World society
Our research proceeds from the assumption that globalization is not only a recent phenomenon but that there have been worldwide contacts and interconnections in the form of trade, political conquest or religious proselytization already several hundred years ago. These early globalization processes, together with more recent processes of globalization, gradually generated a global social system.
We conceive of this global social system as the modern world society, one of its most important traits being that it transforms all other social structures and processes into internal phenomena - including nation states and the recent financial crisis as much as little corner shops and school lessons.
Research at the Institute for World Society Studies, then, has two closely related aims: It seeks to understand the - past and present - formation and development of modern world society as a special kind of social system; and, on the other hand, it seeks to understand a broad range of issues by reading them as structures and processes internal to this world society.
Theoretical-conceptual focus
Central reference-points for this kind of research are the systems theory developed by Niklas Luhmann and the world-polity approach of John W. Meyer. Generally, our research seeks to establish links to mainstream sociological theory which traditionally refers to the single nation state. Thus, rather than building a separate corpus of theory exclusively applicable to global phenomena, we aim at developing present knowledge in classic sociological issues like education, social inequality, modernity or social change so as to account for the global condition of contemporary society.
Research themes
As we do not regard globalization and world society as primarily economic phenomena, our research encompasses a broad range of fields - science and technology, politics and economy, sport, religion and development cooperation.
Especially, our research focuses on the following themes:
Global semantics: The representation of world society
Globalization is not only produced by interactions which connect different parts of the world - like trade, diplomacy, internet communication etc. - but it is also culturally constituted, as, for example, by a social awareness of the world as one world.
Thus, the second half of the 19th century was an era of pronounced globalization in trade and other fields - but also, during the same period, numerous techniques to present and visualize world society were created. Well-planned world-events like fairs and Olympic Games set world society in scene for a global public. During the 20th century, one of the most prominent devices for describing and observing world society has been the concept of 'development'. It provided a scheme for comparing every region or country with any other region in the world, and it defined a common goal 'progress' for all nations.
Our research in this field investigates which ideas and imaginations are selected to present world society, and how they are being modified over time. Thus, today, the concept of human rights may have become more generally accepted than the idea of societal development. But how can we explain this cultural change? Why are certain ideas selected and others rejected? Are ideas from more peripheral countries generally able to gain influence on a global level?
On a more technical plane, research on the expressive aspects of world society analyses the special communicative techniques by which these are produced and which are specifically appropriate to make world society 'tangible' - pictures, texts, statistics or world-events.
Global social policy
A traditional research focus at the Institute for World Society Studies is global social policy.
Whereas the welfare state historically originated in Western Europe, it not only spread to other ?Western? countries later. Since the 1990s, welfare state-institutions such as old age pensions emerged in several so-called transitional countries. These and related developments rise the question if the welfare state - like other core institutions of modernity, market and democracy - will in a long term perspective shape the social structure and culture of world society.
Several projects in this field analyse the spread of welfare state institutions to transitional countries, conceptualizing it as an autonomous globalization process that must not be understood just as an epiphenomenon of economic globalization.
Projects with a more regional focus investigate the conditions and impacts of particular reforms or policies such as the introduction of old-age insurances in China. Global social policy is thus a research field at the Institute for World Society with a special practical relevance.
Human rights
A couple of past and present research projects of our members deal with human rights. Among their research questions are:
How are new human rights generated within world society, and how are they institutionalized? How do these developments relate to (global) processes of social change?
How do human rights spread globally? On which mechanisms do these diffusion processes concretely rely? Which role do different actors play in this context? Are, for example, social rights like the right to education or to clean water globally recognized at all?
How are we to understand discrepancies between the political semantic of human rights and their actual implementation? How does the constitutional implementation of specific human rights, e.g. equal rights for women, differ from country to country?
Microsociology of world society
It might be suggested that only macro-structures such as nation states, big firms or international organizations were relevant to the study of world society. But typical micro-social entities like face-to-face interactions or single events can develop a global relevance, too, and they can be globally/internationally constituted. Micro-structures may also play an important role in the representation and symbolization of world society. Thus, political demonstrations of ethnical or religious minorities might gain global relevance through coverage in the mass media, and this might in turn foster the development of new law regimes. Events like UN-Summits, world fairs or international sport events are specifically arranged with a global audience in mind and can be read as mise-en-scène of world society.
The study of these micro-social structures is a focus of research at the Institute since some years and currently the object of two PhD projects.
Organizations
Organizations have always played a central role in globalization processes - the Jesuit church and the trade companies of the 17th century being only some very early examples. Today, organizations are the locus of world society's most dynamic internal growth, and an immense increase in the number and size of organizations can be found in virtually every societal field.
Our current research projects on organizations investigate primarily the following questions:
- they try to understand the interplay between the global diffusion of certain organizational techniques and their design (e.g., SAP).
- they investigate the consequences that these diffusion processes have for the organizations concerned.
- they analyze organizations as producers of a huge amount of numerical data and the presentation of these data in world public.
International Relations and world society
International Relations and sociology have for a long time cultivated a rather comfortable division of labour: Sociology seemed to feel that only social phenomena internal to national societies were relevant fields of sociological research, while International Relations was exclusively responsible for the scientific study of social relations between nation states.
Now, as sociologists have discovered the whole field of social processes and structures beyond the nation state as a relevant field of sociological inquiry, there is much more cross-fertilization between the two disciplines. But still, few sociologists are interested in core issues of international politics like security policy. And the adoption of sociological concepts in International Relations is still rather selective.
International Relations scholars at the Institute for World Society Studies feel that the study of international politics and global governance can be improved by adopting sociological insights into IR. They share a strong interest in combining approaches from political science and sociology, placing international/global politics and global governance in a broader world-societal context. Among the themes researched in this vein have been border conflicts, the social construction of political spaces and European governance.
