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Innovation: The European Journal of

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The impact of globalization on

sociological concepts: Community,
culture and milieu
a

Martin Albrow , John Eade , Neil Washbourne & Jorg

Durrschmidt
a

Visiting Professor at the Roehampton Institute , London

Principal Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Social

Policy , Roehampton Institute , London
Published online: 24 Jan 2012.

To cite this article: Martin Albrow , John Eade , Neil Washbourne & Jorg Durrschmidt (1994) The
impact of globalization on sociological concepts: Community, culture and milieu, Innovation: The
European Journal of Social Science Research, 7:4, 371-389, DOI: 10.1080/13511610.1994.9968418
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Innovation, Vol. 1, Ko. 4,1994

371

The Impact of Globalization on Sociological Concepts:

Community, Culture and Milieu1

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MARTIN ALBROW, JOHN EADE, NEIL WASHBOURNE AND JORG

DURRSCHMIDT

A B S T R A C T Out of Giddens' (1990) emphasis on modernity and Robertson's (1992) on globality

emerges the need to conceptualize globalization in relation to the social per se. An exemplificatory conceptual
case studypointsto globalprocessesstrainingolder concepts formed for nation state sociologies:deterrtorialization of the community concept results in the imagined community; global culture signals the fragmentation
of the culture concept; 'milieu ' has to be extended and generalizedforglobal relevance. Globalization makes
the structuration of newforms and types of groups and social relationships a key conceptual problem for
sociology. But its impact also highlights the generative processesfor new sociological concepts.

Introduction
Recent writing on globalization has asserted that it has a profound impact on social life.
Equally it claims a key place for the concept in the social sciences. Taking those ideas
together, we propose that globalization amounts to more thanjust another sociological field.
We examine three specific cases to show that it exercises a transformative influence on sociological concepts generally.
For Robertson the discussion of globalization 'touches just about every aspect of academic
disciplines' (1992, p. 9). For Giddens the term 'must have a key position in the lexicon of
the social sciences' (1990, p. 52) Robertson interprets the concept as referring 'both to the
compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole'
(1992, p. 8). Giddens defines it as 'the intensification of worldwide social relations' (1990,
p. 64). Both agree that it entails a refocusing of sociological work.
The reasons they argue for this are similar. They both provide a historical dimension to
show the reflexivity of globalization. The local and the global interact over time to transform
social relations. Robertson writes of'the global field', in which societies, selves and citizenship are relativized. Giddens has a dialectic of global and local conducted through new trust
generating abstract systems.
The implication is that sociologists need new ways of talking and writing about the world
because it has changed. Concepts which reflected an older order, such as society, class,
state, all suffer strain. Giddens notes the difficulty equating society with the nation state
(1990, p. 64). Robertson sees globalization stimulating a search for fundamentals underpinning these shifting phenomena (1992, pp. 174-177).
They are not alone in finding older concepts inadequate. For instance scepticism about
the usefulness of 'society' has been expressed by Mann (1986, p. 2) and Bauman (1992,
p. 57). Clark and Lipset (1991) breathed life into old arguments by suggesting that the
concept of class had lost explanatory relevance under new conditions.
But Giddens and Robertson offer more than deconstruction. They each in effect suggest
a holistic theory of social change in which conceptual transformation is inherent, although

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372 Martin Albrow et al.

there are striking points of difference between them. Giddens' (1990) globalization is the
culmination of modernity where technological developments permit social relationships to
be conducted at a distance (disembedding). This leads him to emphasize changes in personal
consciousness and ideas of self (Giddens, 1991, 1992).
Robertson calls that 'homogenized "modern man" injected with a special dose of phenomenological reflexivity' (1992, p. 145). By contrast he emphasizes the practical consciousness involved in globality and the impact that this has on global order. He pursues a culturalist critique of Wallerstein's (1974) world-system theory and, despite allusions to 'compression', accords scant significance to technology in general or communication technology in
particular.
To a degree their theories of social change explain why Giddens and Robertson do not
pursue the idea of conceptual transformation very far. They tend towards a one-sided
historicism: avision of arelentless pressure, over centuries, exerted by modernity (Giddens)
or globality (Robertson) to change society, with the social losing autonomy in the process.
But how does one then capture the sense of dramatically faster recent change marked by
the emergence of the idea of globalization? How does one register thcroda/innovativeness
which often prompts technological and cultural change?
We agree with Robertson that the globe as a substantive point of reference for individual
and collective actors is a vital element in globalization. Agreeing with Giddens we consider
that technical developments are fundamental. But it is the social organization of culture and
technology conjointly which has recently turned the global point of reference into reality
from a dream. Globalization is an historically contingent outcome of numerous interacting
elements, not a necessary culmination of an unswerving juggernaut.
The compass needed the ship and the will to trade before it could be part of the transformation in the world-system of which Wallerstein has written. It was because they were not
linked to a further whole range of other requirements including means of instant communication and information networks that these interrelationships in the sixteenth century do
not deserve to be called 'globalization' (a term Wallerstein rightly did not apply to his
account).
Globalization is a comprehensive transformation which has only recently gathered full
momentum. It occurs when the individual actor has the chance to act with reference to other
people wherever they might be located on the globe and takes the globe as a meaningful
frame of reference.2 For this to happen a whole range of economic, technological, political
and cultural interactive effects have to be fulfilled. Globalization is the inscription of these
in social relations.
We are then talking specifically about a social transformation. Changing interplays between culture, politics, technology and the economy take place through new forms of social
relations. This is why globalization means changes in basic sociological concepts as research
strives to keep pace with the changing world. In this transformation the space and the
materiality of the globe as a whole is now a real factor represented in new forms of social
organization.
Clearly a comprehensive review of changes in sociological concepts under the impact of
globalization extends far beyond die confines of a journal article. We therefore conceive
this paper as an exploratory conceptual case study. We have focused on three concepts,
closely linked in the history of sociology, which, taken together, suggest the factors which
a more general study will need to examine across the discipline as a whole.
We begin with 'community' because of its centrality in classic sociology early in the
century, its equal salience in macro and micro sociological discourses and for its resonance
in the language of everyday and political life. There we find major reconceptualizations of
the idea to accommodate global changes.

