ABSTRACT
The terms “globalization” and “human rights” enculate two of the most prominent areas of concern across a wide terrain of disciplines and perspectives in the social sciences and the humanities. The term “globalization” generally refers to the expansion of global capitalism, a process which began with the imperial expansion of Europe, accelerated with the Industrial Revolution, and developed in the twentieth century in a variety of new forms, such as the transnational corporation. At the most basic level, one might speak of globalization as the increasing diffusion of what Max Weber called instrumental rationality, both in terms of degree and intensity, across time and space into virtually every geographical area on the planet. Yet the exact nature of this process and its effects are highly contested, with some seeing globalization as an expansion of freedom and opportunity (Bhagwati, 2004) and others seeing it as an intensification of the more negative aspects of capitalism first diagnosed by Marx and intensified in the process capitalist expansion (Falk, 1999; Harvey, 2006). In general, it would be safe to say that globalization is almost always considered in terms of its human outcomes, that it is to say, its effects on human agency, and, in particular, on the well-being of human beings as they experience globalization.
