SOCIOLOGY FOR ONE WORLD: UNITY AND DIVERSITY

Abstract

In this Address I want to advocate a single Sociology, whose ultimate unity rests on acknowledging the universality of human reasoning; to endorse a single World, whose oneness is based on adopting a realist ontology; and to predicate any services the Discipline can give to this World upon accepting the fundamental unicity of Humanity. Ironically, just when globalisation has been growing in the world, so too have doubts about sociology as an international enterprise. This divergent development between the world and the discipline appears to be the direct result of the demise of positivism. Subsequent theorists have polarised into advocates of `false universalism', e.g. `modernisation theory', `dependency theory' and the post-modernist view of `modernity', all of which assume unitary processes with uniform results - to which international sociology stands opposed. Alternatively they have become celebrants of incommensurable diversity, resting on the assumptions of relativism, which would outlaw international sociology altogether. Instead of endorsing either unity or diversity, the task of international sociology is to specify how global mechanisms combine with regional circumstances, in non-uniform fashion, to shape new trajectories and novel configurations. Globalisation is not merely the effect of the `new' world on the `old': the two together make for a radically different world, which it is the job of international sociology to capture - social theory is never intransitive.