Roland Robertson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. His books include International Systems and the Modernization of Societies (with J P Nettl, 1968) The Sociological Interpretation of Religion (1970) Meaning and Change: Explorations in the Cultural Sociology of Modern Societies (1978), Religion and Global Order (co-edited with William R Garrett, 1991) and Talcott Parsons: Theorist of Modernity (co-edited with Bryan S Turner

Globalization as a Problem
The Cultural Turn
Mapping the Global Condition
World-Systems Theory, Culture and Images of World Power
Japanese Globality and Japanese Religion
The Universalism-Particularism Issue
'Civilization,' Civility and the Civilizing Process
Globalization Theory and Civilization Analysis
Globality, Modernity and the Issue of Postmodernity
Globalization and the Nostalgic Paradigm
'The Search for Fundamentals' in Global Perspective
Concluding Reflections

A stimulating appraisal of a crucial contemporary theme, this comprehensive analysis of globalizaton offers a distinctively cultural perspective on the social theory of the contemporary world.

This perspective considers the world as a whole, going beyond conventional distinctions between the global and the local and between the universal and the particular. Its cultural approach emphasizes the political and economic significance of shifting conceptions of, and forms of participation in, an increasingly compressed world. At the same time the book shows why culture has become a globally contested issue - why, for example, competing conceptions of 'world order' have political and economic consequences.