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"The Impact of Globalization on Sociological Concepts 373

We then take 'culture' because for a time in mid-century, above all with Talcott Parsons
(1951) it was the key concept in the attempt to provide a theoretical solution to the individual/
society problematic. It correspondingly now seems to be suffering the most dramatic disintegration, not just as a concept for sociology, but in relation to any discourse.
We proceed to 'milieu' because it has repair potential. It has had a discontinuous relationship with the discipline. It attracted the Chicago School for a time and C. Wright Mills said
the distinction between social structure and personal milieux was one 'of the most important
available' (1956, p. 321). It has surfaced again in Goffman's (1971) Umwelten ('familiar
surroundings', pp. 248-256) andin Giddens' (1991) 'protective cocoon' (p.27) and we consider it important because of its pointers to future conceptual developments.
Our method is historical in that we identify key points in the past when conceptual shifts
have taken place and seek to relate them to changes in the world. It is also analytical since
we treat concepts as composites of ideas the elements of which can be identified and refined.
Since we as sociologists cannot evade globalization's impact either, we also propose to work
constructively, suggesting new formulations where that seems appropriate.3
The three concepts we have chosen raise key issues also about the relationship between
sociology and other disciplines. We have not hesitated to draw on academic contributions
to the understanding of community, culture and milieu which stem from anthropology,
cultural studies or phenomenology. In some cases the impetus for change comes from
outside sociology and the development of those disciplines is itself clearly an aspect of
broader historical change.
But then the old question about the autonomy of sociology arises in new form. We conclude that the reconceptualization of the social under globalized conditions is now a main
priority for sociologists if they are going to make a substantial contribution to a theme which
preoccupies world leaders as much as it does academics.4
Community: from primordial to imagined
If we take the concept of community we can address at the outset the classic features of the
embeddedness of the sociological concept in the social realities of a particular historical
period. Communities were part of lived life for a multitude of people, 'community' became
the talisman of a comprehensive theorization of modern social change, in which certain
attributes were invested by sociologists with primordial significance for the conduct of living.
Nineteenth century analysts of social and economic changeDe Tocqueville, Comte,
Toennies, Durkheim and Marx-began their projects with an examination of what was
causingthe demise of'community'(see Bell andNewby, 1971, p. 22). They generally valued
'community' positively and frequently shared 'a pervading posture of nostalgiaof praising
the past to blame the presentand the two themes combined when the present "society" was
criticised with reference to past "community" ' (ibid.). Despite the wide variety of definitions
of'community' which have since been proposed within the social sciences the influence of
these early writers appears to have encouraged assumptions that community involves 'particularism and ascription and diffuseness and affectivityas a consequence, for example, of
kinship being important and of stability and "knowing" everyone' (ibid., p. 27). Even though
these features potentially could be disaggregated and analyzed separately from each other,
they were constantly referred back to the bounded entity of the small local community.
The influence of diese assumptions can be detected in the plethora of American and British
empirical studies of localities undertaken between 1920 and the early 1960s. Classic studies
by R.E. Park and other members of the 'Chicago School' (Wirth, 1928; Zorbaugh, 1929;
Stonequist, 1937; Park, 1950,1952), by the Lynds in 'Middletown' (Lynd, R. and Lynd,
H., 1953 [1937]) and Lloyd Warner in'Yankee City' (Warner and Lunt, 1941; Warnerand

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374

Martin Albrow et al.

