ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the contours of the concept of world society and outline the connections and tensions with the current endeavour to develop an international political sociology as a distinct approach within the discipline of International Relations (IR). The Stanford School, sometimes also known as sociological neo-institutionalism, is centred around John Meyer and became a widespread source of inspiration for some constructivists in the 1990s spread globally. While the English School associates world society with a distinct mode of global integration, the Stanford School defines world society in terms of rationalization through global scripts and ‘scientification’. The Stanford School uses world society in terms of a cultural system and global scripts and thereby shows how agency is continuously ‘brought in line’ through a set of actors that are usually discarded in IR. The concludes with a discussion of how world society as a problem could help us to advance an international political sociology.
