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Introduction: Globalization, identity, and difference Over the past millenium, Africa's peoples and cultures have been subject to dramatic external interventions and influences enmeshing them firmly within the emerging world system. The successive conquests, colonizations, and associated cultural imperialisms of Arab and European, Islam and Christianity, the haemorrhaging of literally millions of Africans constituted by the slave trade, and more recently the rapid modernization and spread of capitalist consumerism have all transformed and internationalized cultures, conceptualizations, …

…while a high proportion of manufactured goods are still imported or produced purely for the local market. "Globalization," except in a superficial, journalistic sense, therefore has little meaning and analytical utility in general terms. It is precisely the kind of totalizing or universalizing construct being called into question by postmodern modes of social enquiry. As the contributions in King (1991) reveal clearly, globalization even has very different meanings in the cultural arena for various academic disciplines.