Srole, 1945; Warner and Low, 1947) provided substantive data for sociological debates
concerning local communities in northern US urban settings while small town life in the
'Deep South' was explored in pioneering research undertaken by Davis et al. (1941) and
Dollard (1957). In post-war Britain the themes of community and locality were examined
in similar detailed studies which encompassed both urban and rural settlements (Rees, 1950 ;
Brennanrfa/., 1954; Williams, 1961 ; Willmott and Young, 1957; Stacey, 1960) and extended to other parts of Europe (Keur and Keur, 1955; Banfield, 1956; Wylie, 1961).
During the 1960s and 1970s assumptions concerning locality and community and the
sociological models of society to which they were related were extensively criticized as the
impact of wider social, economic and political forces on local communities came to be
appreciated and the issues of internal cleavages and conflicts were highlighted (see Bell and
Newby, 1971, pp. 154-162 and pp. 218-252). In Britain sociological interest in local community studies has waned, probably because those wider forces appear to relocate the
attributes of community elsewhere, for instance in ethnic minorities and peasant society
within Western Europe on which anthropological research has gathered pace (Jeffery, 1976;
Davis, 1977; Watson, 1977; Saifullah Khan, 1979; Werbner, 1990, 1991; Cohen, 1986;
MacDonald, 1989; Bouquet and Winter, 1987; Mandel, 1990). While this research has
added considerably to our knowledge about specific groups of people in certain localities
the assumptions and theoretical problems which dogged sociological writing on community
do not appear to have been resolved.
The expanding literature on Britain's ethnic minorities, for example, has usually focused
on the social, cultural, economic and political content of local communities and the ethnic
boundaries which these groups maintain between themselves and outsiders (primarily the
'indigenous' majority). The fundamental institutions of these groups are assumed to be the
family, kinship networks, religious and cultural organizations (see, for example, Wallman,
1979; Bhachu, 1985; Shaw, 1988; Werbner, 1990). While these writings do not challenge
the conventions established by the community studies tradition some recent discussions of
ethnicity and 'race' in Britain and the USA indicate a growing awareness of the need for
new approaches towards community and locality. Appadurai (1990), Bhabha (1990), Hall
(1991a, b, 1992) and Gilroy (1987,1993) have analyzed in different ways the construction
of imagined, diasporic communities, 'new ethnicities' and a third, hybrid space between
'insiders' and 'outsiders' in the context of global processes. In their accounts they have
emphasized the central role played by migrant workers, refugees and tourists, for example,
in the changing definitions of belonging where nation-state boundaries and loyalties are
challenged orby-passed by global/local dynamics. Appadurai (1990) is particularly persuasive in his analysis of the ways by which the production of locality takes place within the
context of global technological communications and the emergence of'virtual communities'
which span the globe.
The shift to seeing the imagined community (Anderson, 1986) as the guiding principle for
lived social relations represents an important step toward the disembedding of community
for it opens the possibility of representing the absent and distant as being integral to the local.
At the same time the process of globalization, if acknowledged at all by those concerned with
community, is usually understood as having only limited relevance to the communities
studied and, where relevant, leading to the homogenization of culture (see Albrow, 1993).
In adopting such a suspicious or limited view of globalization the discussion of changes taking
place within Britain and other Wes tern nations fails to appreciate the manifold ways in which
the orderings and imaginings of community are determined by not only more global levels
(metropolitan, national and international) but by globalization as a process sui generis.
As we have earlier noted, Giddens has emphasized the ways by which modern technology
enables people to maintain social relationships across the globe (disembedding) and the

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The Impact of Globalization on Sodological Concepts 375

implications of this process for the maintenance of national boundaries and loyalties. While
accepting that the concept of disembedding is illuminating in the specific context of'symbolic
tokens' and 'expert systems' Robertson notes that Giddens neglects 'the fact that social and
cultural differentiation and the tensions and conflicts often occasioned by such, including
"fundamentalistic" attempts to dedifferentiate sociocultural systems, have been pivotal circumstances of recent world history' (Robertson, 1992, p. 144).
Robertson's argument is particularly powerful when ethnic movements are considered
across the globe, i.e. ethnic groups in the USA and Britain, ethnic conflict in Northern Ireland
or the former Yugoslavia and ethnic revivalism in the former USSR. In Britain the production of local communities by ethnic minorities is shaped by global processes which extend
far beyond national boundaries and imaginings and involve 'fundamentalist' rhetorics of
belonging which can establish among British Muslims, for example, an identification with
a worldwide Islamic community (umma) where national boundaries have no place. Britain's
'white' majority is also caught up in this global process of identity formation where the
'future for Britain in a rapidly changing world' is a constant theme in the media and other
forums for public debate. National lites play a key role in this public debate and extend
their rival interpretations across the globe through their privileged access to the means of
information production and distribution.
The construction of 'community' in a specific locality, therefore, cannot be analyzed on
the assumption that the local is prior, primordial, more 'real'. Local solidarities and imaginings may also be produced by global processesa process which is most dramatically illustrated in the lives of migrant workers and their descendants but includes others within the
nation-state. Second generation Bangladeshis in the 'East End' of London, for instance,
engage in lively, diverse commentaries on belonging which range across numerous boundaries of space and time (Eade, 1989, 1990, 1994). Their sense of being British/Bengali/
Bangladeshi/Muslim is informed by the links they maintain with others across the UK,
other Western countries, their country of origin, other territories and co-religionists (Eade,
1990 ; Gardner, 1993). Their his/herstories of where they have come from engage dynamically with interpretations of their present situation in East London. The knowledge which
is used in these constructions of belonging is produced and transmitted through telephone
conversations, religious ceremonies, newspaper accounts, television and radio programmes,
videos and music recordings through a global network of social and technological linkages.
Visits to friends and relatives, interaction with colleagues at work and other forms of 'community' involvement employ this global network to produce 'locality'. Their productivity
runs parallel with the activity of other 'locals' such as 'white' residents whose narratives of
the past and present may exclude them as 'foreigners' in some instances but which also draw
on global networks to establish the knowledge of who belongs to the locality and the nation.
To understand community, therefore, a break has to be made with an intellectual tradition
which was shaped by our 19th century forebears and which associated community with a
disappearing world of traditional solidarities and values. The current ignorance or suspicion
of debates concerning globalization among those who undertake detailed studies of ethnic
minorities in Britain, for example, parallels those earlier celebrations of community in opposition to modern society. At the same time the shift in the focus of community studies to
the abstract, imagined community requires more careful attention to the issue of disembedding in particular than the discussion of diasporic communities, hybridity and 'new ethnicities' has so far allowed.5 At the same time the analysis of globalization needs to be located
in a deeper empirical investigation of specific situationsone of the undoubted strengths of
local community studies and ethnic minority group reports.
Community is in the process of being disembedded, therefore, to the extent that we
identify its reconstitution on a non-local, non-spatially bounded basis. The potential was

