ABSTRACT
The term globalization is loosely dened as the worldwide movement toward economic, nancial, trade, and communications integration. This broader outlook sees the world as an interconnected and interdependent whole. Scholars of globalization today describe the paradox of our contemporary world (e.g. Benyon and Dunkerley 2006). On the one hand, we are witnessing the breaking down of boundaries of time, space, culture, and dierence at a pace that is quite dizzying. As mobile technologies stretch and bend personal and collective communication (see Verne this volume), contact becomes possible at nearly every point in time and space, enabling global economic integration, and unprecedented levels of migration and trade. Discourses and social movements increasingly debate human rights and the social contract at a global level.
