Three Concepts of Globalization

This article is a brief inquiry into the meaning and function of the concept of globalization within the social sciences during the last decade. Describing the ontological presuppositions and historical trajectory of the concept of globalization, this article distinguishes three distinct senses of the idea - transference, transformation and transcendence - and argues that these senses have emerged gradually within discourses on globalization. The article tries to demonstrate how the unfolding of these connotations has destabilized the ontological foundations of international theory by constituting `the global' as a new object of thought and action, hence releasing political imagination from the limits posed by its largely statist past.