Globalization involves the diffusion of ideas, practices and technologies. It is something more than internationalization and universalization. It isn’t simply modernization or westernization. It is certainly isn’t just the liberalization of markets. Anthony Giddens (1990: 64) has described globalization as ‘the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away". As well as offering opportunity it brings with considerable risks linked, for example, to technological change.

Many of the activities that previously involved face-to-face interaction, or that were local, are now conducted across great distances. There has been a significant de-localization in social and economic exchanges. Activities and relationships have been uprooted from local origins and cultures. One important element in this has been the separation of work from the home. But de-localization goes well beyond this. Increasingly people have to deal with distant systems in order that they may live their lives. Banking and retailing, for example, have adopted new technologies that involve people in less face-to-face interaction. Our contact at the bank is in a call centre many miles away;
When we buy goods on the internet the only person we might speak to is the delivery driver. The ‘spaces’ we inhabit when using the internet to buy things or to communicate can allow us to develop a rather different sense of place and of the community to which we belong.
Not everything is global, of course. Most employment, for example, is local or regional – but ‘strategically crucial activities and economic factors are networked around a globalized system of inputs and outputs’. What happens in local neighbourhoods is increasingly influenced by the activities of people and systems operating many miles