How Useful Is the Concept of GlobalSociety?

Abstract

How useful is the concept of global society ? This question has been raised in different ways by several contributors to IPS , most forcefully by Mathias Albert (2007), who argues that globalization theory needs to turn to theories of society. My initial response is to note that two claims are raised by this proposition: first, that there is a significant body of literature which might usefully be called “globalization theory”; and second, that, if we are to make progress in this contentious area then we should turn, not just to theories of society, but to the most advanced of these theories, and, specifically, to the work of Niklas Luhmann. Both claims are debatable. The first, I suspect, gives the literature on globalization greater credit than it deserves. As to the second, the theories of society Albert has in mind are those of sociology, so we can take his plea as calling on us to turn to a certain kind of sociological theory. Before questioning this claim, it is important to note that there is more to sociology, and to sociological theory, than theories of society (Osborne and Rose 1997). The claim that, if we are to understand major social developments, and thus have some hope of dealing with them, we should turn to the science of society, was first advanced by Auguste Comte (often credited with coining the name of this science, “sociology”) in his Plan of Scientific Work Necessary for the Reorganization of Society (Comte [1824] 1998). Comte argued, in effect, that French society was sick and that to address its problems it was necessary to identify how conditions in France differed from what was normal in a society of its kind, a task that he saw as requiring the location of contemporary France within a …