Signs of globalization
Although globalization has touched almost every person and locale in today’s world, the trend has spread unevenly. It is most concentrated among propertied and professional classes, in the North (industrialized nations), in towns (urban areas), and among younger generations.
Globalization has not displaced deeper social structures in relation to production (capitalism), governance (the state and bureaucratism more generally), community (the notion and communitarianism more generally), and knowledge (rationalism). But, globalization has prompted important changes to certain attributes of capital, the state, the nation, and modern rationality.
Contemporary globalization has had some important positive consequences with respect to cultural regeneration, communications, decentralization of power, economic efficiency, and the range of available products.
But state government policies (pro-market) toward globalization have had many negative consequences in regard to increased ecological degradation, persistent poverty, worsened working conditions, various cultural violence, widened arbitrary inequalities, and deepened democratic deficits.
As such, globalization has become identified with a number of trends, most of which may have developed since World War II. These include greater international movement of commodities, money, information, and people; and the development of technology, organizations, legal systems, and infrastructures to allow this movement. The actual existence of some of these trends is debated.