Some definitions of 'globalisation'

I prefer to use the term integration, because it is more precise than globalization. Economic integration occurs when countries lower barriers such as import tariffs and open themselves up to investment and trade with the rest of the world.
» David Dollar, the World Bank's director of Development Policy ,

Globalization aims at improving the whole world by the countries' helping each other. It means the countries' cooperation in trade and policy, which goes with the meeting and mixing of different cultures. The United States itself is a product of the 17th and 18th century globalization. As the world's lone superpower, the United States is often viewed as the driving force behind globalization. But globalization is not as American phenomena many people assume that it is.

At a top political and economic level , globalization is the process of denationalization of markets, politics and legal systems, i.e., the rise of the so-called global economy. The consequences of this political and economic restructuring on local economies, human welfare and environment are the subject of an open debate among international organizations, governmental institutions and the academic world.

At a business level, we talk of globalization when companies decide to take part in the emerging global economy and establish themselves in foreign markets. First they will adapt their products or services to the final user's linguistic and cultural requirements. Then, they might take advantage of the Internet revolution and establish a virtual presence on the international marketplace with a multilingual corporate web site or even as an e-business.


In the context of this portal, globalization is the process of adapting software applications and web sites, so that they are linguistically and functionally suitable for use in more than one country. Overall, globalization requires a combination of linguistic, engineering and marketing knowledge that is not easily available.
» Salamon Eszter, March, 2003, Stud U Szeged

Covering a wide range of distinct political, economic, and cultural trends, the term "globalization" has quickly become one of the most fashionable buzzwords of contemporary political and academic debate.

In popular discourse, globalization often functions as little more than a synonym for one or more of the following phenomena: the pursuit of classical liberal (or "free market") policies in the world economy ("economic liberalization"), the growing dominance of western (or even American) forms of political, economic, and cultural life ("westernization" or "Americanization"), the proliferation of new information technologies (the "Internet Revolution"), as well as the notion that humanity stands at the threshold of realizing one single unified community in which major sources of social conflict have vanished ("global integration").

Fortunately, recent social theory has formulated a more precise concept of globalization than those typically offered by pundits. Although sharp differences continue to separate participants in the ongoing debate, most contemporary social theorists endorse the view that globalization refers to fundamental changes in the spatial and temporal contours of social existence, according to which the significance of space or territory undergoes shifts in the face of a no less dramatic acceleration in the temporal structure of crucial forms of human activity.

Geographical distance is typically measured in time. As the time necessary to connect distinct geographical locations is reduced, distance or space undergoes compression or "annihilation." The human experience of space is intimately connected to the temporal structure of those activities by means of which we experience space.


Changes in the temporality of human activity inevitably generate altered experiences of space or territory. Theorists of globalization disagree about the precise sources of recent shifts in the spatial and temporal contours of human life. Nonetheless, they generally agree that alterations in humanity's experiences of space and time are working to undermine the importance of local and even national boundaries in many arenas of human endeavor.

Since globalization contains far-reaching implications for virtually every facet of human life, it necessarily suggests the need to rethink key questions of normative political theory
» Stanford University

A short definition of globalization is "the growing liberalization of international trade and investment, and the resulting increase in the integration of national economies." Economist David Henderson of the Melbourne Business School expands the definition into five related but distinct parts:  

• The increasing tendency for firms to think, plan, operate, and invest for the future with reference to markets and opportunities across the world as a whole;
• The growing ease and cheapness of international communications, with the Internet the leading aspect;
• The trend toward closer international economic integration, resulting in the diminished importance of political boundaries. This trend is fueled partly by the first two trends, but even more powerfully by official policies aimed at trade and investment liberalization;
• The apparently growing significance of issues and problems extending beyond national boundaries and the resulting impetus to deal with them through some form of internationally concerted action; and
• The tendency toward uniformity (or "harmonization"), by which norms, standards, rules, and practices are defined and enforced with respect to regions, or the world as a whole, rather than within the bounds of nation-states.
» ethailand

Globalization The process of exploiting economically weak countries by connecting the economies of the world, forcing dependence on (and ultimately servitude to) the western capitalist machine Anti-Globalization A grassroots movement to counter the trend of globalization and its harmful effects, and to reform unbridled capitalism.
» anti-marketing.com

Globalisation is a process of increasing interconnectedness of individuals, groups, companies and countries.
» CAFOD

'Globalisation can be defined as the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa.'
» Giddens, A, NYA

What is Globalisation?

Globalisation' has become one of the most contentious issues in contemporary political discourse. Not only has different meanings been ascribed to the phenomenon generally referred to as 'globalisation' it has become one of the most widely used but imprecise terms in political and economic debates.

According to Held, et al (1999), globalisation can be defined as 'a widening, deepening and speeding up of world-wide interconnections in all aspects of life'. To some, the concept of globalisation means a single condition or end state with fully integrated global market; to others it means a process with no single fixed or determinate historical goal.

Some scholars also consider globalistaion as a highly differentiated process found in all areas of social activity; political, military, legal, ecological and criminal.
» Derby University