While anthropological and social scholarly works have been concerned with demonstrating how the flow of people, trade, and ideas affect local people in different parts of the world, either by emphasizing adherence to local traditions as a counter reaction to global hegemony, or discussing the changing aspects of cultures and identities within the context of transnationalism as a process that followed globalization, this paper takes the subject to another dimension where it critically examines the underlying premises of globalizing the world, yet it charts out a path to find our human universals. Using anthropological theories, this paper revisits aspects of the relativity of cultures. It aims at drawing another vision of observing how the world can come to common terms through understanding the inherited reasons for clashes, not from an ideological perspective, but through using anthropological premises, supported by its findings. In order to do that, it demonstrates the fallacy of dichotomizing our history into east and west, or the west and the rest, and clarifies the confusion between political and cultural conflicts.

The term globalization has been increasingly used in economic literature and political discussions as well as in cultural debates. In the past it has swiftly migrated across disciplinary boundaries. It has been rapidly assimilated and consumed by anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, economists, geographers, and other scholars, and even in everyday conversations.

Globalization is often perceived as an emergent phenomenon that is driven by the changing nature of economic and international relationship. There is a widely held view that globalization is related to the international movement of commodities, money, information, people, and ideas; and the development of technology, organizations, legal systems, and infrastructures to allow these movements. Some anthropologists regard globalization as a perspective, rather than reified processes.

It might be suggested that, without ruling out other possibilities, an alternative would be to see globalization in terms of perspective. For those who usually study this question, this alternative would put a brake on the excessive emphasis on periodization and discontinuity, an effect of which is that the old problem of interdependence is largely neglected, as is the historical character of this problem, which in turn is subject to interruptions, cycles, and obvious resumptions that reveal the falsity of any evolutionist view. This makes it possible to relativize discontinuity without necessarily falling back on the opposite, substantialist pole and without having to deny whatever new realities appear (Velho, 1999; p. 322).