ABSTRACT
This chapter will focus on theories of globalization and social solidarity. It has been seen in Chapter 1 that according to some social theorists globalization transforms our understanding of ‘the social’ in ways unanticipated by earlier theory. Urry for example argues that in order to address globalization as an emergent reality, sociology must renounce outmoded conceptual systems (including the ‘concept’ of society) and develop new rules of method. A similar theme is present, if less dramatically, in theorists such as Giddens, Robertson, Beck and Held who have pointed to the far-reaching impact of globalization on understanding social interaction and institutions. This chapter will review some of these claims, with particular reference to Beck’s theory of globalization, in order to argue for the continuing salience of ‘the social’. In this chapter Beck will be taken as an example of a theorist who outlines in general terms the destructive power of globalization (Giddens’ notion of the ‘runaway world’ would be another), arguing that it undermines existing forms of solidarity without obviously generating any new modes. In this sense he restates the core problem of classical sociology, which was how, if at all, the dynamic destructiveness of
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capitalism was consistent with the possibility of social cohesion and integration.
