Globalization

Globalization

Globalization can be defined in 5 ways:

i. Globalization as internationalization. Here globalization is defined as cross-border relations between countries'. It describes the growth in international exchange and interdependence. With growing flows of trade and capital investment there is the possibility of moving beyond an inter-national economy, distinct national economies are subsumed and rearticulated into the system by international processes and transactions (Hirst and Peters 1996)

ii. Globalization as liberalization. Globalization refers to 'a process of removing government-imposed restrictions on movements between countries in order to create an "open", "borderless" world economy' (Scholte 2000)

iii. Globalization as universalization. In this use, 'global' is used in the sense of being 'worldwide' and 'globalization' is 'the process of spreading various objects and experiences to people at all corners of the earth'. A classic example of this would be the spread of computing, television etc.

iv. Globalization as westernization or modernization. Here 'globalization' is understood as a dynamic, 'whereby the social structures of modernity (capitalism, rationalism, industrialism, bureaucratism, etc.) are spread the world over, normally destroying pre-existent cultures and local self-determination in the process.

v. Globalization as deterritorialization (or as the spread of supraterritoriality). Here 'globalization' entails a 'reconfiguration of geography, so that social space is no longer wholly mapped in terms of territorial places, territorial distances and territorial borders. David Held et al (1999) define globalization as a ' process which embodies a transformation in the spatial organization of social relations and transactions