'Globalization is in danger of becoming, if it has not already become, the cliché of our times: the big idea which encompasses everything from global financial markets to the Internet but which delivers little substantive insight into the contemporary human condition.' Cited from Held, McGrew, Goldblatt and Perraton's Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture (Stanford 1999), these words speak to the dangers and challenges of finding a unifying explanation for the complex changes which seem to be taking place around us. Our lives have all been touched by the global reach of communication and transportation technologies, by the speed of information exchange, and by the mutual dependencies which seem almost to be taken for granted.

As we know from historical precedents - the Silk Road trade route between the Middle East and China in the first millennium for example - travel and trade brought with them cultural exchange: new musical forms, new religions, and new forms of political organization. These served both as sources of cultural renewal and progress, but also as very real threats to established traditions and ways of life. The modern histories of communication and transportation have radically intensified these processes. They underscore the economic and political discrepancies between different parts of the world, but they can also be used to bring needed support to areas in crisis. They broaden the spectrum of culture to which populations have access, but they also threaten to trample any organic cultural developments that are in their path. Some of the most profound implications of the new technologies may be found in the economic sector, as global producers and markets are pushed into an integrated system by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization. Since these activities are usually dominated by industrial nations with their own sets of interests, the terms of exchange can be disastrous for more fragile economies and less economically diversified and developed parts of the world. The imbalance between the possibilities that the new technologies bring, and the actual uses to which they are put, has generated widespread concern and protest which can be seen in the demonstrations at various international economic summits such as those hosted in Seattle and Genoa.

As nations, economies, and even ecosystems increasingly depend upon one another, as populations increasingly flow outside national borders, the idea of the nation state is changing. Networks - whether composed of professionals, economic interests, political or religious beliefs - provide de-territorialized linkages among peoples and interests. Freed from physical proximity, enabled by communications technologies, these networks operate outside the bounds of the nation-state and thus often establish their own rules of engagement. However, global exchange and networks play themselves out in local circumstances. As a result, highly specific constraints, meanings and associations are sometimes created for them, depending on where they happen to be found. Globalization may not be the best term for the job, but it directs our attention to the complex interplay of global flows and local interpretations and implications.

Questions to Consider

• Imagine what it's like to grow up in Asia or Africa with surrounded by the sounds and images of American and European culture - Disney's retellings of Western folktales or Barbi, for example. How might these be understood?
• Consider your understanding of Japanese culture through Pokémon or Anime - how might it differ from its meanings in Japan? What does this tell us about international cultural objects and local meanings?
• Are notions of justice, of freedom, of right and wrong the same everywhere, regardless of cultural tradition? Consider the challenges faced by the UN or the world court in The Hague in establishing international ethical codes.
• Consider religion as a globalising influence. Protestantism, Catholicism, Islam and Judaism are all international networks of belief, yet each has extremist elements. How might this extremism pose both local threats as well as dangers to the larger meanings and potentials of religion as a whole?

Related Links

• The Silk Road: A History of Exchange
• Globalization Challenge Initiative
• Anti-globalization: One Year Later, Indymedia, 12/7/2000
• Anti-Globalization: A Spreading Phenomenon, PERSPECTIVES, A Canadian Security Intelligence Service Report (#2000/08), 08/22/2000
• Global Corporation Watch
• Globalization: Threat or Opportunity?, International Monetary Fund Report, 04/12/2000

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