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There are also differences of opinion as to whether the process is generally good or mostly bad.
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In all of these versions, there are those variants that regard the process as a quite recent development and others that locate its beginnings decades and sometimes centuries in the past. Individual states, in this frame of analysis, appear as the primary actors in a globally extended system of such states. The role of states informs a further perspective, one that concentrates on global or international political relations, usually with a parallel emphasis on the hegemonic power of Western countries. Economic globalization therefore focuses on the ways that global capitalism incorporates the world's regions into a single system. A related view adds mass media and cultural components to the economic dimension, stressing the degree to which primarily Western, and especially American, firms have been spreading their products and way of life to all corners of the world.
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Among the variants, however, by far the most widespread sees globalization primarily in economic terms, referring mostly to more recent developments in the operation of global markets, capital, and multinational corporations. They share the common element implied in the word: all parts of the world are becoming increasingly tied into a single, globally extended social unit. Along the way, it has acquired a variety of meanings that it is well to understand at the outset. It first appeared in the business and sociological literature of the 1980s, but by the end of the century it had become a broadly invoked expression in both academic and popular discourse around the world. The term globalization is of quite recent provenance. Globalization further provides fertile ground for a variety of noninstitutionalized religious manifestations and for the development of religion as a political and cultural resource. Religions identify themselves in relation to one another, and they become less rooted in particular places because of diasporas and transnational ties. Among the consequences of this implication for religion have been that globalization encourages religious pluralism. Yet religion and religions have also played important roles in bringing about and characterizing globalization. From religious or theological perspectives, globalization calls forth religious response and interpretation. It implicates religion and religions in several ways. Globalization refers to the historical process by which all the world's people increasingly come to live in a single social unit.