General Introduction

Globalization means different things to different people. To a Korean Pentecostal missionary, it means new opportunities to spread the faith and convert lost souls abroad. To a Dominican immigrant in the United States, it means growing new roots while staying deeply involved in the home village. To an Indian television viewer, it means sampling a variety of new shows, some adapted from foreign formats. To a Chinese apparel worker, it means a chance to escape rural poverty by cutting threads off designer jeans. To an American shoe company executive, it means managing a far-flung supply chain to get products to stores. To a Filipino global justice advocate, it means rules of the global game that favor the rich North over the poor South. For all their diversity, these examples have something in common. They indicate some of the many ways in which more people become more closely connected across larger distances, and grow more aware of their connections as well. "Globalization" captures that process. Of course, new connections entail new risks, as the economic crisis that started in 2007 brought home to many people, when the troubles of Americans unable to pay their mortgages cascaded across the world economy. As the pull-back in trade and investment during that episode showed, connections can be broken, our shared awareness can be put to the test; globalization does not march forward along a smooth path. Caveats aside, however, the record of global change since World War II is quite striking: more people and places have become more interdependent and have organized their new connections in more intricate ways. For all the fault lines it still displays, a new global society, not just a world economy, has been growing all around us. How to guide its growth, how to make it work for most, and how to understand the process are key challenges of the years to come. As a way to help meet those challenges, the selections compiled in this Reader aim to describe and explain the course of globalization and the shape of its outcomes.

What does globalization involve? Globalization refers to the processes by which more people across large distances become connected in more and different ways. They can become connected very simply by doing or experiencing the same sort of thing. For example, Japanese cuisine "globalizes" when more people on different continents enjoy the taste of sushi. Since the nineteenth century soccer has become globalized as players and fans in many countries took an interest in the game. Though many people lack access to good medicine, parents the world over routinely decide to immunize their children against major diseases. These are instances of diffusion: ways of thinking, acting, or feeling spread widely. Such diffusion increased greatly in recent decades as the infrastructure for communication and transportation improved dramatically, connecting groups, institutions, and countries in new ways. The spread of sushi involved not just a shared consumer experience; it also made many American fishermen dependent on a Japanese market as tuna caught off the US coast is sold and shipped overseas. In soccer, the professional prospects of great players from South America depend on the demand from European teams. The health of many children depends on breakthroughs in distant laboratories and an intricate global system for dispensing medication; at the same time, the movement of people around the globe also exposes people to new health risks. For good and ill, such links make more people more interdependent. These links are molded into new organizational forms as regional institutions go global or new ones take shape on the world stage. For example, international law governs who can fish in coastal waters, and the World Trade Organization handles disputes between members, including the United States and Japan. FIFA is an international nongovernmental organization that sets the rules of soccer and organizes major tournaments such as the World Cup. The World Health Organization, as well as more informal networks of professionals and volunteers, organizes campaigns to address major health threats.

Such institutions, which have emerged in many areas of human activity, reflect increasingly common knowledge and awareness. Eating sushi, watching the World Cup, and getting a hepatitis B shot involve elements of world culture - the meaning of sushi, the application of the offside rule, or the reason for immunization are known to consumers, fans, and patients regardless of their location. Even if they do not know the larger structures, their everyday life is nevertheless embedded in a world culture that transcends their village, town, or country, and that becomes part of individual and collective identities. As people become more intricately connected to many others across large distances - not all people to the same extent, of course - the world is becoming a "single place." Globalization thus involves growing diffusion, expanding interdependence, more transnational institutions, and an emerging world culture and consciousness - all aspects of the connectedness at the heart of globalization, all elements of the world society globalization is creating.

Is globalization new? Many scholars point to sixteenth-century Europe as the original source of globalization. After all, the Europeans established worldwide trade connections on their own terms, brought their culture to different regions by settling vast areas, and defined the ways in which different peoples were to interact with each other. Economically and culturally, the modern world system already existed nearly five centuries ago. Others point to the late nineteenth century as a period of intense globalization, when millions migrated, trade greatly expanded, and new norms and organizations came to govern international conduct. At the beginning of the twentieth century, such scholars would stress, the movement of people, goods, and finance across national borders was at least as free and significant as it is today.

We agree that globalization has been happening for a long time. We also agree that specific features of world society have their roots in earlier periods. We add, however, that the second half of the twentieth century was a significant period of globalization in its own right. World War II gave globalization a new impetus. Obscured by Cold War divisions, the transformation of world society in the past seven decades - in terms of linkages, institutions, and culture and consciousness - was nevertheless profound. This Reader includes selections from scholars skeptical of this claim, but it also illustrates by many examples that globalization has entered a new phase.

Is globalization driven by the expanding market? The pursuit of economic opportunity has long sent merchants around the globe, and powerful states have supported their profit-seeking activities. Capitalism knows no bounds, as Marx noted more than a century ago. Marx expected the European economy to become a truly global system, and in many ways it has. In recent years, the integration of financial markets has added a new kind of interdependence. To us, this does not mean that globalization is first and foremost an economic project. While an economic system operating along capitalist lines now encompasses most regions of the world, and economic motives always have been important in creating global linkages, globalization takes place in many spheres for many reasons. The economy may be a driving force in creating global change in some periods, but its effects depend on what happens outside of world markets. To understand the world economy, then, one also needs to understand world society. Accordingly, this Reader presents a comprehensive picture of globalization, covering economic, political, cultural, and experiential dimensions.

Does globalization make the world more homogeneous? This question would seem to answer itself: If certain activities or institutions become global, they must displace existing, locally variable activities and institutions. If there are more global linkages, global institutions, and global values, presumably this means that more people will have more in common. To many critics of globalization, this seemingly neutral description is nefarious. Globalization is the work of the West, they argue. Markets set Western rules for economic activity; one kind of Western state has taken hold around the world; by controlling information flows, Western media companies shape global consciousness; the popular culture of "McWorld" is of mostly Western origin. Globalization thus entails cultural imperialism.

We agree that some things become more similar around the world as globalization proceeds. There is only one World Trade Organization and it enforces one set of trade rules; there is only one kind of bureaucratic state that societies can legitimately adopt. But we do not think this leads to a homogeneous world, for three reasons. First, general rules and models are interpreted in light of local circumstances. Thus, regions respond to similar economic constraints in different ways; countries still have great leeway in structuring their own policies; the same television program means different things to different audiences; McDonald's adapts its menu and marketing to local tastes. Second, growing similarity provokes reactions. Advocates for many cultures seek to protect their heritage or assert their identity. Witness the efforts of fundamentalists to reinstate what they consider orthodoxy, the actions of indigenous peoples to claim their right to cultural survival,...