Every reader will be aware that globalization has been a site of enormous struggle over recent years. Images of ‘anti-globalization’ protests have been flashed across our television screens, beginning with Seattle in 1999. Predictably, mainstream media have often portrayed such protests as violent and anarchistic. There can be no doubt that huge passions have been stirred, but in general we have witnessed the evolution of a peaceful global protest movement (see Plate 1.1). Although this is complex, diverse and incoherent in many respects (see Chapter 5), there can be no doubt that the movement has fulfilled a major purpose in bringing the issue of globalization and its perceived regressive impacts to the attention of the global public. One of the great ironies, as is explored in Chapter 5, is that the movement has used the technologies of globalization, notably the internet, to spread its message. The movement has attracted some unlikely supporters, such as former World Bank chief economist and economics Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, who writes:
[f]ormerly uneventful meetings of obscure technocrats discussing mundane subjects such as concessional loans and trade quotas have now become the scene of raging street battles and huge demonstrations. The protests at the Seattle meeting of the World Trade Organisation in 1999 were a shock. Since then, the movement has grown stronger and the fury