WORLD SOCIETY – CONCEPT AND TOPICS

From the 1990´s onwards “globalisation” has been used as a buzzword to describe increasing world-wide trade, information flows, global cultural phenomena, movements of people, spreading of Internet and other related phenomena. In the beginning of the 90´s I proposed and believed that this increasing global integration would lead to the insight that the whole world could, and should, be characterised as one entity, loosely integrated and organised society, that is, world society (Nieminen 1993, see application to European integration in Nieminen 2005, especially pp. 366-375).

Well, I was wrong, even in the heydays of globalisation frenzy national or state-centred approach to social, economic and cultural phenomena retained its prioritised position (see, for instance blog about changing capitalism and national elites).

However, I still believe that our understanding of the present social, cultural and economic dynamics would profit if we were to comprehend the world as one loosely integrated world society instead of falling into the limited perspectives of nation-states and other nationally organised actors like business firms. To argument for the approach offered by the world society, I must first define what I mean with the fuzzy notion of “society”.

TO WHAT QUESTION THE NOTION OF SOCIETY IS AN ANSWER?

It is noteworthy that old theories of social interaction remain limited in their scope. They mostly concentrate in political organisation of human communities discussing problems of political governance within political entities and their often-belligerent relations with each other (see, for instance Aristotle, Machiavelli, confucianism, theocratic doctrines). They paid very little attention to the economy and culture of these political entities and showed even less interest in lives of women, subordinate workers, children and elderly. Notably they showed minimal interest to organising and making of work even if productive work is a prerequisite for existence of all human groups.

This situation changes dramatically with the advent of modern sociology. Classics like Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber endeavoured to develop theories of social interaction that would consider the multifaceted characteristics of social interactions. 

Apparently, the main motivators for this widening of social theorizing stemmed from the expansion of capitalism, widening market relations, rising working class, nationalism, mass participation to politics, fear of weakening of traditional communities and authority, rise of mass media, imperialism and colonialism. These phenomena produced functional need to approach human interactions from a broad perspective that would offer a fuller picture of functioning and reproduction of social order. It was no longer sufficient to handle social relations from the point of view of political élites, their interactions and conflicts.

After the 19th century, this totalizing approach to social life has been supplemented with new subfields like organisational studies, sociology of work, cultural studies, feminism and so on. Taken together these subfields offer manifold picture of social life, but on the other hand, this flood of ever new subfields of social enquiry jeopardized the very notion of modern societal approach to social interaction.

In fact, influential postmodern thinking has declared that the era of grant narrative of modernisation is over, and it is pointless to try to figure what the logic of societal development might be. Yet, I would argue that the mainstream politics and modes of thinking still follow main lines of modern social theories developed in the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. If not for any other reason, then because there are no plausible alternatives.

Hence, the notion of society (and sociology) aims to answer the question: What diverse forces and elements integrate humans into social entities?

Habitually, these entities are defined as (nation) states, but I argue here that a more proper entity is world society. How this approach to the question of social integration could be justified?

DEFINITION OF WORLD SOCIETY

So, the notion of society endeavours to answer the question how humans form and maintain social entities. These entities are normally grasped as limited systems of social interactions among humans. Basic definition of a society includes these fundamental features:

1. It includes all kinds of social interactions, friendly, competitive, hostile and violent. (It would be impossible to speak about social relations or entities without interactions.)

2. People are conscious of these interactions. (It would be difficult if not impossible to understand human interactions without any symbolic representations.)

3. It has external borders. (Without defined borders, it would be impossible to comprehend dynamical interactions within a system.)

Starting from these fundamental premises, it is easy to see why the notion of world society makes sense in the modern world: Direct and indirect social interactions span over the whole globe. This can be verified, for instance, by glancing at statistics about international trade, movements of people and spread of Internet. 

People are also conscious of these interactions; everyday perceptions, ideologies and social scientific theories purport to present and explain these interactions. Important elements of this societal consciousness are globally accepted ideas and norms like states as fundamental political units of global entity, rules of scientific research, human rights, ideas of education, modernisation of economic activities, functioning of global information flows via Internet, global technical norms, international law and agreements, production of global statistics about populations, international migration, national accounts and so on.

