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and speeding up of worldwide interconnectedness in all aspects of contemporary
social life, from the cultural to the criminal, the financial to the spiritual' (1999: 2).
Held et al . recognize the importance of various spatial attributes, suggesting that
globalization can be located on a continuum that includes the local, national and
regional understood as functioning clusters of states, economic relations, networks
and societies. The authors continue: 'Globalization can be taken to refer to those
spatio-temporal processes of change which underpin a transformation in the
organisation of human affairs by linking together and expanding human activity
across regions and continents' (1999: 15).
Without reference to these spatial connections there can be no meaningful
articulation of globalization. This approach implies:
A stretching (extensity) of social political and economic activities across frontiers
such that events, decisions and activities in one region of the world have
significance for individuals and communities in others.
Connections across frontiers are regularized rather than occasional or random
making for an intensification , or growth in magnitude, of interconnectedness,
patterns of interactions and flows which transcend the various societies and
states making up our world.
The growing extensity , intensity and velocity of global interconnectedness relates
to a speeding up of global interactions due to the development of worldwide
systems of transport and communications which increase the speed of the global
diffusion of ideas, goods, information, capital and people.
The local and global are often deeply inter-related so that distant events may
have profound local impacts in other parts of the world and very local develop-
ments may eventually have enormous global consequences. The boundaries
between domestic and global affairs are therefore likely to become blurred.
Many globalization theorists, including most notably Manuel Castells (1996),
frequently reference to:
Flows - the movements of physical artefacts, people, symbols, tokens and
information across space and time.
Networks - regularized or patterned interactions between independent agents,
nodes of activity or sites of power.
To understand globalization it is probably useful to consider issues such as
climate change or transboundary pollution - for example, acid rain or the fall-out
from nuclear disasters such as Chernobyl. Such phenomena do not respect national
boundaries. Desertification, environmental degradation, resource depletion, world
trade, global communication, new media, population movements, the refugee crisis,
crime, war and security issues also rarely stay confined within states or even regional
jurisdictions (Homer-Dixon, 1999; Barnett, 2001). Economic growth, industrial
development and consumerism in countries such as India and China are currently
having massive global impacts, influencing the wider ecological and economic
environment and the everyday life experiences of citizens throughout the world. This
 
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