Man has come a long way since the very first idea of philosophy and radical thought that Thales’s approach brought to existence and notice. The world of today is that of a social mutter, development and endless connections. Globalization, a term that is held responsible for this change, itself faced a long series of debates on its very existence and continues to deal with the same. However, to look at a much broader sense of this term in its present status that is so much more a product of the past, we need to look at the perspectives that adhered to the term.

 As of today, the term is commonly discussed in two basic senses:

  • The narrow sense
  • The broader sense

Though the terms sound judgemental of the critics and historians, the purpose has solely been to divide the two meanings for a better understanding. The narrower sense of globalization became popular in the USA at the time of the Soviet collapse. This was the time when the United States had emerged as the only superior world power. Though, the argument would make no sense if it were placed in a contemporary sense given the perspective that China would be at the rather centre, this apparent trend towards the global spread of market-oriented economics and democratic politics convinced many that the western political and economic systems and values were universally valid.

Hence, given this perspective, globalization would mean the global spread of ‘western principles’. There were many obvious reactions against this understanding of the term which resulted in significant ‘anti-globalization’ movements around the world. However, many historians debate in the favour of the trend, stating that the sense came out as such due to the failure of some civilizations to adapt to modernity. 

The broader sense:

By the 1990s, many observers were impressed by the growth of ‘global disorder’ as termed by Carter and Rothney, in a sense that there was an establishment of individuality among nations to stand against the imposition of western ideas and principles. The global revolution that terminated the 20th century could be looked at as a space-time compression. This broader sense looks at the acceleration of change, particularly technological change, and the accompanying reduction in distance to the point where ‘global’ could be experienced anywhere and everywhere.

Some processes of this broader sense of globalization were cultural in nature, like religious activism, while others were fundamentally material, such as the consumer democratization. It was the other globalizing forces like technology and internet that combined the cultural and the material altogether. Globalization in this sense can, hence, can be visualized as a result of a number of terms flowing around the world.

Huge material interests came to shape globalizing phenomena and how they are perceived in different areas of the world. With its global redit flows, changeable transitional division of labour and widened development gaps, the contemporary world economy combines integration and spatial dispersion in ways that defy these theorists but have equally created huge profits and losses for humans.

Looking at the aspects that have shaped the broader sense of globalization, we can conclude that human history has come a long way. However, to say that this aspect is the key concept that runs the world of today would be a foolish argument. In fact, if at all, globalization is said to have contributed to the growing terrorism, religious conflicts, misshaped identity politics and most essentially, the grave climate change and destruction of nature that has today led to the death of millions.

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