This chapter locates Burkina Faso on the global map and introduces the historical, ecological and political background of the research area – the southern province of Boulgou – and its connection with the wider region. International relations and the local national political landscape will be related to the country's position in the global political and economic network. Most of the modernization projects encountered are part of a wider international discourse: local intra- and inter-ethnic relations are largely framed by a development discourse that is determined by the country's historical and recent positioning in the global system. Using Wallerstein's (1974; 2004 a and b) ‘world system’ perspective, various threads in Burkina Faso's national and international relations can be tied together and understood as parts of an overarching process. The world system depends on peripheral states such as Burkina Faso largely for their reservoir of human labour as well as for the markets and resources they offer. Analysing the local as part of a global network helps make sense of the role of state agents, international donors and development projects and their interactions. Most organizations encountered on the ground are in some way implementing an agenda that is devised to maintain the new global world order.

Wallerstein's model, however, also received considerable criticism for disregarding the agency of states and other institutions as actors in the process. Evans, Rueschemeyer and Skocpol's 1985 attempt at ‘bringing the state back’ into this debate calls for a much more prominent consideration of states' autonomy in the capitalist core and the former colonial empires, and other institutions, mostly in emerging economies (e.g. Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012).