Introduction

Abstract

One can easily argue that some of the greatest impacts of globalization on cities in the twenty-first century have been the effects of migration-induced transnationalism and multiculturalism engendered at the local level. In anthropology, much of this had been presaged by the work of Appadurai (1996), Hannerz (1996), Kearney (2004) and Friedman (1994) as they discussed the interfaces between global processes and their impacts on local cultures and social structures. These issues have been theoretically examined from every angle; from world systems theory to postmodernism. This volume provides a contemporary “worm’s eye” and “ground level,” i.e., “ethnographic” look at the interdependence of world markets and local cultures. This is what Robertson called “glocalization” (1995); how the homogenizing and universalizing forces of globalization interact with the heterogeneity and particularity of local forces to create hybrid cultures. As noted by Prato and Pardo, multi-ethnic environments marked by cultural heterogeneity, once associated exclusively with societies such as the United States of America, have now become commonplace across the world (2009).