ABSTRACT
What is meant here by “globalization”, now such a powerful keyword in the social sciences? McGrew (1992) has produced an ambitious synthesis of the main propositions relating to globalization and the construction of a global society. He points to a set of intersecting elements which together signify that a global society is emerging. In particular, he submits:
1. that the claims of the Enlightenment – proposing that human beings are essentially similar and have similar needs and aspirations – have now been embraced by most political leaders and by democratic movements in most countries;
2. that there is worldwide financial, economic, technological and ecological interdependence;
3. that there is a growing perception, aroused and confirmed by the satellite pictures from space, that “planet earth” is a single place;
4. that with the collapse of the Soviet Union the bifurcation of the world no longer exists. The “Third World” has also disappeared as a coherent category. There is, so to speak, only one world;
5. that goods, capital, knowledge, images, communications, crime, culture, pollutants, drugs, fashions and beliefs all readily flow across territorial boundaries; and
6. that we are “on the rocky road” to “the first global civilization” – a discrete world order with shared values, processes and structures.1
