In today's growing literature on globalization, the Third World is often conspicuously absent. This book examines the reasons for and meanings of this absence and the Third World's position on the edge of the global economy, drawing on an array of sources from literary narrative and nineteenth-century medical discourse to postmodernist geography and postcolonial theory. By illustrating the extent of globalization and its relationship to gender, race, and sexuality, the contributors to this timely collection fill a critical gap in the field of international relations.