ABSTRACT
A substantial proportion of the phenomena that people usually associate with globalization involves the spreading of American values, institutions, commodities, media products, and ways of life to other parts of the world. For critics of globalization in particular, the symptoms of a “McWorld” (Barber, 1995) include the ubiquitous presence of such things as McDonald's, Nike, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Hollywood movies, reality TV shows, and more recently Internet applications like YouTube, Google, and Facebook in virtually every corner of the globe. Some people would also include liberal political values and institutions such as democracy, freedom of speech, and the rule of law as exports from the Anglo-American world, even though such people may not agree on whether such values and institutions are truly universal.