Lastly, theories of society always exclude some elements of reality. These excluded phenomena may be the nature (social integration is normally conceptualised as sociocultural phenomenon, not as socio-natural dynamics), individuals or groups that are seen as aliens, outcasts, or morally bad. Singular social sciences exclude phenomena that do not belong to their discipline (economics concentrate in market interactions, politics in power relations and so on).

In the previous section of this blog, I referred to classics of sociology and social sciences arguing that they were interested in conceptualizing social life in its totality. From the point of view of a world society, it is interesting to note that even if their empirical studies often concentrated in national or premodern societies, they aimed to develop universal theories about human social life. In this respect they preceded the notion of world society.

Now, whereas in my opinion the notion of world society has strong plausibility in it, it also opens vast areas of uncertainty and open questions. This is because it is much easier to concentrate in national societies or in singular phenomena like markets or culture than to try to understand manifold interactions in a global context. On the other hand, given some present social phenomena, conflicts and problems, the notion of world society could prove handy. In the next section I try to present phenomena that could be illuminated by using this broad notion of society.

 

TOPICS OF WORLD SOCIETY

Some of the current sociocultural phenomena could be better understood if we approach them from a global perspective:

• Nation states, or state-organised societies, are often conceptualised as independent political units. But it would be more realistic to tackle them as political subunits of larger regional entities or as parts of the world society. The function of the state is to govern politically certain geographical areas within the world society. A world state is an unlikely creature in the world society because of large societal and cultural differences within the world society. World society and its dynamics form a framework in which states fulfil their functions. (Wobbe 2000, 52-53). The notion of independent state-actors is in fact a legal fiction that hides global interdependencies.
• Globally sinking birth rates seem to indicate that this phenomenon is based on universal causal factors, that is, dynamics of the world society. It is estimated that in coming decades the global population begins to diminish. This shrinking has already begun in number of countries and areas.
• World trade, globalisation of production and their volume, patterns and regulations tell us a story about functioning of global economic relations. Currently, the president of United States aims to strengthen the relative position of the United States by imposing high tariffs to just about all other countries in the world. Such policies can be understood by positioning the United States into its relative place within the world society: it has been a hegemon but its relative position has been weakening in recent decades.
• Some political and economic conflicts can be conceptualized as power politics withing global élites or global class of capitalist (or global oligarchy), not as conflicts among peoples of states.
• Many modes of interaction and symbolic forms used in Internet and social media are global. They constitute part of a global symbolic order and representation of the world society.
• Perhaps most importantly, human influence on the nature (overexploitation of natural resources, pollution, climate change), so called Anthropocene, necessitates broadening of the notion of society so that it includes interactions among humans and the rest of the nature. In general, human have mainly concentrated in depicting human social interactions, but our understanding of human-nature relations is much more limited. Obviously, this is one of the main challenges of societal and world society theories nowadays.

 

LASTLY

This blog has only touched surface of theoretical perspectives and empirical themes of the global society. The world society approach has all the questions and issues of general social theory and a few additional problems of its own. 

Here are some links to useful resources about this topic:

Institute for World Society Studies

World Society Foundation 

Power, Hegemony, and World Society Theory: A Critical Evaluation

World society approach is not a magic bullet that would solve theoretical and practical problems with ease. But in my view it  does offer a fruitful and, in fact, unavoidable perspective to our present world.

This blog was updated on 23th September 2025.

REFERENCES

Nieminen, A. Kansainvälisyys - haaste sosiologialle? Eli kolme teesiä yhteiskuntakä­sitteestä. In: Kosonen, P. (ed.). 1993. Näkökulmia Eurooppaan ja integraatioon. Helsingin yliopiston oikeussosiologian julkaisuja No 7. Yliopistopaino, Helsinki.

Nieminen, A. 2005.  Towards a European Society? Integration and Regulation of Capitalism. Department of Sociology Research Reports No. 245, University of Helsinki. Available: http://hdl.handle.net/10138/23442

Wobbe, T. 2000. Weltgesellschaft (Einsichten). Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld. Available: https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/23403