1. Globalization A contested phenomenon
Political, economic, social, cultural, historical dimensions

2. Historical background
The Roman empire
The Middle Ages
Pre-WWI period

3. In search of a consensus
Idealist approach: identity, ideology, invention as some of the chief causes
Resulting theories: social constructivism, postmodernism, postcolonialism

4. Still searching
Materialist approach: production, technology, laws, institutions
Theories: liberalism, political realism, social ecology

5. Further methodological approaches
Individualist vs structuralist understanding of globalization
Social actors (businesspeople,officials, politicians) decisive?
Social forces/social order (capitalism, state systems, nationalism) decisive?

6. Knowledge Objectivist position: (politically) neutral knowledge
Subjectivist position: knowledge emanating from the experience of the researcher
Scholte attempts to reach a compromise in all of the above cases

7. Analytical Framework
These preliminary reflections provide a necessary set of starting premises leading to a series of attempts at defining globalization

8. Definitions Circulation of people, goods, capital, ideas
Accepting the vagueness of the concept?

9. (Failed) attempts at defining globalization: Internationalization
- mainly transactions between states
- border-crossing activities: global same as international? Continuity?

10. Liberalization
- removing constraints; abolishing regulatory movements;
Critics: increasing poverty, inequality, ecological damage;
- anti-globalization movement opposing neoliberalism

11. Universalization
- spreading products, experiences, ideas, values round the world
Resulting in standardization, homogenization
- earlier instances? ”global prehistory”; world religions; transoceanic trade

12. Westernization
Universalization on Western terms: interpreted as colonization, Americanization
Modernization
Counter-examples: Buddhist/Confucian/Islamist globalizations

13. A fifth attempt
Globalization referring to a ”shift in the nature of social space”
Globalization as ”growing transplanetary connectivity”

14. New features
Transplanetary connectivity leading to supraterritoriality (transnational instead of international dimension)
”transworld simultaneity/instantaneity” (3000 cups of Nescafé supposedly being drunk round the planet every second)
Reconfiguration of space

15. The changing nature of territorialism
Methodological territorialism: economics, politics, literature being perceived in terms of national-territorial frameworks
Non-territorialist premises
Post-territorialist premises

16. Examples of globality
Fields
Activities
Inadvertent effects

17. Opposites coexisting
Territorial social space not excluding supraterritorial social space
The local not excluding the global (and the other way round)
Social space: ”an interrelation of spheres within a whole”.

18. Multiple globalizations
Competing (political) interests and values
Understanding globalization ”as a respatialization of social life”