376 Martin Albrow et al.

already there in the early formulations of Toennies, but those attributes of community were
persistently referred back to the bounded locality. In large part this was because community
was idealized and associated with a disappearing past which was represented as more clearly
delimited and where people knew where they stood. It was a potent myth to reinforce efforts
to shape the ever changing contemporary reality, to stabilize the state, contain disorder and
limit the consequences of seemingly uncheckable forces of modernity. As such it was intimately connected with the myth of cultural integration.

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Culture: from integration to disintegration

The same kind of emphasis on boundedness and coherence traditionally dominated the
sociological treatment of the idea of culture, even though this was potentially, and indeed
has become, the idea through which the transitory nature of social arrangements can most
easily be represented. Indeed 'culture' has become something of a watchword for those who
document the decline of recognizable social entities and the disintegration of society itself.
The source of the shift in sociological interpretation of culture can be found in the inherent
tension which was at the heart of Raymond Williams' project, namely '... to reconcile the
meanings of culture as "creative activity" and "a whole way oflife" ' (Williams, 1984 [1961],
p. 56). In the functionalist paradigm of sociology 'the way oflife' tracked the course of
community and became its ideal counterpart.
This was reinforced by its incorporation in a dichotomy which was celebrated in German
social theory, namely betweenKultur and Zivilisation. The latter paralleled the development
of Gesellschaft and was associated with technical progress. As one much-read theorist of the
1920s put it when commenting on Oswald Spengler, 'Civilisation is a gift which may pass
to unworthy generations, culture is a realisation which none can share but those to whom
it really belongs' (Maclver, 1928, p. 437). The creative aspect of culture was thus linked
with the essential characteristics of a group, embedded in a group, separating it from the
wider world, where rationality held sway. Even an iconoclast like McLuhan (1962) could
not resist exploiting the parallelism of community and culture when he invoked the 'Global
Village'.
Archer (1988) argues that 'culture' has been, and still is, one of the vaguest and most
vacillating of concepts in sociological analysis. Nonetheless the 'myth of cultural integration'
has effected the perceptual as well as conceptual elaboration of'culture' (p. 2).
The myth was nurtured above all by the assimilation of anthropological perspectives into
the functionalist paradigm for modern societies (see Robertson, 1992, pp. 110-111). The
result was that where instances of minority detachment from mainstream culture were
manifest, the paradigm was preserved by engaging in the ethnography of the 'subculture'
in which the assumptions of separateness, boundaries and essential nature were reproduced
(Gould and Kolb, 1964, pp. 167-168).
In other words 'subculture' is offered as a device to recognize diversity, whilst reducing
the pluralism of its possibilities, by making it an integral part of an integrated whole (cf.
Boudon and Bourricaud, 1989, pp. 95-96).
In the post-war period the myth of'cultural integration' has in effect been challenged from
the outside by the development of the field known as cultural studies Qenks, 1994, pp. 151158). Williams was one of the key figures in its growth. He argued that there were three
dominant uses of'culture'culture as the process of human perfection through intellectual,
spiritual and aesthetic development; culture as high culture; and culture as a way oflife.
More than once in his work he reflected upon the 'genuine complexity' of the various
meanings and use of the term (Williams, 1984 [1961], p. 59; 1976, pp. 80-81), and this
notion of complexity as a good thing, rather than a bad thing or a simply irreducible facticity,

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can also be seen in other work in the cultural studies mode (Jackson, 1992, p. xi). In itself
this has provided a positive route into the exploration of alternative sources of culture and
of challenges to the hegemony of high culture via culture's involvement in the reflexive
reconstruction of the social. This became the main concern of the Birmingham Centre for
Contemporary Cultural Studies, made famous by Richard Hoggart and Stuart Hall.
More recent work in the cultural studies tradition has tended to focus upon 'popular
culture' defined not (just) by what sells, but by a sense of the oppositional, which can easily
be coded, for example, into the street style of subcultural groups. In the much more 'mobile'
streetwise world of Hebdige (1988) he uses a conception of culture that challenges the myth
of cultural integration. In part of an essay devoted to an analysis of the rapid turnover of
consumption of musical styles and forms he argues that:
It no longer appears adequate to confine the appeal of these forms ... to the ghetto
of discrete, numerically small subcultures. For they permeate and help organise
a much broader, less bounded territory where cultures, subjectivities, identities
impinge on each other (Hebdige, 1988, p. 212).
This is an important break away from the notion of culture as a way of life. Hebdige
criticizes the use of the idea of mass culture and is more likely to use notions of youth cultures
or (more especially) popular culture. But a recent article shows how difficult it is to avoid
introducing the idea of cultural integration by default. Frow has thoroughly criticized the
concept of popular culture as conceived by practitioners in the cultural studies field. He
argues that the concept of'the popular' actively elides the distinction between three different
senses of the popular. The first being the 'market notion' of what we might call capitalist
common sense, the second a 'descriptive notion' being all the things that 'the people' do or
have done, the third is the sense favoured by cultural studies. Frow describes the essential
features of this favoured notion as follows: 'the relations which define "popular culture" in
a continuing tension (relationship, influence, antagonism) to the dominant culture' (Frow,
1992, pp. 26-27).
That 'continuing tension' is still defined by relation with a dominant culture. But the
other two notions Frow mentions potentially escape this context. They are the development
of the market and of modern media technology which partake of the creative, potentially
disruptive connotations of the old notion of culture. Linked with the idea of the active
initiatives of ordinary people, culture takes on an unbounded quality, in which however,
media, rather than essence, shapes the object of intellectual interest. The way is open for
new, non-integrative formulations of the idea of culture. We have an example in Thompson's Ideology and Modern Culture (1990, p. 123).

