ABSTRACT
There is nothing new about global trade, upon which imperialism was based, and many of the forces and relations suggested by the word ‘globalisation’ have been around for a long time. However, four significant developments have contributed to the identification of globalisation as a process. First, major corporations have moved from being multinational to transnational, and as such have moved beyond the point at which they can be easily controlled by individual nation states. Second, deregulation has fostered a much greater international division of labour in which production can more readily be relocated wherever wage rates are low, legal protection for workers is minimal, and unions are weak or, even better, illegal. Third, a postmodern consumer culture has produced a market for branded goods that tend to have a high profit margin. Fourth, an unprecedented global mobility of people during the twentieth century has had an impact on the reconstruction of markets around the cultures that have emerged from diasporas and hybridities.
