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.