Social scientists increasingly recognized variations in human culture and even urged at times during the last century that cultural relativity and pluralism are ways of preserving variety and freedom in various cultures and sub-cultures. Assimilation, universalism and â??melting potâ?? ideas were often criticized even dealing with issues within American society. Although urbanization and increased mobility among people had been increasing during the past two to three hundred years, many cultural and ethnic groups continued to struggle on preserving their uniqueness and own identity in order to feel secure in the changing world. Now, however, we want you, particularly as students of sociology, to start seriously thinking about revolutionary trends toward globalization that are on the horizon in the 21st century. Globalization movement has several interconnected dimensions such as a highly significant increase of influence of mass media throughout the world, interconnectivity among people through enhanced means of telecommunication and transportation, and a viable importance of interdependence among people of most nations for conducting economic, educational and political activities. While political â??boundariesâ?? among nations is still persisting at least in a formal sense, people, particularly of younger generation, are significantly moving toward common outlooks, tastes, and ways of lifestyles. It seems that psychological and social boundaries among people at large are being ignored by an increasing number of individuals today. Undoubtedly, we seem to be moving toward a â??global societyâ?? where differentiation and divisions are likely to take a back seat. We must, at the same time, point out that there still are factors and forces around the globe that may have been and continue to be resisting as well as deemphasizing the viability of globalization process. For example, there are indications of increasing fanaticism in certain religions and other forms of divisiveness or conflict producing agents in todayâ??s world in probably the same ways that such were always present in the history of mankind in one form or another. You, as students studying global social issues, must keep your minds open to think critically and be aware of the complexities involved in such agents of change. While globalization may not become a cure-all of our problems and human conflicting and competing tendencies, it could play some role, at least in the long run, in addressing issues that may help human beings in coming closer rather than becoming destructive to their own future on this planet. For example, our hopes are on our future generations who may want to, and be capable of more than some of us previous generation people, in exploring ways for negotiating and cooperating to find ways to solve problems and live in peace rather than to commit suicide as a species. To begin an enhancement of understanding and critical thinking on the process of globalization, we have selected in this book a number of articles written by notable scholars who have addressed several of the key issues connected to that process. The articles are selected carefully to be able to provide you an overview of various dimensions of global social issues. Most of them have a number of traits such as being · based on logic, theoretical sophistication, and empirical research; · able to address various conceptual meanings of selected aspects of globalization; · capable of exploring factors as well as barriers related to the increasing trends in various types of indicators of global developments; and · oriented toward providing ideas for addressing ways for promoting free enterprise and economic competition trends, realization of the world as a singular and integrated system, improvements of opportunities in conducting globalization studies, enhancements of implementing conflict resolution strategies, and accomplishment of desirable degrees of positive changes and progress around the planet and beyond. We hope you will find readings selected here as meaningful and stimulating. Jiaming Sun and Raghu Singh Texas A&M University-Commerce