Prologue

My work on the theme of globalization began as long ago as the mid-1960s although I did not explicitly use that precise concept until a few years later. My own first, very brief, use of the concept of glocalization was in my book Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture (1992). Since then I have published a great deal on glocalization, quite often with other colleagues. In fact, the themes of globalization and glocalization have been, in one way or another, central to most of my published work in the last three decades. It should be noted, however, that this has been continuously combined with my very longstanding concern with culture, religion, and theory. In contrast, my strong interest and publications in the field of European studies have been of a significantly shorter duration. In fact, while I was working in England in my earliest full-time academic positions (at the Universities of Leeds and Essex), culture, religion, and theory were my major preoccupations and I wrote exceedingly little about Europe.