Grounded Globalism

What happens when a traditional region goes global? The world is flat? Maybe not, says this paradigm-shifting study of globalism's impact on a region legendarily resistant to change. The U.S. South, long defined in terms of its differences from the U.S. North, is moving out of this national and oppositional frame of reference into one that is more international and integrative. Likewise, as the South goes global, people are immigrating there from countries like India, Mexico, and Vietnam - and becoming southerners. Much has been made of the demographic and economic aspects of this shift. Until now, though, no one has systematically shown what globalism means to the southern sense of self. Anthropologist James L. Peacock looks at the South of both the present and the past to develop the idea of 'grounded globalism', in which global forces and local cultures rooted in history, tradition, and place reverberate against each other in mutually sustaining and energizing ways. ""Grounded Globalism"" draws on perspectives from fields as diverse as ecology, anthropology, religion, and history to move us beyond the model that depicts the South as a region paralyzed by the burden of its past.