But that scarcely brings us nearer to what globalisation means. The phenomenon could be a great deal of different things, or perhaps multiple manifestations of one prevailing trend. It has become a buzzword that some will use to describe everything that is happening in the world today.

The dictionary definition is a great deal drier. Globalisation (n) is the "process enabling financial and investment markets to operate internationally, largely as a result of deregulation and improved communications" (Collins) or - from the US - to "make worldwide in scope or application" (Webster). The financial markets, however, are where the story begins.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the business model termed the "globalised" financial market came to be seen as an entity that could have more than just an economic impact on the parts of the world it touched.

Globalisation came to be seen as more than simply a way of doing business, or running financial markets - it became a process. From then on the word took on a life of its own. Centuries earlier, in a similar manner, the techniques of industrial manufacturing led to the changes associated with the process of industrialisation, as former country dwellers migrated to the cramped but booming industrial cities to tend the new machines.

So how does the globalised market work? It is modern communications that make it possible; for the British service sector to deal with its customers through a call centre in India, or for a sportswear manufacturer to design its products in Europe, make them in south-east Asia and sell them in north America.

But this is where the anti-globalisation side gets stuck in. If these practices replace domestic economic life with an economy that is heavily influenced or controlled from overseas, then the creation of a globalised economic model and the process of globalisation can also be seen as a surrender of power to the corporations, or a means of keeping poorer nations in their place.

Low-paid sweatshop workers, GM seed pressed on developing world farmers, selling off state-owned industry to qualify for IMF and World Bank loans and the increasing dominance of US and European corporate culture across the globe have come to symbolise globalisation for some of its critics.

The anti-globalisation movement is famously broad, encompassing environmentalists, anarchists, unionists, the hard left, some of the soft left, those campaigning for fair development in poorer countries and others who want to tear the whole thing down, in the same way that the original Luddites attacked mechanised spinning machines.

Not everyone agrees that globalisation is necessarily evil, or that globalised corporations are running the lives of individuals or are more powerful than nations. Some say that the spread of globalisation, free markets and free trade into the developing world is the best way to beat poverty - the only problem is that free markets and free trade do not yet truly exist.

Globalisation can be seen as a positive, negative or even marginal process. And regardless of whether it works for good or ill, globalisation's exact meaning will continue to be the subject of debate among those who oppose, support or simply observe it.

A recent report in the Press Gazette, the trade magazine for journalists, dealt with attempts by a BBC focus group to throw some light on how far television audiences understand news reports.

In one clip, economics editor Evan Davies referred to "globalisation - whatever that means". A panellist replied: "Well if he doesn't what it means, how the hell are we supposed to?"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/oct/31/globalisation.simonjeffery

Simon Jeffery  is a chief publishing officer of ngmoco's Plus+ Publishing group  

Journal of Globalization and Development, V1,Issue1, The Berkeley Electronic Press, [online]

Globalization has been credited with helping shift wealth toless-developed countries.However, globalization is also often blamed for the loss of employment in developed nations, as corporations ship manufacturing facilities and  jobs overseas in order to save costs; critics say it weakens national sovereignty as well.

Read more: Globalization https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/globalization.asp#ixzz550402IZH 

Jean, D. (2008). Globalization.  51(4), 480-492 [Online]. Available at <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0020872808090241> [Last accessed 23 January 2018]  

Miles Kahler is Rohr Professor of Pacific International Relations at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS), University of California, San Diego (UCSD). In 2002 he was named Founding Director of the Institute for International, Comparative, and Area Studies (IICAS) at UCSD. His publications include Governance in a Global Economy, co-edited with David Lake (Princeton University Press, 2003) and Leadership Selection in the Major Multilaterals

what is globalization? 

Globalization is a process of interaction and integration among the people, companies, and governments of different nations, a process driven by international trade and investment and aided by information technology. This process has effects on the environment, on culture, on political systems, on economic development and prosperity, and on human physical well-being in societies around the world. 

 

The goal of globalization is to provide organizations with a competitive advantage through lower operating costs and the gain of greater numbers of products, services and consumers. 

Globalization’ is the process of corporate structuring that focuses a company’s core competency on a single worldwide market, creating growth and profit opportunities [...] It affects employees, customers, and suppliers. The fundamental precepts of the vision are free flow of commerce, labor and capital, and belief in the ability of an individual to significantly and favorably impact larger social and economic systems. 

APA (American Psychological Assoc.)
Held, D. (2004). A Globalizing World? : Culture, Economics, Politics. London: Routledge.

MLA (Modern Language Assoc.)
Held, David. A Globalizing World? : Culture, Economics, Politics. vol. 2nd ed, Routledge, 2004. Introduction to the Social Sciences. EBSCOhost.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/globalization.asp
http://www.globalization101.org/what-is-globalization/

Globalization and its discontents in the Mena Region (Middle East and North Africa Region )

 The great wave of globalization that welled up as the Cold War was ending and peaked with the 2008-09 global nancial crisis 

has, after a brief recovery, been steadily ebbing away. Between 1985 and 2011, global trade grew at an annual average
 rate of almost 6 percent, almost twice
 the annual rate of global GDP growth of 3.1 percent. The rapid expansion of trade in goods and services, made possible by technological innovations such as contain- erization and the Internet, and a favorable global political environment, were the principal drivers of that rapid economic growth. Since 2011, annual global trade has grown less than GDP: 2-3 percent.1 Stagnation in global trade, as symbolized by the nal breakdown of the Doha Round of WTO negotiations in December 2015, has acted as a brake on world economic growth, and IMF forecasts do not antici- pate a reversal any time soon. Regional trade blocs are proliferating, while the global nancial infrastructure erected in the wake of World War II is facing in- creased pressure from emerging countries and even open competition from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank initiated by © 2016, The Author 

China. Revanchist anti-globalization politi- cal forces are gathering strength in both the United States and Europe. A previous wave of globalization commenced with the rise of steam navigation and the telegraph in the 1870s and dramatically ended with the outbreak of World War I. It was not followed by another wave until the 1980s, suggesting that globalization crests have been intermittent, unpredictable, driven by the world’s political context and punctu- ated with extended periods of stagnat 

Springborg, Robert, 2016. Globalization and its discontents in the Mena ReGion. Globalization and its discontents in the Mena ReGion, [Online]. Vol 2, 160. Available at: http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=1d9828ae-24ac-4416-95f2-6b19a160a551%40sessionmgr4006 [Accessed 23 January 2018].

 

*Dr. Springborg is a visiting professor in the Department of War Studies, King’s College, London, and a research fellow at the Italian Institute of International Affairs. 

Globalisation describes a process by which national and regional economies, societies, and cultures have become integrated through the global network of trade, communication, immigration and transportation.

lexicon.ft.com/term?term=globalisation