Abstract
I am grateful to Jef Huysmans both for organizing a Forum whose contributions refer to my article published in IPS (Albert 2007) as well as for giving me the opportunity to contribute to this Forum in reply as well. Given space constraints it is of course impossible to take up all the arguments made in the other contributions, so the following remarks are based on what I take to be some of the most important issues raised. Talking about simplifications, one point needs to be conceded right away. Barry Hindess is right that theoretical contributions about globalization in the end are probably not coherent enough to address them as one body of “globalization theory.” Talking about globalization theory or, for that matter, IR or sociological theory always involves a partially illegitimate evocation of some images of a shared agenda or “mainstream” which does injustice to existing theoretical diversity. That said, I of course also agree with Hindess that there is more to sociology than theories of society. Yet my point was not to deny that different inputs from sociology into globalization research have a valuable contribution to make, but that theories of world society are particularly well-suited to address the dynamics of globalization processes in a comprehensive fashion.
Published Version
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