Modernity is inherently globalising-this is evident in some of the most basic characteristics of modern institutions, including particularly their disembeddedness and reflexivity.
The Globalizing of Modernity
Globalisation refers essentially to that stretching process, in so far as the modes of connection between different social contexts or regions become networked across the earth’s surface as a whole.
Anthony Giddens – Globalization
Globalization is in danger of becoming, if it has not already become, the cliché of our times: the big idea which encompasses everything from global financial markets to the Internet but which delivers little substantive insight into the contemporary human condition.
David Held on Globalization
Having been borne across the world, we are translated men. It is normally supposed that something gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately, to the notion that something can also be gained.
Roots & Translation
The wealth of a common global culture will then be expressed in the particularities of our different languages and cultures very much like a universal garden of many-coloured flowers. The "flowerness" of the different flowers is expressed in their very diversity. But there is cross-fertilisation between them. And what is more, they all contain in themselves the seeds of a new tomorrow
A New Tomorrow
Globalization is in danger of becoming, if it has not already become, the cliché of our times: the big idea which encompasses everything from global financial markets to the Internet but which delivers little substantive insight into the contemporary human condition
Globalization
He loses his place, he enters into an alien language, and he finds himself surrounded by beings whose behaviour and codes are very unlike, and sometimes even offensive to, his own. And this is what makes migrants such important figures: because roots, language and social norms have been three of the most important parts of the definition of what it is to be a human being. The migrant, denied all three, is obliged to find new ways of describing himself, new ways of being human
Triple disruption that a migrant suffers
During the 1990s the convergence of global deregulation of finance and the availability of new information technologies and new management techniques transformed the nature of capital markets. For the first time in history, a unified global capital market, working in real time, has emerged.The explanation, and the real issue, of the phenomenal volume of trans-border financial flows . . . lies in the speed of the transactions. The same capital is shuttled back and forth between economies in a matter of hours, minutes, and sometimes seconds.
Castells on information technologies
Because of the great increase in the traffic in culture, the large-scale transfer of meaning in systems and symbolic forms, the world is increasingly becoming one not only in political and economic terms, as in the climactic period of colonialism, but in terms of its cultural construction as well, a global ecumene of persistent cultural interaction and exchange.
Hannerz on Culture
The twentieth century has been a unique period in world cultural history. Humankind has finally bid farewell to that world which could with some credibility be seen as a cultural mosaic of separate pieces with hard, well-defined edges.
Globalisation and cultural interaction
Every person now must, and can, ask: Where do I as an individual fit into the global competition and opportunities of the day, and how can I, on my own, collaborate with others globally?
Global competition
The fact that different people know different things: workers know more about their ability than does the firm; the person buying insurance knows more about his health, whether he smokes and drinks immoderately, than the insurance firm; the owner of a car knows more about the car than potential buyers; the owner of a firm knows more about the firm than a potential investor; the borrower knows more about his risk and risk taking than the lender
Information asymmetry
The are things you just can´t do in life. You can´t beat the phone company, you can´t make a waiter see until he´s ready to see you, and you can´t go home again
Things you can’t do in life
As might be expected, the shining face of the global economy wears its brightest smile in the show windows of the media owned and operated by the same oligarchy that owns and operates the banks. The accompanying press releases predict limitless good news in the world joyfully blessed by open markets, convertible currencies and free trade. The financial magazines make no attempt to quiet their emotions or restrain the breathless tenor of their prose. Behold, men of genius and resolve
