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Globalization

Theory and Trends

Stanford University, USA, meyer{at}stanford.edu

Since the Second World War, there has been a steadily increasing awareness of a global society, and of national interdependencies in this society. The catastrophes of the war (and earlier Depression) and the extraordinary violations of human rights and welfare are involved. So are rapid decolonization, and political and economic interdependencies. Consciousness of a global society, however, has led to nothing like a world state, so all the much-perceived interdependencies lead to global movements to control the national and social actors that are understood to carry the burden of social control. Thus world culture has created wave after wave of somewhat standardized national policies, committing countries to the pursuit of collective progress and individual welfare and equality, and to international cooperation. The political logic here is one of natural law, not positive law, since there is no world state. Extraordinary expansions of world political society result — an explosion in the use of science, and various principles of standardized social rationality, and dramatic emphases on individual rights, welfare, and empowerment.

Key Words: globalization • sociological institutionalism • world society

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