Fehlinterpretationen der Weltgesellschaftstheorie

The article responds to a critical discussion of sociological world society research and our article “What makes globalization possible?” (KZfSS 63/2011) by Markus Holzinger in the present issue of this journal. We repeat the central point made in our earlier article: that world society theories should be seen and used as a heuristic device to develop a historical sociology of globalization, rather than transferring obsolete controversies within sociological theory to yet another research field. To make this point, we (2) recapitulate our article, showing where and how we see it as being misrepresented in Holzinger’s article. Against this background, we (3) discuss a typical research interest of world society theories—the relationship between global structures (expectations, institutions) and the local appropriation of (or dissociation from) them—using the example of the decoupling-thesis by the Stanford School.