ABSTRACT
One of the challenges of dealing with globalization as a longstanding process, albeit with important separate stages, involves a sense of inevitability: if globalization began a 1,000 years ago, or 500, or even 150, and if it is still going strong today, then surely we are dealing with a historical force that has an unshakable momentum. And to some extent, some observers might conclude that this is so. While a few regions have briefly resisted new, connective technologies – like Japan around 1600 – there has been no point at which the technological momentum has really been reversed.
