ABSTRACT
Although everyone agrees that ‘globalization’ is a helpful category, there is considerable disagreement about its precise meaning. Many commentators, while conceding an economic aspect to globalization, want to see it defined much more broadly. So Roland Robertson, for example, writes:
For present purposes, globalization may be defined simply as the compression of the world. This notion of compression refers both to increasing sociocultural density and to rapidly expanding consciousness. Globalization itself has been a long term process extending over many centuries, although only in recent centuries has it, with increasing rapidity, assumed a particular, discernible form.
