ABSTRACT
Globalization can be understood as a multi-dimensional, complex process of profound transformations in all spheres-technological, economic, political, social, cultural, intimate and personal. It has been variously conceived as time-space compression (referring to the way that instantaneous electronic communication erodes the constraints of distance and time on social organization and interaction); accelerating interconnectedness (understood as the intensifi cation of worldwide social relations and consciousness of world society); action at a distance (whereby the actions of social agents in one locale can come to have signifi cant consequences for “distant others”). Globalization thus suggests the expanding scale, speeding up and deepening impact of interregional fl ows and patterns of social interaction (Held and McGrew 2003). It has been infl uenced above all by developments in systems of communication (Giddens 1999: 10); there is no globalization without communications media. Contemporary individuals, subject to an extraordinary diversity of information and communication, can be infl uenced by images, concepts and lifestyles from well beyond their immediate locales. Globalization affects the basic identities of individuals who now live with a partial and precarious integration of the multiple dimensions of cultural referents (Castells 1997). And it is said, “its existence alters the very texture of our lives, rich and poor alike” (Giddens 1999: 11).
