From nation-state to global society: the changing paradigm of contemporary sociology

Abstract

This paper discusses the strong criticism by Elias against the nation-state paradigm in sociology. Elias pointed his attention on sociologists of the twentieth century but particularly criticizes the analytical model of Parsons (AGIL), which seems to him an abstract combinatory of variables (pattern variables) without any references in social contexts. The sociology in the twentieth century is an apologetic of nation-state and, in Parsons, of the hegemonic role of the United States in the world. In fact, during the twentieth century many authors (historians and sociologists) tried to overcome the nation-state paradigm in the social sciences. The author of the paper analyses the contribution of Toynbee, Braudel, C. Schmitt, Huntington, Wallerstein and Hard–Negri. These attempts are based on different unit analysis: the civilization and its clash in the case of Toynbee and Huntington, the world economy in the case of Braudel and Wallerstein, and power in the case of C. Schmitt and Negri–Hardt. The author appreciates these attempts but his conclusion is that the concept of global society can better serve as unit analysis for a construction of a new paradigm in the social sciences.

Keywords:

• global society
• sociological theories
• nation-state

Acknowledgements

The text reproduces, with minimal variations, the speech that was held at the conference The Mobility of Peoples and Cultures organized in Rome, 2–3 December 2005, by the Associazione Italiana di Sociologia and the American Sociological Association.

Notes

1. On attitudes towards the war (First World War) by Durkheim and Simmel (but also other European intellectuals) cf. Water (1991).

2. I avail myself to this purpose of documentation collected for the writing of my Sociologia del mondo globale (Cotesta 2004).

3. It can be interesting to observe that Americans, who are the most notorious melting pot of different cultures, traditions and religions, have slowly asserted their character of ‘nation’, in other words, of men and women originating from the same ethnical group.

4. This approach has a strong consonance/harmony with Erodotus’ approach. Before he narrated of the Persian wars, he described the physical environment structure in which the then known population lived and then their institutions, uses and traditions, religion. Only at last came the events.

5. The parental relation (filial and parental) is admitted by both. Cf. Prefazione by Braudel to Wallerstein (1974).

6. By so saying I do not mean that Wallerstein inspires himself directly to stoic philosophy, something that would not surprise me either, but only that his theory implies a rationality of the world that ‘evolves’ or, more neutrally, ‘proceeds’ according to well defined laws that men may elaborate and express. In this sense his thoughts on philosophy of nature by I. Prigogine (cf. Wallerstein 1998) are important.

7. See also Sombart (1902).

8. They are The Georg Simmel Lectures of 1995.

9. ‘Virtually every social science has taken some version of the national society as the basic unit and the framing context for its intellectual enterprise … Perhaps it is time to demote the nation-state from its throne of analytic sovereignty correspondingly, as its real base of economic, political, integrative, and cultural sovereignty is lessened’ (Smelser 1997, p. 96).

10. ‘International sociology, or global sociology, which takes the relations among nations as its focus – or, alternatively, treats the world or some subsystem of it as its unit of analysis – is the least developed area of sociology. By now, however, it is one of the most important, largely because of the ongoing transformation of its subject matter, the world’ (Smelser 1997, p. 73).