Three meanings of globalisation

The term is used in many different ways. I have three clearly separate usages.

First, I recognise globalisation as referring to the 'global village' - the various technologies which are shrinking the globe: air travel, the internet, mobile phones, Skype, automatic translation and many more. The global village has both positive and negative implications for how we live and how our world works. On one hand it enables people's movements to build solidarity across the oceans. On the other hand it threatens cultural homogeneity and the obliteration of difference. Much more to be said.

My second usage of the term is to refer to a particular configuration of economic relations and a particular set of dynamics - economic globalisation. It is a very complex 'system' which to be properly specified will require a complete accounting of the stocks and flows of a myriad of goods and services, inputs and outputs, as they move from producers to consumers in different countries, of different income levels, different genders, ethnicities.

It is important to recognise that systems (like 'models') are defined by the purpose of the describers or modellers. There are many ways of describing the global economy depending on the purpose of the describer: whether my shares will increase in value, why I cannot sell my fish, why we do not stop global warming, etc etc. If you want to know why there has been a net flow of resources from the low income countries to the rich countries over the last two decades or why one billion people are excluded from access to the global economy the babbling of the stock market commentator will not tell you very much. There are narratives which do make sense of the growth fetish and the necessity for inequality but they are not to be found in the mass media.

My third use of the term 'globalisation' centres around the governance of the global economy: globalisation as a particular regime of global economic governance. This approach frames a set of questions about control and about power. How are the current patterns of economic relations maintained? How are the dynamics of the global economic regime governed? More importantly, how might they be changed?

Understanding the relations between globalisation and population health can benefit from the insights provided by all three of these perspectives.