**5. Conclusions**

The bottom line of the article is structured along three main conclusions. The extent to which world society approaches represent elementary breaks with traditional thinking styles is the focus of the first conclusion. The second refers to development trends of sociology in the twenty-first century and the nation–state related paradigm of this scientific discipline. The conclusions close with the theming of the global shift of sociology and thereby refer to the pioneering work of world society theorists.

has as a field of the science of sociology undergone massive changes over the period of the last 100 years. It is only when a scientific work can change its appearance that it can be transformed; it grows a little further—especially when it breaks the boundaries of its immediate context, that

In view of how the social refers to the world, sociology in its historical form cannot meet a perspective on the world as a whole. It is its basic conceptual inventory which is indiscernible to world-social developments and global processes, and for this reason must be fundamentally renewed and changed. An essential part of this basic conceptual inventory is the term *society*. Sociology has conceptualized the term *society* more or less exclusively as a *nationally organized and territorialized unit* [69]. Over decades of time the concept of society was in its prevalent use

The classic, and still highly influential, sociological theory designs contributed to the generalization of a very specific concept, resting on the principle of territoriality and the nation-state form of space. The question of the spatial organization of social relations found as such a clear answer. A historical specific formation—the territorial nation-state—was dehistoricized and was, as it were, a natural container in which all life takes place, institutionalized as an organizing principle of the theory of social science, without, on the other hand, becoming the object of theoretical reflection [71]. In this regard, also Immanuel Wallerstein [72] summarizes on the social science paradigms of nineteenth and twentieth century that we could not even explain why we implicitly assumed that each state has a society and every society has a state. A branch of knowledge that cannot explain such a central phenomena will inevitably be in big trouble. It is the view of sociology as *'homeland theories of society'* [73] that leads to the assumption that sociological knowledge is, despite all universalistic validity claims, essen-

Conceptualizations of world society stimulate a critique of such a territorializing thinking style. In contrast to *traditional sociology*, world society approaches are a theoretical programme which tries to implement the sociology of the global as a counter-project. This requires the overcoming of the *methodological nationalism* as criticized by Ulrich Beck [74], the *zombie categories of the national view* [75] and also the *container theory of state and society* [76] as well as the development of fundamentally new conceptual terms, which meet the world as the totality of social relations. Present sociological diagnoses have to take global reality into account, and world society approaches provide a pioneering work in this direction. These conceptualizations break with the model of *methodological nationalism*—until now long uncritically used in the discipline—by postponing questions about the spatial organization of social relations at the global level; and they break even with basic terminologies of the discipline which no longer meet social reality

The bottom line of the article is structured along three main conclusions. The extent to which world society approaches represent elementary breaks with traditional thinking

is, its national and historical context—and becomes part of a global interpretation [68].

no more and no less than *bounded nation-state* conceptualized [70].

tially a regionally specific knowledge.

14 Social Responsibility

in the third millennium.

**5. Conclusions**

It can be stated as a *first* conclusion that it has been proved that world society approaches are a counter-project to the classics of sociology. As a conceptual term, *world (wide) society* directly points to the diminishing importance of spaces and addresses a conceptualization of *society* which is understood to be extra-territorialized. The increasing use of digital information and communication technologies for the empirical processing of sociological studies can here contribute significantly to the abolition of the spatial concept as a unit of analysis.

It is one of the greatest intellectual challenges of the present for all social science disciplines to deal with the world as a framework of culture, economics, law, politics and social reality and to use them constructively for scientific analysis. It certainly needs the courage to say what is not yet explorable since, for example, the empirical methods have not yet been developed; and that since one sits on a theory building in which the *'universal and global house of sociology'* is to a large extent revealed as a house of few countries of the world, there is still much to do in the field of sociological conceptions and theoretical approaches. At this point conceptualizations of world society can make an important contribution to the *global social responsibility* of science.

In the sociological field of world society research, nation-state myths have been disenchanted, the local is identified as global and vice versa, and the central concept of sociology—that of society, which has always been manifold and controversial within the discipline—becomes relevant again.

