Some people can say that they've opened new world thanks to globalization and, particularly, watching «soap operas», enjoying spending their holidays abroad or eating dishes of foreign cuisine in their own country. But some people protest against globalization and giving defense of local uniqueness, individuality and identity. So what is globalization and how does it influence our life?
Globalization is the process of transformation of local or regional phenomena into global ones. It can be described as a process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and function together.
This process is a combination of economic, technological, cultural and political forces. Globalization is often used to refer to economic globalization, that is, integration of national economies into the international economy through trade, foreign direct investment, capital flows, migration, and the spread of technology.
The term "globalization" has been used by economists since the 1980s although it was used in social sciences in the 1960s; however, its concepts did not become popular until the latter half of the 1980s and 1990s. Globalization is viewed as a century’s long process, tracking the expansion of human population and the growth of civilization that has accelerated dramatically in the past 50 years. Globalization, since World War II, is largely the result of planning by politicians to breakdown borders hampering trade to increase prosperity and interdependence thereby decreasing the chance of future war. Their work led to the Bretton Woods conference, an agreement by the world's leading politicians to lay down the framework for international commerce and finance, and the founding of several international institutions intended to oversee the processes of globalization.
These institutions include the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank), and the International Monetary Fund. Globalization has been facilitated by...