Introduction

This book examines the implications of globalisation upon social relations.

Although a widely used contemporary term, ‘globalisation’ remains largely undelimited and unspecified. As such, anxiety accompanies efforts to con-

ceive its meaning. At a general level it may be agreed that globalisation is an

outcome, or an artefact, of rapid change upon boundaries of social, tech-

nological, political and economic arena that seemed previously to be less

permeable. That said, although an increasing number of scholars have

sought to pin down globalisation by specification, in my view they have met

with limited success. ‘Globalisation’ seems unwilling to be packaged. The

more interesting analytical problem, rather, is ‘globalisation’s’ ubiquitous yet hazy explanatory usage by actors within myriad contemporary contexts.

Thus, while this study explores an unambiguously globalised site in con-

siderable ethnographic detail, as a methodological strategy it purposefully

allows ‘globalisation’ its evasive and open-ended quality. My ethnographic

emphasis is not upon what scholars have said about ‘globalisation’, then,

but how persons caught up in it, as we all are, make sense of their con-

temporary experience.