This provokes the formulation of contending world views. Everyone must now reflexively respond to the common predicament of living in one world. Global consciousness does not imply global consensus.īy the end of the twentieth century, if not before, globalization had turned world order into a problem. Such limited common principles do not provide a basis for world order. To some extent, a common framework has guided that interpretive work for example, states can appeal to a universal doctrine of nationalism to legitimate their particularizing claims to sovereignty and cultural distinction. These elements of the global situation became 'relativized' national societies and individuals, in particular, must interpret their very existence as parts of a larger whole. In that period, the main reference points of fully globalized order took shape: nation-state, individual self, world-system, of societies, and one humanity. The contemporary shape of the globe owes most to the 'take-off' decades after about 1875, when international communications, transportation, and conflict dramatically intensified relationships across societal boundaries. Yet European expansion and state formation boosted globalization since the seventeenth century.

Global interdependence and consciousness of the world as a whole precede the advent of capitalist modernity. The confrontation of their world views means that globalization involves 'comparative interaction of different forms of life' (Robertson: 27). These questions receive different answers from individuals and societies that define their position in relation to both a system of societies and the shared properties of humankind from very different perspectives. What it means to live in this place, and how it must be ordered, become universal questions. In thought and action, it makes the world a single place. Globalization refers to 'the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole' (R.

Globalization definition sociology