I will argue the opposite, that the study of a society or a culture is the foundation for studying these other entities, as long as we treat the global as one very big society and treat the individual as many very very small societies. As a result anthropology should give way to psychology for the individuals and macro-sociology for the global. We might have argued the opposite, that anthropology is an anachronism, that its topic based on the plural term societies or cultures assumed to be relatively homogeneous internally and associated with specific regions, are being dissolved away and replaced by a growing individualism on the one hand and globalisation on the other. I will ague that the study of society as practiced by anthropology has the potential to address both macrocosm, microcosm and the relationship between these two.
On the other hand as the enlightenment tradition always predicted, along with greater generality and encompassment, comes greater particularity in the form of an unprecedented individualism and potential for personal autonomy that has become the microcosm of social analysis. On the one hand we have the growth of a global world which starts to become a genuine entity in its own right the macrocosm of social analysis.
The challenge today is to confront a world that expands in both directions from this initial state. In order to achieve this goal I will argue that we must start with that core tradition by which anthropology has endeavoured to describe and account for societies on the assumption that culture and society are the products of an a priori historical diversity based on regions. On the contrary I will argue that it is some of the most traditional aspects of anthropology that have come into their own as an ideal resource for directly confronting the challenge represented by the phrase `the state of the world'. I will argue against any view that suggests that the changes and developments that create our contemporary world have made anthropology anachronistic or less appropriate as a means to try and understand our world. One which draws from the traditions and achievements of that discipline but is applied in an unprecedented manner to that which is unprecedented about the contemporary world. My concern today is with the potential for Anthropology to provide a specific perspective on the state of the world.
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