Generations and Globalization: Youth, Age, and Family in the New World Economy

Written primarily by cultural anthropologists, the collection of essays presented in this volume provides a fresh analytical perspective to the study of age, intergenerational relationships, and globalization. Critical of previous anthropological studies that polarize "the global" and the "local," a major theme woven throughout the book is the necessity of connecting structural demographic changes (e.g., population aging, the transnational migration of workers) to the role that individual agency and families play in shaping globalization and processes of inequality. As such, all of the papers in this book emphasize the ways in which intergenerational transmission and social reproduction inherent in family exchanges are critical to the movement of people through their life cycles and to the regeneration of households and the social world.