By recognizing the mobility of symbolic forms Thompson has started to articulate a

critique of the integration myth. This has involved the disaggregation of the older concept
of culture into its analytical components. Effectively Thompson is reducing the meaning
of 'culture' to an empty label since it adds nothing to an analysis which is conducted in terms
of the ideas of meaning, symbolism, symbolic form, and their relations to the social contexts
in which meaning is encountered, produced, consumed and so on.
At the same time Thompson recognizes that such an analysis must be seen in relation to
the history of the production and circulation of symbolic forms, by now a global operation
(pp. 198-203; 260). This disaggregation of the concept of culture means its elements can
be separable components in a (commercialized) media production process on a world scale.
Globalization or globalizing practices involve, but are not simply reducible to, changes in
social and material existences of the modern world such that new connections between
places are forged and the world as a whole is articulated as the appropriate arena in which
to pursue marketing, intellectual, environmental and other practices (these include life-

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378 Martin Albrow et al.

planning practices; Giddens, 1991, pp. 5-6; 147-148). There are profound implications for
the notion of culture. Robertson (1992, pp. 33 ; 46) is quite correct to see the revival of interest
in culture (Gilmore, 1992, p. 404) as an aspect itself of globalization.
Featherstone in his introduction to the collection Global Culture (1990) speculates about
the possibility of a global culture, the existence of'third cultures', and trans-societal cultural
processes, all of which challenge lazy associations of culture and national identity, and simple
associations of culture and territoriality although question of globality is not really dealt
with. Globalizing processes have raised to the forefront of our thought experiences of borders, 'multiculturalism' within a 'locality', and hybrids as products of post-coloniality (Gupta
and Ferguson, 1992, pp. 7-8). The language of'culture' is reflexively involved in the construction of these identities and new hybrid forms (Hannerz, 1992, p. 43).
These changes in social and material existences demand new forms and modes of analysis,
and to some extent this is being achieved (King (ed.), 1991). When Hannerz asserts that
there is a world culture he means that the world has become 'one network of social relationships'. This world culture is created, he argues, 'through the increasing connectedness of
varied local cultures, as well as through ... cultures without a clear anchorage in any one
territory'. These are all, he asserts, 'becoming subcultures... within the wider whole' (Hannerz, 1990, p. 237).
But we can still see the problem here that these 'cultures' seem to remain (conceptually)
untouched by internal problems, any recognition of the pluralism within a 'culture'. Rather,
they merely respond to a wider cultural frame within which they have their operation and
gain their meanings (although Hannerz, 1992 has addressed these issues). In the same
volume Appadurai (1990) is more successful in moving us away from the realm of cultures
qua culture by exploring a framework for the disjunctures between economy, culture and
politics. He analyzes global cultural flows in terms of five perspectival dimensions, called
ethnoscapes ('tourists, immigrants, refugees, exiles, guestworkers...'p. 297), mediascapes,
technoscapes, finanscapes, and ideoscapes and develops ideas whereby the speed and hallucinatory quality of some aspects of modern societies may be articulated. Near the end of
his essay he argues that the central feature of global culture today is:
... the politics of the mutual effort of sameness and different to cannibalise one
another and thus proclaim their successful hijacking of the twin Enlightenment
ideas of the triumphantly universal and the resiliently particular (Appadurai, 1990,
pp. 307-308)
What is most interesting about this is that, what Thompson (1990) called the classical
conception of culture is the origin of our modern senses of culture and has set the agenda
for all discussions of and 'in' culture (cf. Darcy, 1987, p. 7).
The relationship between the plurality and diversity of particular groups and the psychic
unity of humanity entered into the definition of culture which was supposed to negotiate
those very relations, to solve their problematic 'relationship'. Every successive solution to
the problem reiterated the relation in specific kinds of ways. Since the modern concept of
culture worked in a constant tension between particularity and universality, it could be used
to articulate antithetical viewpoints and has resisted operationalization (at least simply for
intellectual purposessee Boyne, 1990, pp. 58-59practically it is operationalized, for example, in the activities of global organizations such as UNESCO).
But globalization has dramatic effects on that tension in the old concept. The media which
make world-wide communication possible are disengaged from any primordial base. Communications technology itself promotes the disembedding of community, detaches culture
from historical roots and becomes the bearer of commercialized symbolic forms so that any
'cultural integration' is more to be sought in media organizations themselves (Hannerz,

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The Impact of Globalization on Sociological Concepts 379

