A World Beyond Difference unpacks the globalization literature and offers a valuable critique: one that is forthright, yet balanced, and draws on the local work of ethnographers to counter relativist and globalist discourses. This book: presents a lively conceptual and historical map of how we think about the emerging socio-political world, and above all how we think politically about human cultural differences; interprets, criticizes, and frames responses to world culture; draws from the work of recent major social theorists, comparing them to classical social theorists in an instructive manner; and, grounds critique of theory in years of ethnographic research.