With contemporary worldwide culture increasingly characterized by such themes as astronomy, cosmology, space travel and exploration, there is an increasing disjuncture between academic concern with connectivity, on the one hand, and culture and consciousness of the place of planet earth in the cosmos as a whole, on the other. This book addresses this deficiency from a variety of closely related perspectives, presenting studies of religion, science, sport, international organizations, global resistance movements and migrations and developments in East Asia.

Roland Robertson is Distinguished Professor of Sociology Emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh, USA and Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Global Society at the University of Aberdeen, UK. He is the author of Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture; The Sociological Interpretation of Religion; Meaning and Change: Explorations in the Cultural Sociology of Modern Societies; and co-author of International Systems and the Modernization of Societies; Deviance, Crime and Socio-Legal Control: Comparative Perspectives; and Globalization and Football. He is editor of Sociology of Religion: Selected Readings and European Glocalization in Global Context. He is co-editor of Encyclopedia of Globalization (4 vols.); Global Modernities; Globalization: Critical Concepts in Sociology (6 vols.); Globalization and Sport; Church-State Relations: Tensions and Transitions; Religion and Global Order; Identity and Authority: Explorations in the Theory of Society; Talcott Parsons: Theorist of Modernity; and European Cosmopolitanism in Question. Didem Buhari-Gulmez is a Lecturer in International Relations at Istanbul Kemerburgaz University. She was previously a postdoctoral visiting fellow at London School of Economics and Political Science, European Institute (Research on South Eastern Europe) sponsored by TUBITAK. She taught at Oxford Brookes University and Royal Holloway, University of London. She has published on World Society theory, Europeanization studies, and Turkish politics at various journals, including International Political Sociology, New Global Studies, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, European Union Studies Association Review, and Journal of Contemporary European Studies.

Introduction, Roland Robertson; Global culture and consciousness, Roland Robertson; Globalization and global consciousness: levels of connectivity, Paul James and Manfred B. Steger; Connectivity and consciousness: how globalities are constituted through communication flows, Barrie Axford; Globalization's cultural consequences revisited, Robert J. Holton; Dynamics of world culture: global rationalism and problematizing norms, again, George M. Thomas; Rationalizing global consciousness: scientized education as the foundation of organization, citizenship, and personhood, Gili S. Drori; Jesuits, connectivity, and the uneven development of global consciousness since the sixteenth century, José Casanova; Glocalization and global sport, Richard Giulianotti; Global culture in motion, Peggy Levitt; China in the process of globalization: a primarily cultural perspective, Wang Ning; 'America' in global culture, Frank J. Lechner; Taking Japan seriously again: the cultural economy of glocalization and self-orientalization, Koji Kobayashi; Conclusion, Roland Robertson and Didem Buhari-Gulmez