La Vida

GLOBALIZATION
Globalization (or Globalisation) refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people, and economic activity. It is generally used to refer to economic globalization: theglobal distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import quotes. Globalization contributes toeconomic growth in developed and developing countries through increased specialization and the principle of comparative advantage. The term can also refer to the transnational circulation of ideas,languages, and popular culture.
Critics of globalization allege that globalization's benefits have been overstated and its costs underestimated. Critics argue that it has decreased inter-cultural contactwhile increasing the possibility of international and intra-national conflict
Covering a wide range of distinct political, economic, and cultural trends, the term “globalization” has quickly become oneof the most fashionable buzzwords of contemporary political and academic debate. In popular discourse, globalization often functions as little more than a synonym for one or more of the followingphenomena: the pursuit of classical liberal (or “free market”) policies in the world economy (“economic liberalization”), the growing dominance of western (or even American) forms of political, economic,and cultural life (“westernization” or“Americanization”), the proliferation of new information technologies (the “Internet Revolution”), as well as the notion that humanity stands at the threshold ofrealizing one single unified community in which major sources of social conflict have vanished (“global integration”). Fortunately, recent social theory has formulated a more precise concept ofglobalization than those typically offered by pundits. Although sharp differences continue to separate participants in the ongoing debate, most contemporary social theorists endorse the view that...