Globalization has perhaps been the notion most widely used and debated by the social sciences in the last decade of the twentieth century and in the first years of the twenty-first. Subject to diverse and sometimes conflicting interpretations, the concept has also been the target—as shown in Chap. 1—of harsh criticisms from authors who have contested its real meaningfulness and extent. One of the main weaknesses of the concept is the difficulty of giving it solid empirical bases and, especially, of obtaining evidence that make it possible to distinguish globalization processes from others which at least partly overlap with them, such as internationalization and regionalization
