Global Sociology: Four Transformations

Pleyers, Geoffrey [UCL]

Extended version of the discourse pronounced as newly elected president of the International Sociological Association. While sociology aims at understanding the transformations of our world, our discipline is also affected and itself transformed by them. This is notably the case of the project of global sociology, which needs to be revisited considering the transformations our world has gone through over the past decades. I started studying globalization in the late 1990s. By then, it was a central topic in sociology. “Sociology for One World” was already the theme for the ISA 1990 World Congress. Thirty-three years later, global challenges have become even more critical. Our world has become increasingly “global”. However, how we see the world, globalization, and sociology have changed dramatically. In this short address, I would like to briefly mention four of these changes, why they require renewing the project of a global sociology.