PROLOGUE.

The article presents information on religion and sociology. The authors' work on the general theme of globalization and its implications began in the mid-1960s. In a series of publications, initially with Peter Nettl, in the years 1965 to about 1972 grappled with problems which were situated at the intersection of modernization theory and the discipline of international relations, with particular reference to the then popular problem of `the modernization' of Third World societies. Some of the authors' ideas on globalization were developed within, but never limited to, a sociologyeofareligion perspective. (A number of relevant papers, plus others, are to be published in book form separately.) It may be worth saying here that among the issues raised in that context were those of the relativization of societal and other standpoints and the attendant problems of identity, particularly collective identity.