In recent years, many scholars have become fascinated by a contemporary, multidimensional process that has come to be known as "globalization." Globalization originally described economic developments at the world level. More specifically, scholars invoked the concept in reference to the process of global economic integration and the seemingly inexorable movement toward a single economy and a single division of labor in the world. Scholars have also studied world cultural and political integration as dimensions of globalization; it is in such contributions that we encounter references to the "McDonaldization" or "Americanization" of culture. Globalization analysis does differ from world-systems analysis, however, and the purpose of this discussion is to define this difference more accurately--to relocate the tension between world-systems analysis and globalization analysis--through a review of 50-plus years of thinking about world interconnectivity. This study begins with a review of the dependency theory as a response to modernization theory, and then examines how world-systems analysis advances this earlier conception. The degree to which globalization analysis replicates, and departs from, the world-systems approach is considered, and the history of thinking about international and global integration with reference to economic inquiry is illustrated. This approach is not intended to suggest economism but to anticipate application. The essay concludes by considering the implications of these findings for comparative education. (Contains 95 endnotes.)