ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses albeit very quickly and superficially, some of the main strands in this more complicated tapestry which is the history of sociological thought since the war. Macrosociology is the term given to the endeavour to study and compare total societies and cultures, or major aspects of them. The scholars who have turned their minds in this direction have not always spoken of civilisations; some speak of high cultures or world cultures, but they are agreed that it is reasonable to think about human social life on a large scale in such terms. Oswald Spengler has a very similar breakdown of world history into units which he calls "high cultures". The recognition by Pitirim s. Sorokin that human cultures are not tidy means that it is less easy for him to say something general about them than it is for a Spengler or a Arnold J. Toynbee, but he does provide some categories for this purpose.
