Conceptualizing the World

What isand what wasthe world? Though often treated as interchangeable with the ongoing and inexorable progress of globalization, concepts of world, globe, or earth instead suggest something limited and absolute. This innovative and interdisciplinary volume concerns itself with this central paradox: that the complex, heterogeneous, and purportedly transhistorical dynamics of globalization have given rise to the idea and reality of a finiteand thus vulnerableworld. Through studies of illuminating historical moments that range from antiquity to the era of Google Earth, each contribution helps to trace the emergence of the world in multitudinous representations, practices, and human experiences.