What in the World?

Abstract

Analysing social change has too often been characterized by parochialism, either a Eurocentrism that projects European experience outwards or a disciplinary narrowness that ignores insights from other academic disciplines. This book moves beyond these limits to develop a global perspective on social change. The book provincializes Europe in order to analyse European modernity as the product of global developments. It provides a range of promising theoretical approaches, analytical takes and substantive research areas that offer new vistas for understanding change on a global scale. The book begins with the questions that need to be addressed when thinking about global social change. It discusses the cross-fertilizations between the various branches of global history, world society theories, global historical sociology, postcolonial studies, and theories of international relations. It moves on to explore the possibilities of a fruitful exchange between world society theory and global history approaches, and develops a new perspective on fundamental problems of periodization that goes beyond postcolonial criticism. The book explores how the Bourdieusian field theory can be deployed to make sense of global dynamics. It next investigates the emergence of the idea of international organization in the nineteenth century and argues that the perception of organization for the world accompanied the foundation of states from the very beginning. It discusses how an international political system was eventually established while being theoretically anchored in the world society approaches of modern systems theory, and analyzes the history and effects of third-party actors in global military affairs. The book concludes by examining the global numerical statistics on territories, populations, and economic potentials over the past centuries that have created a vast political space in which the nation features as a result.