ABSTRACT
After briefly summarizing regional developments and events between 2000 and 2021, and their comparative implications, the chapter focuses on three kinds of global trends. First, trends that accelerated earlier patterns, particularly growing global prosperity (despite key problems) and consumerism. Second, trends that in some ways continued, or at least had clear 20th-century precedents, but with some newer implications: new objections to globalization, rising authoritarianism, new problems with and for immigrants, changes in the global balance of power. Finally, three newer trends, involving less clear prospects, round out the picture: the varied implications of the turn to social media; the growing ageing of the global population; and the more visible, and intensifying, impact of environmental change; a separate insert also takes up the 2020 pandemic.
