Although globalisation has many facets, economic globalisation - the removal of barriers to trade and investment through trade liberalisation, privatisation and deregulation - is the dominant trend from which political and cultural globalisation flow. The aim of economic globalisation is to remove the obstacles to the global movement of capital and the production of goods and services that have accumulated in industrially developed capitalist countries.

Today's globalisation could be called 'corporate globalisation' or 'global corporatization', considering that corporations not only produce goods and services but also define and control economic as well as social, political and cultural aspects of our lives.

For the purposes of this paper we will focus on the challenges of economic globalisation and will offer suggestions for how to understand the potential for political and cultural globalisation.