GLOBALIZATION

Globalization

Globalization

Introduction

It has been said that high expectations breed deep frustrations. Perhaps the truth of that saying is attested in recent and more sober assessments of the phenomenon called globalization. The past decade was marked by unalloyed enthusiasm and unrealistic hopes for the emergence of a global village in which the world's disparate and warring peoples would realize at last that they shared one small, vulnerable planet on which their destinies were linked. But there was no such epiphany.

Instead there has been a growing, if disillusioning, realization that globalization is not a panacea for the world's ills. Globalization has both advantages and disadvantages and it provides opportunities at the same time that it posits dangers, because globalization carries with it unanticipated, often contradictory and polarizing consequences.

This process of globalization is part of a ever more interdependent world where political, economic, social, and cultural relationships are not restricted to territorial boundaries or to state actors and no state or entity is unaffected by activities outside its direct control. Developments in technology and communications, the creation of intricate international organizations and transnational corporations... and the changes to international relations and international law since the end of the Cold War have profoundly affected the context within which each person and community lives, as well as the role of the state.

"Globalization" is a term that came into popular usage in the 1980's to describe the increased movement of people, knowledge and ideas, and goods and money across national borders that has led to increased interconnectedness among the world's populations, economically, politically, socially and culturally. Although globalization is often thought of in economic terms (i.e., "the global marketplace"), this process has many social and political implications as well. Many in local communities associate globalization with modernization (i.e., the transformation of "traditional" societies into "Western" industrialized ...