The Blackwell Companion to Globalization

Chapter 2

What Is Globalization?

ROLAND ROBERTSON AND KATHLEEN E. WHITE

The question we address in this chapter is both very general and very specific. It is general because it almost inevitably covers a number of disciplinary standpoints as well as worldviews to be found in different parts of the world. It is specific because we are concerned with the demarcation of the distinctive features of what has come to be called globalization. The general sense of the question ‘What is globalization?’ is continuously latent in what follows, whereas specification is much more explicit. Many different topics are included under the rubric of globalization, such as global governance, global citizenship, human rights, migration and the creation of diasporas, transnational connections of various kinds and so on. We are not concerned here with the matter of particular topics within the general frame of what we might loosely call the globalization paradigm.

Notwithstanding our attempt here to produce a definitely systematic way of analysing globalization, it should be strongly emphasized that in a major respect globalization is, in the frequently used phrase, an essentially contested concept. Many books and articles purporting to be talking about globalization indicate at the outset that there is no accepted definition of globalization but that the author or authors are about to provide one. To some degree this phenomenon is a manifestation of the relative newness of this topic on the academic ...