Theorizing societalization across borders: Globality, transnationality, postcoloniality

Abstract

The editorial summarizes the main conceptual and epistemological challenges of theorizing on society across borders. Its particular aim is to initiate the dialogue between theories of society and cross-border studies that address global, transnational and postcolonial relations. In essence, this special issue addresses four interrelated concerns of studying societal processes across borders. The first of these concerns is prompted by a decades-old critique of methodological nationalism. The second concern addresses the question of how can ‘society’ and the boundaries of ‘societalization’ be conceptualized, if global, transnational and postcolonial processes straddle the boundaries of nation-states? The third concern relates to the fact that sociological ‘grand’ theories have been criticized for failing to analyze recent developments of societies on a meso- and micro-level. Fourthly, a conversation between social theory and cross-border studies is also challenged by epistemic inequalities. Therefore, theories of society should be able to take into account not only the ‘grand scale’ of societal contexts and societal changes but also the positionality of the theorizing subject within global asymmetries of power.