It is proverbial that you never see a bus for ages, and then several come along at once. The same appears to be true of reference books about globalization, for this is the third reviewed in these columns within a year (Wunderlich and Warrier, 2007) (RR 2008/156) and Robertson and Scholte, 2007 (RR 2008/111)). However, it is quite distinct from the other two, as this is a collection of 35 essays rather than an encyclopedia or dictionary. The essays, by prominent academic experts, run to a total of about half a million words. Naturally, they do not all adopt the same approach, some being in the nature of review articles, but others expressing the author's own point of view. Each chapter has a bibliography (and between them occupy more than a tenth of the book) but there is no general bibliography. The index is on a scale appropriate to such a large volume. There are a few tables and charts, but, curiously, no maps. It is a pity that neither a glossary of technical terms nor a list of abbreviations is provided.
The subject of globalization seems to lend itself to sociological jargon which will not encourage the uninitiated reader, who has to cope with such terms as “problematiques”, “imbrication”, “operationalization”, and “interiorized glocal [sic] strategizing”. Perhaps this complicating factor has distracted the sub‐editors and proof‐readers from noticing a few errors, so that one author appears to assert, several times, that antinomy is the same as antimony, and another declares on different pages that the number of degree‐granting institutions in the USA is variously 42,000 and 6,000.
It would be futile, particularly for a layman like your reviewer, to attempt to summarize this long and complex work, but at least its structure can be described. It falls into three parts, each provided with a substantial introduction by the general editor. The first discusses globalization in broad terms: what is it, and what theories explain it? The general editor perceptively remarks that the majority of contributors start by defining what they think “globalization” means, and that the definitions are by no means identical. Roughly speaking, some authors define it in a value‐neutral manner as a tendency towards ever‐greater connections between events in different parts of the world, while others contend that these connections pertain to the spread of a neo‐liberal capitalist economic system which many deplore as reinforcing worldwide inequality. They in turn often advocate an “anti‐globalization” movement (or “globalization from below” rather than “globalization from above”), which, ironically, could succeed only by exploiting the potential of globalization in the first sense.
The second main section addresses specific topics in their relation to globalization, for instance, religion, the media, and the environment. There does appear to be a major omission here. Historians have long recognised that global wars have been taking place since the eighteenth century, but there is no chapter on war in general (though there is one on the question of whether globalization increases or decreases the risk of it, and another on the role of the media in war).
The final section covers major controversies surrounding the subject; most notably, does globalization increase or decrease inequality among the peoples of the world? Two chapters appear on this topic, written from opposing points of view. It would appear from another discussion that at least in principle, increased trade ought to reduce the risk of war, though one contributor pertinently notices that Norman Angell's book The Great Illusion expressed the same argument four years before the outbreak of the First World War. The book ends on a remarkably apocalyptic note, with a final contributor predicting a worldwide crisis: “globalization will make catastrophes more general, immediate and profound. The pandemics of the future, precisely because the world is interconnected but lacks any effective global governance, will destroy millions of people, undermine whole societies and threaten civilized life”. Let us hope this prediction is no more accurate than Norman Angell's was a hundred years ago; meanwhile, perhaps the greater knowledge of globalization which this significant work aims to promote, may help to avert such disaster.
