Content area
Full Text
RR 2014/092 The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization Edited by George Ritzer Wiley-Blackwell Malden, MA and Oxford 2012 5 vols ISBN 978 1 4051 8824 1 £640 $1,035 Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedias in Social Sciences Also available as an e-book
Keywords Encyclopedias, Globalization
Review DOI 10.1108/RR-02-2014-0030
According to the publishers, this is one of those "definitive reference resources" that students, researchers and academics are all clamouring for. It is true that large reference works focussing on globalization are infrequent entrants to our collections, but does this encyclopedia stand up to the hype? The volume itself, or rather the five large hardback books that make up the physical collection, seems determined to work with its editor George Ritzer to make it so. Ritzer is perhaps better known for his contribution to the world of social theory research, including the Concise Encyclopedia of Sociology (Ritzer and Ryan, 2011) (RR 2011/261), but his background makes him well placed to deliver on such as promise.
The encyclopedia begins, as many of these large reference works have to, in a very fragmented way - lots of short, disjointed sections. This is often necessary to help the reader map out the sections, and it is certainly needed in this vast sprawling set of books. We start with The List of Editors (general editor, managing editor, advisory editors), followed by the lengthy List of Contributors. These contributors between them have written over 600 entries. There are 420 authors listed here (I counted!), so it is of no surprise that you just get the barest amount of information - name and institution.
An excellent short section simply called Lexicon follows. Here, Ritzer brings together some of the terms and subject headings that the researcher might stumble upon, and gives the page numbers for that subject. It works rather like a "quick links" section of a web page, and I can see immense value in its inclusion. Usefully, these terms are subdivided into larger umbrella subjects, such as "conflict", "media/information" and "social movement".
A rather wonderful section, simply called Timeline, follows the Lexicon. We seem to be seeing this sort of innovation in a number of reference works. The approach works particularly well here, despite the fact that the discipline itself is a young one. Here, Zach...