In the case of Jan Scholte’s effort to provide a textbook on globalization, the answers are clear: the “however” rhetoric is pervasive because globalization involves phenomena that are endlessly contradictory and complex, even as they are linked together by a persuasive theoretical perspective. In a profound sense, Scholte’s readiness to delineate nuance and to indicate how any globalizing pattern is subject to qualification by a contrary observation is a form of decisiveness. It alerts students to avoid sweeping assertions about any aspect of globalization. It tells them that globalizing dynamics span such a broad diversity of processes and problems as to require familiarity with key concepts in economics, sociology, political science, geography, anthropology, philosophy, and law, if we are to evolve a full and adequate understanding of the subject. To study globalization, in short, is perforce to undertake interdisciplinary inquiry, so far-reaching and interrelated are its ramifications.

To Scholte’s credit, his book does not imply otherwise. His unifying perspective is substantive and not disciplinary. He defines globalization as consisting of all those phenomena not bound by place, as “a reconfiguration of geography, so that social space is no longer wholly mapped in terms of territorial places, territorial distances, and territorial borders” (p. 16). Unlike many inquiries into the subject that employ narrow definitions grounded in economics, Scholte’s concept that globalizing processes are at work whenever and wherever phenomena are “supraterritorial” enables him to probe a remarkably wide range of problems, processes, structures, and norms that plainly demonstrate the interdisciplinarity of the subject. To be sure, he does not neglect the economic and (for him) the negative consequences of neoliberal policies. These are fully examined, as are the challenges of global governance, environmental degradation, human rights, and many others, but at the same time, his analysis extends well beyond the conventional topics that mark the field’s literature, including the impact of supraterritoriality on knowledge, aesthetics, youth culture, gender solidarities, oligopolies, accounting practices, tourism, rationalism—to mention only some of the phenomena that are startlingly revealed as undergoing alteration when viewed in a supraterritorial context.

In short, the theoretical perspective works! It informs! It clarifies! It stimulates! However, even as Scholte persuasively demonstrates how each aspect of globalization he probes in terms of its supraterritoriality sets it apart from prior practices, values, and assumptions, he notes that the prior patterns are still operative and have not been fully replaced.

To the oft-debated question of what is new about globalization, Scholte has a clear-cut response: a great deal, which is summarized in two lengthy tables of data (pp.58, 86) that demonstrate the impossibility of applying “territorialist thinking ...to today’s world.” Powerful as Scholte’s underlying scheme is, however, he makes no claim that globalization is recent. He acknowledges that globalization “can be traced back several centuries” (p. 62), but he suggests that in the current historical epoch “the spread of territoriality” has become large-scale, a distinction he stresses by consistently referring to “accelerated globalization” and “contemporary globalization.” On the other hand, his dedication to nuance often leads him to note the various ways in which territoriality still serves as a basis of what transpires in world affairs.

I have two main reservations about the book, neither of which is so serious as to detract from an otherwise superb work. One is perhaps more traceable to the pressures of his publisher than to Scholte. It concerns a seemingly obvious effort to cast the work as a textbook to be used in classrooms: its subtitle and summarizing boxes at the start and end of every chapter smack of pressure to simplify for the uninitiated. Such a format strikes me as unnecessary. Indeed, the book may well be the most accessible and succinct treatment of globalization available for beginning students (as well as for any reader who seeks a concise overview). It is also a very thorough treatment, with an impressive bibliography consisting of 713 entries. Still, the presence of boxes at the start and end of every chapter that summarize what has been covered is a bit misleading. Not only are they repetitious, but, more important, they also detract from the qualifications and nuances that pervade the work and suggest instead an orderly world that can be reduced to (in the first words of each chapter’s opening box) a few “main points.”

It would have been preferable to have emphasized at the outset that it is a messy world filled with contradictions, uncertainties, and ambiguities. The reader also needs to appreciate the complexities wrought by globalization, and that distortion is bound to follow if any aspect of the subject is reduced to a few main points. Nowhere in the book does Scholte claim the subject is marked by simplicity. On the contrary, throughout his analysis the contradictions, uncertainties, and ambiguities are brilliantly highlighted, even though the book lacks an opening statement to this effect and even though its format implies otherwise.

My second reservation also involves unnecessary simplicity. Scholte devotes a whole chapter to the causes of globalization, presented in a structuration context wherein “the course of social history results from mutually constituting agent choices and structural dispositions,” with neither coming “before the other: there is no chicken/actor without the egg/structure and vice versa” (p. 91). I could not agree more that such a perspective is required if globalization is to be adequately comprehended. The trouble is that Scholte then posits only four “primary” causes, two of them being structuralist impulses derived from rationalism and capitalism and the other two being technological innovations and regulatory mechanisms sustained by agents. The analysis of these dynamics is sound and persuasive, but again it seems overly simple; I believe that the interaction of at least eight or more dynamics underlies globalizing processes, a conception that hints at the messiness of things without conveying a sense of sheer disarray. In fact, Scholte’s wide-ranging analysis in subsequent chapters identifies many other causal sources, thus undermining the contention that four of them are primary.

Given the messiness of the human condition and the pervasiveness of supraterritorial phenomena, questions arise as to where globalization fits in the panoply of academic disciplines. Should an introduction to it be taught in political science, geography, sociology, anthropology, economics, history, and philosophy departments, or is it best offered in international relations (IR) schools? Should environmental programs or even some of the hard sciences include it in their curricula? Is there a place for such a course in the humanities? Should colleges and universities engage in excessive duplication by offering introductory courses in most or all of these disciplines?

And what about research? Should inquiries be confined to a single domain, to political science on the grounds that politics is at the root of all issues? For me, the answer to these questions is obvious: precisely due to the messiness with which it seeks to cope—and as Scholte’s book makes clear—globalization is profoundly an interdisciplinary subject, and both students and researchers deceive themselves if they think they can grasp its complexities by limiting their work to a single discipline. Unfortunately, while the interdisciplinary scope of the subject is widely recognized, globalization continues to be taught and researched in the context of a single discipline. Scholte shares this regret:

Most professional research continues to be funneled through discipline-related organs. Similarly, most academic conferences have remained tribal conclaves on disciplinary lines. Most academic funding has continued to flow through disciplinary channels, and respect of disciplinarity normally still provides researchers with a faster track to promotion than alternative approaches. In short, some minor inroads aside, disciplinary methodology remains quite firmly entrenched in the contemporary globalizing world (p. 198).

That is not all. I suspect that Globalization: A Critical Introduction will not be widely used in introductory courses because most instructors feel obliged to stay close within their disciplinary boundaries. Moreover, I also suspect, though I do not know for sure, that many instructors will not even know of the book’s existence because the publishers are likely to advertise Scholte’s book mainly in political science and IR journals rather than in other social science journals. What a shame! This is a book that can serve as an introductory text in all fields. It is the kind of work that can help promote movement in the direction the academy, its classrooms, and its research centers should be going: toward the unity of knowledge in a world ever more tied together by nonterritorial processes, structures, and norms.