ABSTRACT
During the last decade of the twentieth century, the concept of globalization became ‘an all-purpose catchword in public and scholarly debate’ (Lechner and Boli 2000:1). It has become the new ‘regime of truth’, ‘imbued with its own rationality and self-fulfilling logic’ (Blackmore 2000:133). Kelly (1999:379) states that at the end of the millennium, the word ‘globalization’ has, together with the ‘millennium’ itself, become ‘the new mantra for our times’. As Robertson and Khondker (1998:32) argue, the term ‘globalization’ is therefore in danger of becoming simply a ‘slogan’ as well as a ‘scapegoat for a wide range of ecological, economic, psychological, medical, political, social and cultural problems’. This is further elaborated by Lechner and Boli:
Government officials could attribute their country’s economic woes to the onslaught of globalization, business leaders justified downsizing of their companies as necessary to prepare for globalization, environmentalists lamented the destructive impact of unrestrained globalization, and advocates for indigenous peoples blamed the threatened disappearance of small cultures on relentless globalization.
