ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the impact of globalisation on communities and indicates how understanding the forces that play upon them can help to address better the needs of disadvantaged and marginalised communities that are themselves the product of globalising changes at the level of the locality. Globalisation has redefined communities, changed boundaries, fused cultures and altered social relations within and between communities to create players with access to markets and choice, and non-players who are excluded. Whether based on geography, interest or identity, communities have been subjected to the pressures of globalisation in contradictory processes of interdependence; integration and fragmentation; homogeneity and diversity to become globalising communities in context-specific locales. Globalisation as a system of domination entails capitalist social relations penetrating all aspects of everyday existence. In it, the state, for-profit sector and civil society including the voluntary sector each play a role in facilitating market-oriented service provisions.
