The global marketing strategies of firms such as McDonald¿s and Coca-Cola¿ the use of offshore production plants and sweatshops by firms such as Nike and The Gap¿the struggles over fair trade coffee¿ the rapid growth in international migration¿new forms of ¿exotic¿ tourism ¿the dramatic increase in material inequality around the globe. These are some of the most prominent symptoms of major changes that have been taking place in the working of the world since the late 1960s. Such changes are often referred to under the general heading of ¿globalization.¿ How should we think about these changes? What is the relationship between their economic, political, and cultural dimensions? And, above all, how do people around the world experience them? We will explore these issues by focusing on the ways they are being addressed by socio-cultural anthropologists, historians of the present, documentary film-makers and others. We will consider the varied approaches these analysts employ. And we will explore how the challenges posed by globalization are encouraging them to re-conceptualize their objects of study and revise their modes of research. This course is meant to make it easier for you to recognize and engage the significant shifts that are taking place in the world around you, the relationships and processes that connect your daily lives to the lives of others elsewhere in the world, and the urgent contemporary debates about the current and future organization of these connections.