Critical Sociology 26,3 REVIEW ESSAY GLOBALIZATION AND THE FAILURE OF THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION:

But what are concepts save formulations and creations of thought, which, instead of giving us the true forms of objects, show us rather the forms of thought itself? — Ernst Cassirer, Language and Myth 2 During the past decade, the examination of globalization, broadly conceived, has assumed a central position in the agenda of social sci-ence research and political commentary. As a keyword, a designator of a pivotal concept in contemporary discourse, globalization is however a relatively recent innovation. “Globalization, ” as one account has it, “is the buzzword of the late twentieth century ” and is set to become “the biggest political issue of the next century.”3 In the preface to The Cultures of Globalization, Fredric Jameson writes “Globalization—even the term itself has been hotly contested—... is the modern or postmod-ern version of the proverbial elephant, described by its blind observers in so many diverse ways. Yet one can still posit the existence of the ele-phant in the absence of a single persuasive and dominant theory...