The globalization of capitalism and the contemporary economy

For almost 30 years, people have talked about the contemporary era as a period of globalization. What they mean in general is the emergence of a single worldwide economic system. What many people fail to see is that this global economy (1) is not new, although it is much more important now, and (2) does not actually integrate people into a single social system. The contemporary global economy is a capitalist system, and in fact it emerges and becomes more important to Western capitalism as a solution to the crisis of Fordist production. When anthropologists talk about globalization, they have these specific features in mind:

• Globalization of capitalism does not create a monoculture.
• A better definition of globalization is the creation of a new system of inequality.
• Everyone depends to some extent on the working of a global capitalist system, but everyone occupies a different, unequal position with respect to the whole system.
• People in any one position within global capitalism do not see the whole system. They only see their part of it.
• Maimafu needs to be a “traditional society” based on gifts and a “modern society” based on labor for globalization to work.