Understanding Cultural Globalization. Book: published by Polity Press in 2007. ISBN-13: 978-07456-3557-6. ISBN-13: 978-07456-3558-3 (pb)
This work builds upon my previous books, Rebuilding Communities in an Age of Individualism and Living with Globalization, emphasizing how a differentiating, multidimensional, contextualist and interdisciplinary approach must be employed in relation to all aspects of globalization, including the cultural. For example, it indicates how globalizing and cultural globalizing processes are informing and changing the national cultures of countries like France and the USA.
Understanding Cultural Globalization, is another work examining the primary social and cultural developments of our age, and in this case the tendencies associated with cultural globalization, like homogenization, deterritorialization, cosmopolitanism, hybridization, network formation and transnationalism. In exploring the cultural dynamics of globalization, the book investigates the interrelationship between globalization and culture deconstructing both concepts in the process. The book also shows how the particular definitions and criteria that we employ in investigating globalization has shaped many of the debates surrounding it, something that is reflected in the different disciplinary approaches to this subject and its contested nature. In short, this book continues my investigation into the nature and meaning of globalization, and in doing I engage with other leading internationally renowned writers on this area, like Arjun Appadurai, Manuel Castells and Roland Robertson.
Given that this book was not published until the end of September 2007, it is not possible to determine its impact at this stage. However, the book is designed to have international appeal, providing examples of the effects of cultural globalization upon countries and regions throughout the world. Polity Press – who are one of the world’s leading publishers on globalization – are marketing the book so that it becomes an essential point of reference for work in its field. Extracts of the book have already been posted on Amazon.
Having explored the cultural, sociological and political aspects of globalisation in this and my previous books, it has provided me with the necessary background and expertise to be able to explore globalisation’s other dimensions. And I am now researching the relationship between globalisation and development as well as the environment. I am currently completing books on both of these areas, and have book contracts for a work entitled Understanding Development (Polity, 2008) and another entitled Understanding Global Environmental Politics (Polity, 2009).
