Gupta and Ferguson begin by thinking about anthropology's study of the marginal, of the marginal of the margins. Going back to early anthropology they consider the use of bounded places, such as the Torbriand, to study people in original states. They argue that there is no such thing as original states. That all places are places of contact and exchange. Modernity and globalization has sped the process of contact and exchange. Concern over homogenizing is dismissed with the understanding that great central concepts of what is and how to control what is, is always failing. An affective consideration is in how the elite of any globally connected place are more closely interconnected to one another than they are to the working class in their physical proximity. This is true on a level. Bill Gates can fly in the same manner as the wealthy of India or Arabia. They might visit the same resorts and concern themselves with the same common problems their status brings, similar diseases and
"Jointly constructed participant frameworks help to establish whether an utterance is taken as earnest, sarcastic, playful, hostile, and so on, while establishing the target(s) of the utterance". Social scenes play a part in communicating the earnestness, sarcasm, playfulness, hostility, and so on, of a given expression while implying who the message is for and about.