Globalization and Society: Processes of Differentiation Examined, R. Breton and J.G. Reitz, eds., Praeger: Westport, 2003, pp. 321.

There is currently a plethora of books on globalization in all of its guises. Many of these fail to seriously contribute to a growing body of literature in any intellectually rigorous way because they either simply re-hash well-worn notions about global political economy or culture, or provide a weakly disguised postmodern attempt to textualise social and economic change. There are some notable exceptions, however, and this book is one of them. The first thing to strike you with this edited collection is the sheer breadth of the scale ranging from trends in global inequality to considerations about nationalism and the crisis of the welfare state. This is a comprehensive treatment of a highly complex set of processes which does not uncritically apply the term “globalization” without recourse to informed theoretical debate concerning the active role of civil society, forms of governmentality and the nation state. While the authors do not completely escape forms of reductionism in the language used, they do nonetheless attempt to ground this reasoning within a critical context which avoids the excesses of idiosyncratic localization or convergence theories.