Globalisation over with breath

Things and events are not eternal. Neither the bad ones, and unfortunately, nor the good ones. If anything characterised the thirty years from the fall of the Berlin Wall until the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was the gradual opening up of the world. Physical and invisible borders, which had restricted things like the flow of capital or ideas, were falling. Ever-larger parts of the planet participated in the global division of labour, companies sought and found places for more efficient production, as well as new customers and markets all over the world. It was, in short, the golden era of globalisation, unprecedented in its depth and scale in the recorded history of humankind. But this era is slowly ending, with small steps and the gradual tightening of screws. And it's ending before many have had a chance to notice just how extraordinary those three decades were. This book is therefore a collection of texts united by the search for an answer to a single unsettling question: how is the already advancing de-globalisation manifesting itself and how will it continue to manifest? And what might this planet-wide shift from openness to closeness mean for the world, for Europe, and also for the Czech Republic, which was one of the many winners of that golden era of globalisation. Narrated by an AI voice, directed by Zdeněk Rytíř.