The challenge of globalization

Abstract

This article seeks to place contemporary globalization in its right historical place, in two senses. First, it assumes that globalization, associated with the spread and deepening of capitalism, has a long history. It therefore asks what aspects of contemporary globalization can be considered genuinely new. Second, the article offers a historicized perspective, and draws on Marx, Braudel, Polanyi and world-systems theory to defend a non-economistic interpretation of capitalist globalization. It stresses the need to recognize the social and institutional contextualization of globalization in time and space, but without losing sight of the core principles of marxist analysis.