What Is Globalization?

Globalization is the increasing interconnection of people and places as a result of advances in transport, communication, and information technologies that causes political, economic, and cultural convergence. It should not be narrowly confused with economic globalization, which is only one aspect. While some scholars and observers of globalization stress convergence of patterns of production and consumption and a resulting homogenization of culture, power, stress,and hunger, others stress that globalization has the potential to take many diverse forms. In economics, globalization is the convergence of prices, products, wages, rates of interest and profits. Globalization of the economy depends on the role of human migration, international trade, movement of capital, and integration of financial markets. The International Monetary Fund notes the growing economic interdependence of countries worldwide through increasing volume and variety of cross-border transactions, free international capital flows, and more rapid and widespread diffusion of technology. Theodore Levitt is usually credited with first using the term globalization in an economic context. The word "globalization" can be traced back to 1944[citation needed]. The term has been used by economists since 1981, however its concepts did not permeate popular consciousness until the latter half of the 1990s. Various social scientists have tried to demonstrate continuity between contemporary trends of globalization and earlier periods.[2]. The first era of globalization (in the fullest sense) during the 19th century was the rapid growth of international trade between the European imperial powers, the European colonies, and the United States. After World War II, globalization was restarted and was driven by major advances in technology, which led to lower trading costs.

Globalization is viewed as a centuries long process, tracking the expansion of human population and the growth of civilization, that has accelerated dramatically in the past 50 years. Early forms of globalization existed during the Roman Empire, the Parthian empire, and the Han Dynasty, when the silk road started in China, reached the boundaries of the Parthian empire, and continued onwards towards Rome. The Islamic Golden Age is also an example, when Muslim traders and explorers established an early global economy across the Old World resulting in a globalization of crops, trade, knowledge and technology; and later