ABSTRACT
One of the crucial issues in current debates about globalization is the question of whether and to what extent the ever-widening expansion of transnational relations and interactions are so new that it allows us to speak of a radically new era. McGrew (1998, pp. 325-326) has called this one of the ‘intellectual faultlines in the globalization debate’. While the sceptics point to historically earlier transnational flows of people, goods, cultural and institutional forms and conclude that one cannot speak of a really dramatic change, the hyperglobalists assume that we currently deal with an unprecedented expansion of global interconnectedness in most fields of economic, social, cultural and political organization. As Held et al. (1999, pp. 15-18) have argued, there is little to be won by taking such polar positions, and any assessment of current processes has to be done in terms of historical continuity and change that permit a more differentiated analysis of the similarities and differences of historically earlier and contemporary processes of globalization.1 Globalization, thus, is a matter of degree in different dimensions, the extensity, intensity, velocity and impact of transregional and continental flows and networks. Such a general approach helps us to appreciate both past and present and to avoid falling into the traps of the stereotypes that Tsing has in mind.
