Defining Globalization
Human societies across the globe have established progressively closer contacts over many
centuries, but recently the pace has dramatically increased. Jet airplanes, cheap telephone
service, email, computers, huge oceangoing vessels, instant capital flows, all these have
made the world more interdependent than ever. Multinational corporations manufacture
products in many countries and sell to consumers around the world. Money, technology
and raw materials move ever more swiftly across national borders. Along with products
and finances, ideas and cultures circulate more freely. As a result, laws, economies, and
social movements are forming at the international level. Many politicians, academics, and
journalists treat these trends as both inevitable and (on the whole) welcome. But for
billions of the worlds people, business-driven globalization means uprooting old ways of
life and threatening livelihoods and cultures. The global social justice movement, itself a
product of globalization, proposes an alternative path, more responsive to public needs.
Intense political disputes will continue over globalizations meaning and its future
direction.
I. Introduction
The term “globalization” has acquired considerable emotive force. Some view it as a
process that is beneficiala key to future world economic developmentand also inevitable
and irreversible. Others regard it with hostility, even fear, believing that it increases
inequality within and between nations, threatens employment and living standards and
thwarts social progress. This brief offers an overview of some aspects of globalization and
aims to identify ways in which countries can tap the gains of this process, while remaining
realistic about its potential and its risks.
Globalization offers extensive opportunities for truly worldwide development but it is not
