For example, in the year 2002, an estimated 1000 journals, articles and books were published discussing globalisation and its various impacts but there was no consensus among any of the pieces of work as to what globalisation actually is. This in fact indicates the diffused and flexible nature of globalisation, meaning that it can be defined to suit anyone's agenda and interests. We see liberal economists, socialists and even environmentalists all defining globalisation to suit their own political and academic agendas and criteria. We could quite easily fill these pages with various definitions of globalisation by individuals such as Joseph Stiglitz, Anthony Giddens, Paul Krugman and Gordon Brown but this would defeat the objective of this article as it would make the article another piece of academic regurgitation rather than dealing with the reality that faces the world today in an era of vulgar capital and finance moving around the world at the press of a button in New York or London. Rather, we will try to define it so that everyone is able to grasp it and understand it based on the reality that encompasses us today. .
Fundamentally, globalisation is about what is happening to the world today in the economic, political and cultural spheres. It is beyond the scope of this article to delve into all the spheres encompassing globalisation, therefore the focus will be on the economic aspect of globalisation often referred to as 'economic globalisation'. This is associated with the flow of goods, commodities, finance and capital from one corner of the world to another. Basically, this means that national economies have developed economic relations that have transcended the nation state and occur at a supranational level, giving rise to the world economy. As a result of economic globalisation, advocates propose that it no longer suffices to refer to goods as being American,.
British or Chinese and no longer appropriate to refer to economies as being German or Canadian but more appropriate to refer to a global economy, in which interdependent and interrelated economic relationships have developed, spearheaded by improvements in transport and telecommunications.