Coming Full Circle with Globalization

We’ve spent the last week and a half attempting to make connections between markets and history, between countries and cultures. Globalization is an important development to understand, and something in which we all participate. And to fully understand contemporary globalization we must now turn our attention back in time to the Renaissance; before that, however, a bit more on globalization.



Meet Nayan Chanda, director of Yale University’s Center for Globalization and author of Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped Globalization (2007). Like Friedman, Chanda has wide global experience and the credentials of a journalist. Yet his work takes a much larger historical perspective. And unlike Zakaria, Chanda frames his discussion globally instead of using the U.S. as a point of analytic departure.





Follow this link to hear Chanda discuss his book Bound Together (particularly from about 4:40-8:40). And read part 3 and part 4, of a 4-part interview Chanda gave at the Institute of International Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Chanda has also written a very helpful article about globalization titled, "What is Globalization?"

The center that Chanda directs has a publication titled YaleGlobal Online, and it has many great resources. For example, here is a Flash movie about the history of globalization (and presentations in other formats), and there are articles and columns on globalization as well as reports and information about what globalization looks like regionally and locally, what Friedman calls "glocalization." Check out the site's multimedia center as well; you will find podcasts, video clips, and other presentations about globalization.


After reading Chanda's article about globalization, think about the similarities and differences between his definition of globalization, as well as the thoughts of Chomsky, Friedman, and Zakaria.