The *second* conclusion of the article refers to development trends of sociology, to the nationstate paradigm of sociology and the breaking thereof due to world society approaches. Here it was discussed how world society conceptualizations can make a constructive contribution to the sociology of the twenty-first century.

In the face of world society research, sociology is confronted with an often unreflected nationstate paradigm and a state-centric vocabulary, which opposes the perception of the global as a perspective. Sociological knowledge about transnational social spaces or post territorial communions or the perception of the *social world as a totality* in a normative sense, is yet to be developed profoundly.

The rise of sociology began with the emergence of the nation-state and nationalism. Therefore, society as the central object of the investigation of sociology was equated with the nation. This form of sociology, which reached its peak in structural functionalism and modernization theory, is increasingly being critically viewed and questioned in the present due to globalization processes: A new, global sociology is taking shape which is no longer oriented towards 'society', but rather towards social networks, border areas, border crossings and world society. The sociology of a nationally restricted society deviates from a post/inter/national sociology of hybrid forms, times, and spaces [77].

The subject of world society requires of many sociological issues—such as class and social structure analyses, poverty and inequality research as well as research fields of cultural sociology or political sociology—an emergence from the analytical unit of a 'nationally organized society', which is often assumed to be self-evident. On the basis of sociology, questions about social change, inequality, culture, power and domination have not become obsolete, but they have been moved into a different perspective. In particular, their importance ratio changes at the moment when these questions are referred to at the global reference level.

**Author details**

Veronika Wittmann

University, Linz, Austria

496 p. [here: see p. 101f.]

Verlag; 2002. 480 p. [here: see p. 52]

1997. 1164 p. [here: see p. 158f.]

1997. 1164 p. [here: see p. 159]

Verlag; 2000. 274 p. [here: see p. 10f.]

Verlag; 2000. 274 p. [here: see p. 105]

Verlag; 2001. 262 p. [here: p. 196]

[here: see p. 120]

[here: p. 120]

**References**

Address all correspondence to: veronika.wittmann@jku.at

Global Studies, Department of Modern and Contemporary History, Johannes Kepler

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In this sense, 'the globe as a big idea' has transformed not only sociological theories, but also the form of sociology as a whole. Sociology, which entered the historical stage as a science of 'modern society', is on its way to constituting itself as the science of one 'social world' [78]. World society approaches to this end had already been preparing sociological discourses on the way that the discipline can enter the contemporary stage of a *social world as a unit* decades before globalization. They have set trendsetting signposts for the discipline with their theory designs which have the world as a reference framework for the *'global house of sociology'* to be established, which should openly and constructively address the social challenges of the twenty-first century.

The discourse on world society can be viewed as a seismograph of the state of current social science discourses in the face of processes of globalization and transnationalism. This seismograph shows how long inter- and transnationalism in the analysis of *society* have had a minor role in the sociological research of the so-called First World. It may be a great merit for world society sociologists from recent decades to leave the Euro- and North American centrism and to choose the global as the reference frame for the analysis. This implies, not least, the realization that the traditional empirical methods of capturing *society* are doomed to failure in the context of the global; and the traditional theoretical approaches of sociology as well as their conceptual instruments require a thorough revision.

In addition to the demonstration of theoretical and empirical challenges, the analysis of world society, themes of globalization and transnationalism, the issue of transnational social spaces and classes, the range of global inequality and questions about transnational citizenship and the extensive field of global justice are new and modern approaches of sociological research. The future will show to what extent, with this thematic selection of research approaches, the nation-state as a reference frame of analysis is abandoned and how a tension between questions of continuity and the discontinuity of sociological concepts to the analysis of globalization and transnationalization as well as world society approaches can be drawn in a convincing way.

Sociology has, due to world society approaches, some social responsibility to put forward constructive plans in relation to the *global shift* of its scientific discipline. At the moment, both the merger and the implementation of the plans are important. For sociologists, this project will be a central challenge of the twenty-first century at the *construction site of sociology*.
