ABSTRACT

Since the “long sixteenth century,” the growth of European mercantilism and the onset of industrial capitalism in Britain, Europe and the Western world (Wallerstein 1976, 1980, 1989), the uneven development and evolution of our world system is replete with episodes of global strategies, global penetrations of local, national and regional systems, and globalizing forces and movements (Amin 1997). Though not without its “nay-Sayers,” who question its contemporary identity (for example, Hirst and Thompson 1999; Sen 2002), today’s era of globalization has been characterized as a “new, informational global economy and new culture” (Castells 1998) and the product of a new “knowledge-based economy” (Thurow 2000). To many, including the authors of this collection, today’s globalization era appears to be globally more comprehensive and interdependent, and fundamental in its restructuring of national economies and societies (Held et al. 1999; Henderson 1999).