1992, p. 41though he interprets the role of the non-mass media of fax, telephone, tape
recordings, computer and letter as of crucial importance-p. 46).
Paradoxically the means whereby culture has been globalized themselves militate against
anything which could be called a unitary global culture. The locus of culture is severed from
either high or low culture locations and its new site is in a phase of mass production. The
universality of culture is achieved, equally destroyed, through the particularity of megastars (Madonna, Michaeljordan) andglobal media events (Live Aid, World Cup, Olympics,
GulfWar-Mellancamp 1990;D'Arcy, 1993) and images. Culture can no longer potentially
simply encapsulate the historic experience of a people. In that sense it may not be exaggerated
to speak of the end of culture (or of postculture-see Waters, 1994, pp. 211-212).
This is entirely consistent with the fact that culture is now a key concept for social units
which have long had minimal territorial associations, namely the large scale corporation
(Williams etal., 1989; Hofstede, 1991). It is valued by the modern business consultant for
the essentialist, boundary defining, deep motivating factors that the idea has evoked in the
past, with the added factor of imparting a primary elemental force to organizational structure
thus effectively conferring charisma on the dark-suited executive. It is a pure case of a concept
disembedded from its territorial base and reembedded in a communications media frame.
But its new locus makes it ephemeral and manipulable, its dimensions altered at will by the
modern magician. It is just as alien and external to the individual as 'high culture' was to
an illiterate peasantry.
The limits to this manipulability and emphemerality can be approached by attempting
to articulate the realexistent and emergingrelationships between context and social meaning. Such an analysis might seek to grasp 'the different ways in which ideational patterns
maybe interpreted, employed, reconstituted and expanded in a variety of situational circumstances' (Robertson, 1992, p. 111). How it could relate issues of meaning and structure and
alsothe metacultural codes of societies (Robertson, pp. 34,41) raises questions of a different
order of difficulty and even intelligibility.
The pattern of the coming together of context and social meaning in globalizingprocesses
can be seen in the new network 'frames' constructed by groups and individuals out of travel
and non-mass media resources. The variety of new forms of association (computer networks-Whole Earth Electronic Link, GreenNet, KIDLINK, GLOBALink, Internet and
business computer networks ; ethnic diasporas ; exchange students ; global non-governmental organizationsAmnesty International, Friends of the Earth; the globality of social movements; jet set and brain drainsee Ferencz and Keyes, 1991; Sproull and Kiesler, 1991;
Hannerz, 1992, pp. 46-47; Rheingold, 1994; Stefanik, 1993; Solomos and Back, 1994, p.
150) with different temporalities and spatialities, fleeting forms of encounter, in which dense
and varied meanings flow, are the new forms of dispersed polycentric 'communities' within
which it will make sense to speak of culture. Apart from the experience of travel, migration
and the transformations of ethnic belonging there is only a limited literature and knowledge
of the implications of these forms of association/or cultural flow. We have even less sense
of the extent to which these associations overlap and interweave (see Hannerz, 1992, p. 47;
Rheingold, 1994 for the overlapping, interest and quasi-community centred culture of multiple computer networks). This deterritorialized, non-integrationist conception of culture
requires empirical research with appropriate methodology which seeks as a key focus to
grasp the relationships between modes of globality and modes of compression (Robertson,
1992,pp.22,28fn.4).
Extended and generalized milieux
The alienation of individuals from a global culture serves to highlight those concepts which
focus on the individual's active efforts to create and maintain his or her own world. The

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380 Martin Albrow et al.

phenomenology of the milieu in a globalized world can thus emerge as an explicit testing
ground for new sociological conceptualization and with the formulation of the idea of globalization we are now in a better position to appreciate the significance of the phenomenological
project as the re-appropriation of meaning by individuals in a world escaping dieir control.
The inspiration of modern phenomenology, Husserl (1859-1938), living during what
Robertson (1992, p. 59) calls the 'take-off phase of recent globalization' (1870 -1925), pointed to 'the problem of modernity' as a dominant aspect of globalization (for him 'westernization') in his later writing. In these works he talks of a 'Crisis of (European) Modernity',
caused by a 'crisis of meaning' (see Welter, 1986, pp. 41-56).
He criticizes the way the ideal of 'complete objectivation' of experience in a formalized
language, 'scientific objectivism', sweeps aside the 'standpoint of subjectivity' (Pivcevic,
1970, pp. 83-92; see also Grathoff, 1987). He thus anticipates Robertson's unease with
'systemic' or 'objective' explanations of globalization while individual attempts to make
sense of globalization in their everyday lives are largely faded out. It was Schutz who later
took up Husserl's ideas in his writing on 'relevancies', the creative impact of the 'biographical
state' of individuals.
We can take the concept of the 'milieu' as one attempt to redress the situation by focusing
on the individual's intersubjective experience of the world: in Schutzean fashion how to
make 'our' world from the 'world'. But to use it today we are bound to take account of the
interplay of an increasingly global, often anonymous, structure of society and the attempt
of individuals to organize their surroundings in a self-determined and familiar way.
By 'the milieu' we refer to our ability, but also necessity, of creating our own environment
according to our intentions and always in co-operation and conflict with our fellow-beings.
Thus by the generation and maintenance of a 'milieu' we gain familiarity and competence
in certain practically relevant 'zones' of everyday life. Probably it is this emphasis on the
willed activity of the individual which has made the concept resistant to incorporation widiin
the sociological paradigm which gave community and culture such prominence.
Scheler originally developed the conception of'milieu' within the context of Philosophical
Anthropology. He distinguishes between 'milieu-structure' and 'actual milieu'. The first
refers to the relatively stable setting of values and intentions of the individual, which structure our milieu as 'practical world'. The 'actual milieu', however, is linked to the current
and transitory contents of the 'practical world'. The 'milieu-structure' remains stable, whereas the 'actual milieu' can completely change (Scheler, 1973).
It was Gurwitsch who then further developed the 'milieu' concept by taking in an 'implicit
knowledge' of how to deal with die 'fellow-being'. For him it is the 'horizon' of the situation
in the practical 'milieu-world' which predetermines our relationship with the other in a
practical way. Since Gurwitsch is mainly concerned with concrete types of'milieu-situations'
and their impact on intersubjectivity, especially the notion of 'near' and 'far', his analysis
provides an entry into encounters in the context of globalization, in, for instance, global
cities or social networks based on computer networks, etc. (Gurwitsch, 1979; see also Vaitkus, 1991).
The current sociology of 'milieu' in diis tradition is mainly concerned with the maintenance of'normality' between fellow-beings by forms of prepredicative understandingand
their symbolic expressions (Grathoff, 1989). Special attention is given to types of intersubjectivity which guarantee shared borders and barriers between individual milieux.
Since the world comes increasingly together in processes of globalization it is important
in helping to redefine 'Acquaintances' and 'Strangers' in terms of relative proximity.
What kind of links are there between global processes and the milieu? We can start with
one of the very obvious results of globalization-'the voluntary and involuntary cosmopolitans' (labour migrants, refugees, businessmen, athletes, intellectuals). They all must

