This paper contends that globalization as framed and understood within the theoretical context of mainstream International Relations (IR) and International Political Economy (IPE) is largely incapacitated to reflect on contemporary changes in world politics and that the advent of ‘globalization debate’ in IR theory and IPE has been unrewarding. Nevertheless, rather than refuting globalization, this study redeems the concept by defining it in such a way that it is able to capture such changes in world politics which often evade traditional categories of analysis in IR. For this purpose, this study, drawing largely on critical sociological theorizing of globalization, attempts to develop a conception and framework of what it calls ‘reflexive’ globalization. Reflexive globalization puts special emphasis on the socio-cultural changes in the world and identifies three aspects of globalization: ‘reflexivity’, ‘relativization’ and ‘deterritorialization’. Thus, the concept of globalization suggested in this study is more complex and holistic than either transnationalism, or interdependence or internationalization, and it rests on a different image of the world. It thereby resists being bounded by the analytical and theoretical limitations of the mainstream IR theory. Reflexive globalization recasts the globalization debate in IR and offers a way of advancing distinct explanations of contemporary changes in the state and the international system.