Globalization and cultural choice

When historians write of the world’s recent history, they are likely to reflect on two trends: the advance of globalization and the spread of democracy. Globalization has been the more contentious, because it has effects both good and bad, and democracy has opened space for people to protest the bad effects. So, controversies rage over the environmental, economic and social consequences of globalization. But there is another domain of globalization, that of culture and identity, which is just as controversial and even more divisive because it engages ordinary people, not just economists, government officials and political activists.

Related Subject(s): Economic and Social Development