Defining globalisation
Globalisation has become a buzz-word, yet there are widely differing conceptions of what it means. Part of the problem is that those who use the word seldom bother to define it. Prima facie, it would appear that a globalised world is one in which there are no barriers (other than purely natural and technological ones) to the movement of people, products, money and ideas around the world. But globalisation in this very general sense pre-dates capitalism and the formation of nation-states. Clearly, this is not the subject of current debates about globalisation, although it is not irrelevant to them. It is presumably in order to clarify this point that various adjectives are used to qualify ‘globalisation’, such as ‘capitalist’, ‘imperialist’ and ‘neoliberal’. However this creates new problems, because these adjectives have their own meanings. When they are combined with ‘globalisation’, where do these meanings end and the meaning of globalisation begin?