Introduction: Globalization, localization and hybridization: Their impact on our lives

Abstract

The recent discourses on the implications of globalization refer to the process whereby the world is said to be transformed into a single global system. Analysts approach the question (and debate) from three angles: economic, political, and cultural. The rapid development of information technology has tremendously facilitated financial globalization, thus enabling markets to continue expanding on a global scale by the electronic transmission of funds and the detailed and finely-tuned tracking of economic transactions, which can increasingly be done from any location in the world. The globalization of financial markets and corporations encroaches on the power of sovereign states to administer affairs within their own jurisdictions. The global dissemination of a postmodernist ideology of consumerism is destined to displace or intermingle with the more localized cultures. The hybrid product of a national identity arising through globalization can be signified by the compound word: “globalizentity.”. Keywords: financial globalization; hybridization; localized cultures; sovereign states