The Blackwell Companion to Globalization

Chapter 5

Globalization Today

JOHN BOLI AND VELINA PETROVA

Globalization signifies becoming global or worldwide. Expanding on Roland Robertson’s well-known framework, globalization entails conceiving the world as a single social space – for example, an all-encompassing world society, polity, culture or economy. It is evident in the ‘making global’, or ‘universalization’ (Boli and Thomas 1999), of social entities, organizations, authority structures, knowledge and accounting systems, news and entertainment media and so on. Globalization thus entails the making global of such elemental social entities as the individual, the corporation, the state and nature. It entails the construction of globe-spanning authority (global governance) in the form of international governmental organizations (IGOs) and international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). It signifies the development and worldwide propagation of scientific principles, research methods, engineering techniques and management methods that are presumed to be useful everywhere. Globalization also involves universalization in the moral domain – the ‘making global’ of principles of sacred value, equality and propriety that define an ever-expanding array of rights and obligations of globalizing entities.

The presumptuousness of this chapter’s assignment – to review the essentials of globalization today – cannot be overstated. Begging indulgence for our necessary selectivity and the many points of contention that cannot be addressed, ...