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The Impact of Globalization on Sociological Concepts 381

develop the ability to make themselves at home in various places in die world. As we know
with Scheler, our 'milieu-structure' is not influenced by a local change, since it is just our
'actual milieu' which changes with 'mobility'.
The increasing mobility of individuals highlights two advantages of the 'milieu' concept:
it never had strict borderlines or culture bounded contents, its territoriality being a function
of the individuals' values or relevancies. Its 'situatedness' never meant the boundedness of
a single locality. 'Milieu' rather refers to a focus of our daily routines, distinguished by a
higher degree of familiarity and competence.
In terms of the physical we can notice the 'multiplication of life-centres', both in biographical succession (birthplace, different living-places according to status-pasages: education,
work, retirement), and/or the simultaneous coordination of life-plans and daily routines
around more than one locality.
This leads to the possibility of'extended milieux' as the example of the milieu-type of an
'American expatriate' in London might illustrate.
His/her milieu centres around the American School of London and die Ludieran Church
in London, where he/she meets people who share a similar milieu (internationalized families,
cosmopolitan life experience, temporary employment contracts), rather than around die
local neighbourhood in which they have come to live. The 'expatriate' gets die appropriate
'milieu-knowledge' for the generation of a 'stop-over-milieu' from other 'fellow-expatriates'
who have to deal with the same situation of temporary setdement.
At the same time he/she keeps up ties with family-members back in the States and to
'fellow-expatriates' at former workplaces across die globe. So the areas in which he/she feels
familiar and competent are no longer fixed surroundings of a single locality but rather
'patches' (potentially) scattered across the globe and linked up by 'abstract systems'.
The 'extension' of the 'milieu' however is more clearly expressed in terms of communication at a distance. Even die individual who stays local, can have his/her 'milieu' extended
to a global reach by telephone, fax or e-mail. By diose means of communication she/he can
extend her/his zones of familiarity and competence into a global scope beyond die bodybounded 'readyness at hand'. This invites a review of the 'milieu' concept and the notion
of immediate surroundings in terms of Umwelt in die light of global 'abstract systems' and
the impact of technology on the lifeworld.
We advocate here the linking of the conception of 'milieu' with Schutz' conception of
'relevancies' to provide better understanding of what we shall call the 'extended milieu'.
Both concepts operate at a similar epistemological level, so that Scheler's 'milieu-structure'
seems to match Schutz' 'system of relevancies'. According to Schutz the individual experiences die world as structured according to his/her 'relevancies' (life-plans, projects, tasks)
and correspondingly structured zones of interest, knowledge and familiarity (1970a, b, pp.
117-132, pp. 329-331,1971, pp. 306-308). The spatio-temporal structuring of these relevancies however is determined by our access to the world. Schutz distinguishes between
the 'world within potential reach' (attainable or restorable) and 'world widiin actual reach'
(world of perceived and perceptible objects), having as its core-zone the 'manipulatory
sphere', open to immediate interference and modification by bodily movements or 'artificial
extensions of the body' (1971, p. 307). Schutz himself sees major changes resulting from
the use of 'technical devices' (for his time the 'use of long-range rockets' being die most
striking example) which complicate die spatio-temporal structure of the life-world producing
a convergence of the 'world within potential reach' and the 'manipulatory sphere' (1971,
p. 307).
That raises the question of the consequences of an (potential) 'extension' of the milieu
on other notions of the 'milieu'.
Presence seems no longer required in die different local extensions of our 'milieu' because

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382

Martin Albrow et al.

