We are surrounded by globalizing developments: the emergence of the global communications industry; the growth of multinational enterprises; the influence of global financial markets; global warming; and international action on human rights. These have brought the idea of a global society into prominence. We now recognise that the constraints of geography are shrinking and that the world is becoming a single place.

In this crisp and incisive book, Malcolm Waters provides a much needed guide to the concept in social theory and the social, economic and political consequences.

The first two chapters offer a critical summary of the main theories of globalization, outlining the standard contributions - modernization and convergence, the capitalist world-system, transnationalization and the global village - before moving on to tease out the common threads in the contemporary globalization theories of Robertson, Giddens, Harvey and Beck.

The succeeding chapters trace the effects of the process through the arenas of economy, politics and culture. Here the book gives a lively treatment to such topics as planetary environmentalism, the new international division of labour, the new world order, growing religious fundamentalism and democratization and marketization. These topics are integrated within a theoretical account that views globalization as the consequence of the new pre-eminence of culture in social life.