Taking the plane or sending an e-mail: globalization has become part of the fabric of our daily lives. And yet it is often seen as an impersonal force that is threatening to destroy identities and undermine nation states. In this major new book, Jean-Francois Bayart offers a radically new account of globalization which challenges the way it is interpreted both by neo liberals and by the anti-globalization movement. Bayart argues that globalization is something that we ourselves have created, and the nation state is actually a product, and not of a victim, of this process. Far from being synonymous with alienation and social disintegration, globalization establishes transnational solidarities and networks which overlap with nation states without necessarily undermining them. Globalization has also refashioned sexual identities, transforming, through the representation of female and male bodies in the media, in advertising and in the Internet, the way individuals in different...