Globalization has challenged concepts such as local culture and cultural autonomy. And the rampant commodification of cultural products has challenged the way we define culture itself. Have these developments transformed the relationship between culture and autonomy? Have traditional notions of cultural autonomy been recast? This book showcases the work of scholars who employ a broad definition of culture to trace how issues of cultural autonomy have played out in various arenas, including literary criticism, indigenous societies, the Slow Food movement, and skateboarding culture. Although they focus on the marginalized issue of autonomy, they reveal that globalization has both limited as well as created new forms of cultural autonomy.

Petra Rethmann is assistant professor of anthropology at McMaster University. Her work has been published in American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, Anthropologica, and The Anthropology of East-Europe Review.

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Imre Szeman holds the Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta and is the cofounder of the Petrocultures Research Group. He is the coauthor of After Oil and the coeditor of The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism.

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William D. Coleman is CIGI Chair in Globalization and Public Policy at the Balsillie School of International Affairs and professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo.

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