ABSTRACT
It is often claimed that we are living in the era of globalization. Anthony Giddens (1991) defined the term more than 20 years ago as “the intensification of worldwide social relations [that have linked] distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa” (p. 64). Theorists have debated about the point of origin of globalization, with some seeing it as a relatively recent phenomenon, as a “consequence of modernity,” and others seeing it as having started six centuries ago, coterminous with the emergence of the capitalist world system (Wallerstein, 1999; Waters, 2001). But no matter when the process began, most scholars would agree that increasing global interdependence is a continuing process that speeded up in the last decades of the twentieth century. Today national borders are becoming increasingly porous for the flow of money, commodities, media, technologies, ideas, people, images, and viruses. Our lives are indeed increasingly affected by events happening afar, matters over which we usually have little control and about which we may have little knowledge.
