Capitalism has long been idealized as a symbol of success, power, and free enterprise. In reality, while capitalism has brought wealth and success to some people, many others are rapidly losing opportunities to make a living as globalization transfers more and more control over local resources to distant powers. Today there is a growing sense that something is wrong with a system that treats people as mere components of the production process, focusing on efficiency to such extremes that services to citizens of even wealthy nations are neglected. The eleven anthropologists, economists, and researchers represented in this volume address this disparity of global capitalism and offer surprising solutions to the present effects of the burgeoning ""global marketplace"" on some of today's struggling communities. The essays, ranging in subject matter from the preservation of traditional fishing communities in New England to the effects of NAFTA, emphasize the need to reestablish grassroots development and locally focused use of resources and champion the concerns of contemporary poor and working-class people. In its consideration of possible alternatives to the profoundly damaging effects of uncontrolled global capitalism, Communities and Capital offers a new perspective that balances the power and success of capitalism with a recognition of its costs.

Postville is an obscure meatpacking town in the northeast corner of Iowa. Here, in the most unlikely of places, unparalleled diversity drew international media. Now people declare the town's experiment in multiculturalism dead. It was not native Iowans, or the newly-arrived Orthodox Jews, or the immigrant workers who made Postville fail. Postville was stopped in its tracks by a massive raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on May 12th 2008. 20% of the population was arrested, forcing the closure of the town's kosher meatpacking plant. The raid exposed the disastrous enforcement of immigration policy, the exploitation of Postville by activists, and disturbing questions about the packing house's operators.