Globalization as an area of scholarly inquiry has generated a voluminous literature (Berger and Huntington, 2002; Bhagwati, 2007; Held and McGrew, 2007; Scholte, 2005; Steger, 2003). So too has human rights (Davies, 1988; Freeman, 2002; Griffin, 2008; Power and Allison, 2006), a vast field with an even longer history (Hunt, 2007; Ishay, 2004). It comes as somewhat of a surprise, therefore, to discover that relatively few books have explicitly focused on the interrelationship of globalization and human rights.1 Perhaps the lack of works on globalization and human rights might be explained by the ubiquitous and often imprecise use of the term “globalization.” As might be expected when large numbers of people discuss an issue by employing a word that can mean “anything, everything and nothing” (Munck, 2000, p. 84), not all that has been written on globalization is informative or insightful. In fact, some critics have gone so far as to dismiss debates on globalization as “globaloney” (Veseth, 2006), “global babble” (Abu-Lughod, 1997), and intellectual “folly” (Rosenberg, 2002). But if much theorizing on globalization has been vague or unhelpful, this in itself does not offer sufficient justification for jettisoning the term. Indeed, as Scholte (2005) observes, it could suggest the reverse—that much more work remains to be done in terms of refining concepts and gathering evidence to assess the meaning and implications of globalization (p. xvii). In spite of its contested nature, globalization remains a useful term for describing a process that commenced around the sixteenth century CE. Since the time of Columbus’ first explorations, all the world’s major regions have been increasingly drawn into a global system of commercial, cultural, and ecological exchanges that has drastically transformed how human beings live and view the world around them.

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