by Thomas Hylland Eriksen
Pluto Press
4/20/2026, paperback
SKU: 9780745352220
A spirited and engaging 'big picture' narrative of how we can reverse capitalism's relentless drive towards biocultural homogeneity
For thousands of years, humanity's story was one of diversification. Across centuries and continents, our species proliferated new approaches to family and community life; to agriculture, economics, religion, artistic expression, and self-understanding. Today, this process is in reverse.
Culturally and ecologically, we are witnessing an almost universal drive towards homogeneity and the loss of diversity. The global forces of capitalism have created a world riddled with overlapping crises, pushing alternatives to the margins and narrowing the scope for action just when we need it most. And yet its logic is never totalizing: contrary to Margaret Thatcher's famous mantra, there are many alternatives.
The Big Here and the Long Now begins with the story of how our world of efficiency, standardization, and development optimism first came into being; and how promises of progress, growth, and prosperity have, in recent years, acquired a nasty aftertaste. The book concludes with hope, and an exploration of creolization and hybridity. With biocultural diversity already being revived by activists and indigenous communities from Manhattan to Micronesia, there are plenty of green shoots. Now they must be cultivated and nurtured.
Reviews:
"Truly an inspiration. Only someone of Eriksen's stature could write this call to intellectual and political action in everyday life with such authority, lucidity and grounding. Through smartphones, containerships, cement and soil, Eriksen shows us that there are small signs of more liveable worlds than the juggernaut of globalisation allows." --Caroline Knowles, Professor Emerita at Goldsmiths University of London, author of Serious Money
About the Author:
Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962--2024) was Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and former President of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA). He was among the most highly cited anthropologists of his generation, and his classic book Small Places, Large Issues remains a cornerstone in anthropology courses.