Leslie Sklair: The Implications Of Globalization

Globalization has become a favourite catchphrase of everyone; journalists, economists, politicians, environmentalists, lawyers, and even farmers. But what people mean by 'globalization ' is often confused and confusing. Scholte notes that “in spite of publications on the subject, our analyses of globalization tend to remain conceptually inexact, empirically thin, historically and culturally illiterate, normatively shallow and politically naïve. Although globalization is widely assumed to be crucially important, we generally have scant idea what, more precisely, it entails”. This is associated with ‘globalization’ being a truly multifaceted phenomenon, with implications that encompass not just the economic but also the social, political, cultural

… But, it is not only the notion that we are living in a global village, which is a fantasy. The belief that the whole world is now, largely, one huge global free market is an illusion.’’ According to Leslie Sklair, the globalization literature is confused because not all those who use the term distinguish it clearly enough from internationalization. He argues that although some writers appear to use the two terms interchangeably, a clear distinction must be drawn between the international and the

It has been part of the movement of history. Globalization has ensured that the old distinctions between international and domestic policies are becoming increasingly irrelevant.7 Globalization “refers to processes whereby many social relations become relatively delinked from territorial geography, so that human lives are increasingly being played out in the world as a single place”.8 Steve Smith and John Baylis conceive of globalization as “the process of increasing interconnectedness between societies such that events in one part of the world more and more have effects on peoples and societies far away.9 Ramesh B. Karky could not have stated the position better when he said succinctly, “it is hard to get a single definition of globalization.”10 The International Labour Organization defines globalization as a process of growing interdependence between all people of this planet. According to them, people are linked together economically and socially by trade, investments and