Is Sustainable Development Possible in a Globalized World? Available to Purchase

Globalization, says a recent study, “is in danger of becoming, if it has not already become, the cliche of our times: the big idea which encompasses everything from global financial markets to the Internet but which delivers little substantive insight into the contemporary human condition.” That study, although lamenting that globalization “lacks precise definition,” nevertheless defines it as “a process (or set of processes) which embodies a transformation in the spatial organization of social relations and transactions — assessed in terms of their extensity, intensity, velocity and impact — generating transcontinental or interregional flows and networks of activity, interaction, and the exercise of power.” Public debates on globalization often generate more political heat than analytical light; yet we cannot avoid studying globalization for, as the Finnish scholar Raimo Väyrynen notes, “it is an important, pervasive historical trend whose consequences will be accentuated in the new millennium.”