I'm putting together a little bibliography about "how scholars distinguish between 'global history' and 'world history'." (Full disclosure- this is for a seminar I'm taking. I will of course get into the stacks myself, but no one said I couldn't ask you guys for guidance!)
I wonder if you can recommend any articles about this distinction, as well as maybe different works on the same subject that use either approach with a few words on what makes them different?
My sense, just instinctively, is that 'global' history is the history of a specific topic taken on a global scale. This would make it mainly a study of the networks and pathways of a given thing across national and geographic borders. For instance, is Gabrielle Hecht's Being Nuclear a global history of the uranium trade (at least the first part), in that it traces the economic and political networks that supported that trade? Or is global history a kind of history that shifts our perspective from traditional points of view? Being Nuclear is global in this sense too, as it forces you to locate your focus (and nuclear things) in Africa instead of the West.
World history seems to connote the kind of broad overview, in chronological order, that we get in big undergrad surveys (which, at my school at least, were called "Western Civilization 1&2", which is of course concerning). Is world history just the story of humanity from as far back as possible to the present day, covering all geographies? Or can you write a 'world history' of the 16th century?
I'd be very happy to post the bibliography when it's complete for everyone to use. Cheers!
My understanding of the historiography here is that your sense of global history is correct. I'm actually in a "global history" course right now, and Being Nuclear is on the syllabus! I would add that, in addition to studying specific topics on a global scale, global history examines global connections more generally; so, rather than studying networks of uranium trade (or salt trade, or gold trade), global history might examine world-wide connections through the lens of the British Empire and the variety of networks and connections that allowed people all over the globe to call themselves "British." Maybe its a subtle distinction, but I think there's a slight difference in studying one sort of trade or technology in different contexts and studying all of the ways through which a specific grouping of connections worked in all contexts. Both seem to fall under the category of global history, though. (Which, by the way, is primarily studied between the 16th and 21st centuries - global historians argue that globalization isn't a new trend, but I don't know of anyone talking about global connections during Roman times. The closest thing to that would be Mediterranean history.)
On the other hand, I haven't heard the term "world history" outside of high school courses. Broad, civilization-level histories such as Guns, Germs and Steel might fall under this heading, I suppose, but those are often criticized by historians for many of the same reasons that "Western Civilization 1&2" might be criticized - generalizing people together under the heading of "civilizations" can overlook detail, differentiation and similarities among peoples and their history to a problematic degree. (Among other criticisms.) I can't think of a historian (in the strictly defined, PhD in history sense) who writes world history - Jared Diamond himself has basically a biology background. I'm not saying that Guns, Germs and Steel is a bad book - it's worth reading. In general, though, historians tend to emphasize detail and uniqueness in history more than most other social scientists. Sociologists and political scientists, on the other hand, generally tend to try to find trends and models applicable in many situations. I think that's why historians tend not to write world histories - if you want to emphasize detail and uniqueness and don't like over-generalizing, trying to summarize literally everything that has happened involving humans in the last few thousand years is a monumental and thankless task. (James Loewen's "Lies My Teacher Told Me" goes into further depth on the question of historians' relation to World History classes.)
For another form of global history - examining global connections through a local lens - you might read Jeremy Prestholdt, "Domesticating the World: African consumerism and the genealogies of globalization." Also, I've only read a little bit of environmental history, but I would be surprised if nobody has written a global environmental history.