Globalization is the word used to describe the growing interdependence of the world’s economies, cultures, and populations, brought about by cross-border trade in goods and services, technology, and flows of investment, people, and information. Countries have built economic partnerships to facilitate these movements over many centuries. But the term gained popularity after the Cold War in the early 1990s, as these cooperative arrangements shaped modern everyday life. This guide uses the term more narrowly to refer to international trade and investment among advanced economies, mostly focusing on the United States.
Migration is by no means a modern phenomenon, but is a process with its origins in the earliest times of human settlement. Today around 214 million people, some 3% of the global population, live in countries other than those in which they were born, leading some to call this the ‘age of migration’.Four models of migration : the classic model ; the colonial model ; the guest workers mode; illegal forms of immigration. Migration involves both ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors: migrants may feel pushed by poverty or political oppression and/or pulled by greater religious and political freedoms or improved economic conditions.

Ethnic Relations. Relations between people of different ethnic groups are crucial issues in. the world of today. At both the national and international levels, ethnic. conflicts are important issues, impeding effective relations and social.

50. Global diasporas, their key categories, features and criteria (Robin Cohen).
Diaspora describes the scattering of an ethnic population from its homeland into other areas, often in forced conditions. Cohen sees five types of diaspora. Victim diasporas (the African slave trade), labour diasporas (indentured Indian workers under British colonialism), trading diasporas (Chinese people moving to Southeast Asia, buying and selling goods), imperial diasporas (British imperialism took people into new countries) and cultural diasporas (cemented by literature, religion and so on). All diasporas involve movement to a new place, shared memories of the homeland, strong ethnic identity and sense of solidarity and a contribution to pluralistic host countries.
51. Ethno-national policy in Kazakhstan and other post-communist states, its problems and perspectives at the present stage,
52. The sociological study of religion (Durkheim, Berger, Wuthnow
Classical sociological theory continues to exert a strong influence over the contemporary sociology of religion. Marx saw religious beliefs as ideological (the opium of the people), attributing to gods a divine power to shape individual lives which, in fact, lies within the power of human beings and societies. Religion frequently acts to support the position of the powerful within society. However, Marx also saw that religions can be a ‘haven in a heartless world’, thus providing some comfort to the poor and relatively powerless.
Durkheim studied the phenomenon of religion in some detail, especially within small-scale societies. Religion provides an ordering system for societies, centred on a fundamental distinction between the sacred and the profane. That which is sacred actually stands for the core values of the society itself, whilst collective rituals help to generate and sustain social solidarity.
Weber carried out extensive studies of the world religions and was particularly concerned with the relationship between religion and social change. Weber argued that whilst Eastern religions promote values that do not sit easily with capitalist economics, Protestant and particularly Calvinist beliefs and values fit well with the drive and investment patterns that enable capitalism’s development.