Trying to define globalization is like trying to pick up mercury with chopsticks—it’s a slippery and complex concept. It’s a highly charged term that evokes a wide range of opinions and emotions. As you might guess, the picture is more complex than either of these positions suggests.

it’s important to recognize that globalization in not a thing; that is, it is not a structure or a condition with a stable set of characteristics that can be enumerated one by one. It is much too fluid and dynamic a process to be characterized in this way. Globalization has compressed the world through communication technologies and speed of travel, and as a result, our consciousness of other places and our place in the world as a whole has intensified.

Advocates of globalization argue that the creation of an increasingly universal and homogeneous world with shared economic interests and values leads to a more stable and cosmopolitan global society. Yet critics of globalization argue that it is an all-consuming force that destroys unique, indigenous cultures and erases difference. Globalization also increases the gulf between the haves and the have-nots.