Globalization has an ever-increasing effect on our lives. It has made the world smaller and brought us closer together yet it can also make us more vulnerable and divided. The deregulation of finance and banking and the crisis they led to is a devastating example of the knock-on effects of globalization.

This fully revised fourth edition reviews the history and complexities of globalization, examining the forces in play and whose interests they serve. And while the global exchange of people, products, plants, animals, technologies, and ideas intensifies the key question that Wayne Ellwood asks 'how can globalization be a positive force for change?'