During the past three decades or so, two highly contested terms have entered not only academic discourse, but everyday discourse outside the groves of academe: postmodernism and globalization. Over the course of this period, despite many attempts to sort out with some precision exactly what each term means, they both remain highly contested-as concepts that are meant to specify something distinctive about the contemporary social world and as normative evaluations of that world. This collection of essays is assembled with a conviction that both postmodernism and globalization have the potential to be valuable tools for social analysts, this despite the uncertainties and ambiguities that persist.