Introduction: Industries, Globalization and Politics

Abstract

Globalization is widely considered to cause many of the major political challenges of our time. Moreover, when defined as a set of processes that embody ‘a transformation in the spatial organization of social relations and transactions, generating transcontinental or inter-regional flows and networks of activity, interaction and power’ (Held et al, 1999: 16), globalization is frequently said to be causing convergence in the way economies are structured and governed. More precisely, as a set of ‘aggregate social consequences’ (Bisley, 2007: 30), globalization is claimed to be driving homogenous and unstoppable swathes of neo-liberal transformations of contemporary economies and polities (Harvey, 2003).