If hand mill gives us the society of feudal lord and steam-mill gives us the society with industrial lord… then microchips gives us the society with global capitalists. Thus, revolutionary changes in the information technology have led contemporary capitalism to enter into a new stage globalization. It is a holistic process that has impact in all spheres of social relations. The molding effect of computerization in social processes has unified the world into "one world". Economic relations have transcended the national boundaries. The power of nation state has been eroded by various transnational organizations. Culturally, globalists hold, mankind has become denizens of an integrated habitat – "the global village" where both the rich and poor will have opportunity to share the resources of the world. This has made the struggle for socialism or any alternative to capitalism irrelevant. Capitalism has triumphed in that sense – be a part of it, because that is the reality. 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 critically examines the development of the concept of globalization, different dimensions of its processes and different debates centering around it. The notion of globalization has so much impact that one will find here some left join with right in an unprecedented historical alliance. The disputes are yet to be settled. But this study will enable the reader to have a clearer understanding of globalization i.e. today’s world capitalism. This book will serve as a valuable guide to students of social sciences as well as to activists struggling for a better world order.
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