ABSTRACT
Let us remember that we started this book with a clear premise: the birth and rising fortunes of global studies as a relatively new transdisciplinary field of inquiry are inextricably linked to the emergence of globalization as a prominent theme in late twentieth-century discourse. The increasing visibility of worldwide integration favored the global as a new conceptual framework and unit of social analysis that enabled people to make better sense of their rapidly changing world and their place in it. Indeed, the growing awareness of the expansion and multiplication of worldwide interconnections called out for a new keyword that captured the scale and intensity of changing forms of human contact. ‘Globalization’ filled this need perfectly because it emerged from the very process it referred to.1 It also conveyed the sense of an unprecedented compression of space and timemediated by new digital technologies-which many people experienced as both exhilarating and unsettling.
