ABSTRACT
Since at least the second world war, there has been a tendency toward what many commentators have called globalisation. This tendency includes several facets: the integration of production and trade within corporations that operate across national borders (Dicken 2003); increasing flows of capital over boundaries of states (Daly and Logan 1989); increasing salience of a variety of forms of global governance, spanning such diverse arenas as economy, environment, human rights and law (Gill 2003); and a trend to the development of market forms of valuation to replace other ways of organising social life (Hinkson 1996). In effect, globalisation is the tendency for societies in many parts of the world to adopt a common system of valuation: commodities, including labour, are increasingly valued through markets that are themselves becoming more interdependent sectorally and spatially (Webber 2000). This tendency has been uneven in space (it is far less well advanced in Africa than in Europe, for example) and in time.
