This important new book offers an engaging and challenging introduction to the thorny paths of the globalization debate. Beck aims to clarify the ambiguities of the debate, to distinguish between the various types of globalization and to warn the reader of conceptual traps. Most importantly, however, he opens up the horizon for political responses to globalization. Beck focuses on two main questions: what does globalization mean? and how can it be moulded politically? He begins by examining the ambivalences and paradoxes of globality and globalization, with regard to society, economics, politics, ecology and culture. He sets out the rival perspectives in the globalization debate and assesses the prospects for a transnational state. Central to the book is Beck?s argument that a decisive critique of globalism is necessary to make space for the primacy of politics. In the last section, he offers a series of constructive proposals to counter the current paralysis of politics,...