to change or improve the world’s economic structure and restrain globalisation or free trade. I propose that possibly America has such potential partly due to its dynamic societal structure. For example, criticism against globalisation, including the concept of the richest 1 %, has been spread by the US to the rest of the world. Such optimistic views about America should be considered with some scepticism though.