ABSTRACT
The year 1989 did not mark the end of history, but it did initiate a new phase in relations between states and peoples. The term globalisation has become the label for this work-in-progress. But it is an exceedingly slippery term. Globalisation is used descriptively as an umbrella word to link a variety of otherwise unconnected developments, and also evaluatively to indicate an attitude or orientation towards these developments. The term globalisation is ubiquitous in political rhetoric. Politicians invoke it as the cause of insoluble problems or the reason for unavoidable changes. For scholars and activists, it functions variously as a problematic analytical construct or as a value-laden ideology. For some, it is the new guise of Orientalism, for others a code for the pursuit of American or Western self-interest, and for still others, the royal road to economic prosperity, democracy and freedom.
