Globalization

Globalization refers to the worldwide diffusion of practices, expansion of relations across continents, organization of social life on a global scale, and growth of a shared global consciousness. As new forms of communication and transportation enable individuals and groups to overcome spatial constraints and cross nation-state boundaries in their activities, “supraterritorial” relations increase (Scholte 2000). Conventionally associated with economic integration in a world market, globalization more broadly comprises many such forms of connectedness. Together, these mark the drawing together of the world as a single society. This is experienced as the “compression” of the world, which gives rise to a widespread intensification of “consciousness of the world as a whole” (Robertson 1992). Since it transforms the context of human experience, globalization ushers in a “global ...