The mantra for globalisation is 'Think Global, Act Local'. Like most taglines, it is brief, memorable and based on an age-old rhetorical model. Like most taglines, it is glib, simplistic and facile.
Had General Motors acted less locally in the United States, it might not be facing bankruptcy. Toyota is one of the prime examples of successful globalisation, but that is largely because it acted globally to impose best practices, often in the face of strident local opposition.
A company such as HSBC may well spend the equivalent of a small nation's GDP advertising itself in airport terminals worldwide as 'the world's local bank', but try depositing a local cheque at any branch in Britain into your Hong Kong account and see where it gets you. The systems are still far from integrated: they 'act local'.
Globalisation, stripped of any political overtones, defines the breaking down of barriers between nations, including financial, social, trade and cultural. Its spread over recent years has been so swift and inexorable that it prompted Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, to state that 'arguing against globalisation is like arguing against gravity'.
The fears of contemporary anti-globalists are that today's multinationals are no less violent in imposing global corporate imperialism in their relentless quest for profit, exploiting poor workforces and ravaging the environment, among many other ills, than their empire building predecessors of previous centuries.
They worry as much about cultural globalisation: the McDonald's syndrome, where the same products are available in exactly the same way everywhere in the world - life reduced to a reliable but bland and soulless lowest common denominator.
And it's not just at the low end. Look at luxury brands in the shopping malls. We are constantly solicited to visit Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong to buy the same expensive goods (often produced abroad) that you can buy in Paris, Milan or London.