Globalization and Anti-Globalization: A Critique of Contempary Capitalism and its Counter Trends

The opponents, however, contend that the above globalist version of reality is an exaggeration. It basically packages the ideology of neoliberals in order to present capitalism in a positive light. Capitalism, they hold, has always been a global process. Technology has, no doubt, speeded up the processes of expansion. But it has not brought about any qualitative change in the world economy. State, the imperial state, is still the predominant actor. Our world is still divided between the poor and rich. World Wide Web cannot automatically connect the gap created by social injustice. Reality, on the contrary, shows a statistical correlation between capitalist expansion and increasing world poverty, war and environmental destruction. Capitalism is not the end of history. It has its own contradictions reflected in the increasing cycles of mass movement against globalization around the world. This book is a systematic study of globalization from the sociological perspective. Putting in historical context, it critical examines the development of the concept of globalization, different dimensions of its processes and different debates centering around it.