[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

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emerges from the dialectic between local identity and global similarity or embeddedness, a
dialectic that simultaneously promotes vast networks and exchange systems and facilitates the
incorporation of goods and ideas travelling along these systems into local social structures and
cultures. From this point of view, the limits of the Western Desert cultural bloc are not defined
endemically, not from within, but fiom without by people or groups who refuse to engage in
the exchange systems and who reject a people and language that easily integrates itself within
foreign systems. The desert’s expansionist and inclusivist ethos is the major social engine at
work in the section systems’ easy and rapid diffusion throughout the Western Desert.