ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an analysis of group discussions with adolescents in India which demonstrates that global processes have certain effects on the socialisation of young people. As they describe their realms of experience, the interviewed students refer to the simultaneity of global processes and local living environments, also called global' experiences. This illustrates how meaningful globalisation is for them: it is part of their life and not just an abstract concept. Their critical evaluation of social change resulting in a deep distrust of globalisation contradicts the pessimistic and general assumption that the youth naively deals with globalisation-related processes. While in the mid-1980s the term globalisation was mainly used to describe economic changes, it became more and more relevant to anthropology and other social sciences at the beginning of the 1990s. Globalisation rendered engaging with different cultures and global issues a necessity for sociocultural research in international contexts.
