Many see it as a primarily economic phenomenon, involving the increasing interaction, or integration, of national economic systems through the growth in international trade, investment and capital flows.
However, one can also point to a rapid increase in cross-border social, cultural and technological exchange as part of the phenomenon of globalization.
The sociologist, Anthony Glidden's, defines globalization as a decoupling of space and time, emphasizing that with instantaneous communications, knowledge and culture can be shared around the world simultaneity critics of globalization define the word quite differently, presenting it as worldwide drive toward a globalize economic system dominated by supranational corporate trade and banking institutions that are not accountable to democratic processes or national governments.
Globalization is an undeniably capitalist process. It has taken off as a concept in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and of socialism as a viable alternate form of economic organization.
Try this: Globalization is the rapid increase in cross-border economic, social, technological exchange under conditions of capitalism.
Simon Reich also explores this question in a working paper for the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
Eusol. It attempts to characterize globalization, and its effects on poverty, the environment, gender, culture, and political structure and dynamics.
David Held and Anthony McGrew write in their entry for Oxford Companion to Politics that globalization can be conceived as a process (or set of processes) which embodies a transformation in the spatial organization of social relations and transactions, expressed in transcontinental or interregional flows and networks of activity, interaction and power.
When did globalizations begin?.
There is no agreed starting point, but understanding of globalization is helped by considering the following.