Edward LiPuma is a professor of anthropology at the University of Miami specializing in the character of globalization and its implications for politics and culture. He is the author of Encompassing Others: The Magic of Modernity in Melanesia (2000) and the coauthor (with Benjamin Lee) of Financial Derivatives and the Globalization of Risk (2004) and the forthcoming The Political Culture of Democracy in South Africa (with Thomas Koelble).