ABSTRACT
In an opening address to nongovernmental organisations before the United Nations Millennium Summit on 6th September 2000, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared: ‘arguing against globalization is like arguing against the laws of gravity’. The subsequent three-day summit meeting brought together over a hundred of the world’s leaders in order to discuss the economic, political and cultural consequences of globalization, which Annan asserted should be ‘an engine that lifts people out of hardship and misery, not a force that holds them down’. Globalization’s potency derives both from its ubiquitous deployment as well as of existing terminology to accurately describe transformations in twenty-first century fiction and culture more widely. This chapter presents prevailing definitions of the term, outlining the socio-cultural and economic systems of integration associated with its usage. Globalization is best understood as a socio-cultural and economic phenomenon which deepens existing forms of exclusion and inequalities of access as much as it activates new patterns of connectivity.
