Even in a world of circulation, in which the same things and ideas penetrate to the last corners, the living conditions do not necessarily resemble each other. For in the concrete places to which they reach, these things and ideas are reworked and reinvented, in creative processes, according to the respective existing ideas and desires. Kurt Beck has contributed significantly to making this insight into the nature of global interconnectedness the ethnological state of the art. With the help of three approaches central to his scholarly work - body, technology, knowledge - this volume examines the creative shaping of a world always in flux, mostly using the example of Africa.