This article analyzes the problems related to the globalization of the world at the beginning of this millennium, being treated different attempts to conceptualize the essence of globalization and highlight its characteristic features. There are three major currents of thought that address this social phenomenon: hyperglobalism, skepticism and transformativism. At the same time, the negative phenomena that appear as a result of globalization are treated: the decomposition of traditions, the atrophy of the civic sense, the confusion of education, the slipping in authoritarianism, the systematic manipulation, the expansion of indifference, etc. Given the that research on the phenomenon of globalization is an integrative field of scientific knowledge the author notes the to create a theoretical and methodological basis for research on globalization and its multiple manifestations.