This is a dialectical process because such local happenings may move in an obverse direction from the very distanciated relations that shape them. Local transformation is as much a part of globalisation as the lateral extension of social connections across time and space. … The increasing prosperity of an urban area in Singapore might be causally related, via a complicated network of global economic ties, to the impoverishment of a neighbourhood in Pittsburgh whose local products are uncompetitive in world markets.

DEFINE: Clarifies the meaning of dialectical process in the context of globalization — that local happenings can run counter to global-scale relations.

Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Moderni…, loc. 167