we can use global media of communication like fax, telephone, computer. They become
familiar parts of our milieu, with its extension over space limited, as any other aspect of the
milieu, by the personal determination to hold the different 'fragments' of his/her milieu
together. The extension of the milieu in this sense means an extension of the concept itself,
an increased scope, a refinement of its contents and a differentiation of its varieties.
The possibility of such 'extended milieux', which are not limited to family or friendship
relations, but may be the basis for work and leisure activities too, raises a crucial question
of the degree to which the notions of'familiarity' (with 'relevant' localities) and 'normality'
(with 'relevant' contemporaries) canbe produced and reproduced without face-to-face interaction. Globalization effectively brings the nature of human social relationships under new
critical scrutiny. In this respect we need to make another conceptual innovation.
Tendencies to transcend the 'milieu' or to give it a cosmopolitan or even global dimension
bring with them a basic problem, when the individual is permanendy on the move (as a
participant in one of me 'transnational cultures' (sport- and business-travellers etc). Even
the 'global individual' needs a place to sleep, to rest and recover. Sleep needs to be protected
and organized, like anything else. The way of dealing with this problem and related problems
of everyday needs is through the world-wide creation and maintenance of 'generalized
milieux', by which we mean those places which provide or serve the basic needs of the
'global individual' in an organized and standardized manner. Hotels, fast food outlets, petrol
stations, and car rental firms are organized in chains which operate to the same standard
anywhere. McDonalds is the classic example where experience of one in one town allows
us to use others anywhere in the world. These places save die 'global individual' from the
need to organize, possibly every day, another 'actual milieu' to serve his or her basic needs
at a different location.
There is an obverse side to this transcendence of the local.
Global Cities as examples of localities which are the site of'microglobalization' (Robertson, 1992, p. 54) experience the integration of global differences in religion, language, beliefs,
clothes into a single locality. Generating a milieu in those places becomes almost a necessity
for the individual in order to 'handle the unexpected' (Harvey, 1989, pp. 71-72).
The 'milieu' operates as a zone where the individual gains familiarity and competence,
ensures security and relief in certain areas of everyday life, and provides conditions for
handling the increasing optionality of a dynamized world. It is his/her 'milieu' which gives
the individual 'original and primary comportment towards the world-context of everyday
life' and by this makes 'society possible' (Vaitkus, 1991, pp. 48-56).
The internationalization of 'local milieux', associated with the flow of 'voluntary and
involuntary cosmopolitans', which led to 'all of Greater London's thirty-two boroughs
becomingmorecosmopolitanbetween 1971 and 1981'(King, 1990, p. 141), makes it normal
mat people with rather different 'milieux' must live together in the same locality. The relativizing of time and space (nearness and farness) in the 'milieu' concept thus opens critical
access to problems of internationalization and multi-cultural communication. The borders
and barriers between 'milieux' are always a relatively fluid product of shared effort, work
and conflict instead of abstract commitment to a closed culture or community or adherence
to state commands. It is the 'other' and his/her 'milieu' who is a necessary determination
of my 'milieu' and at the same time conditions the scope of my acting in my 'milieu'. At the
same time irrespective of cultural commitment there are many people who consider their
'local milieu' as a 'stopover'. In that sense a 'danger' to the local milieu is not the cultural
stranger as milieu'neighbour' but the neighbour who doesn't want to be engaged in the
maintenance of the milieu.
The converse is that the nearest and dearest persons by birth or by choice live elsewhere
in the world or one has moved far from them. Families may be extended around the world

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The Impact of Globalization on Sociological Concepts 383

and with modern communications that dispersal no longer need mean broken contact. The
telephoned news of a birth in Washington raises cheers in London and the new grandmother
makes hasty arrangements for a transatlantic flight.
Those who remain tied to a locality feel the impact of globalization also as 'local milieux'
become sites for other people's 'generalized milieux'. Again the fast food chains are a good
example for this interplay between the local and the global. Although designed for the global
traveller rather than for the needs of local residents, their 'generalized' nature equally allows
locals to enter. The local 'character' takes his/her place in the nearest McDonalds, finds the
discarded newspaper, someone to talk to, and, if s/he is lucky, a free coffee. She develops
his/her actual milieu within the generalized milieu and brings the global and the local together.
But the spread of'generalized milieux' results in an increasingly standardized everydaylife adapted to global needs. We can ask whether it is only the 'character' who is individual
enough to create a local milieu from a fast food outlet. For local residents these settings are
largely associated with the kind of flow of 'voluntary and involuntary cosmopolitans'. The
notion of 'generalized milieux' raises a crucial question of the interplay between 'milieux'
as zones distinguished by individual competence and familiarity, and everyday life in which
we act according to standardized roles and typifications, which needs further exploration.
Looking at the 'milieu' concept in the light of globalization processes we find it quite
effective in handling the phenomenon of increasing global mobility. We find that the disembedding of 'milieux' may result in their (potential) 'extension' with global scope while 'generalized milieux' are part of a deliberate process of globalization. Both depend onindividuals'
access to global media of communication and increasingindividual mobility. Thus 'milieux'
spread and intermingle in a scattered way as foci of individuals' local, regional and global
relevances, constituting one 'concrete structuration of the world as a whole'.
Reworking sociological concepts under globalized conditions
We, in common with other contemporary contributors to die understanding of globalization, find that it is no longer possible to base sociological concepts in an image of nation state
society (Featherstone, 1990, p. 2). The flows of ideas, resources, people across boundaries
and transnational systems of communication and finance make the nation state just one
conditioned form, albeit important, among the multiplicity which shapes social life.
Yet sociological concepts require reconstitution under globalized conditions. It is not
sufficient to seek to squeeze the new phenomena into dated categorical frameworks which
invariably bear the marks ofthe time in which they are conceived (cf. Albrow, 1974). Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft was the product of an earlier historical transformation and no amount of
elaboration will make it adequate for the new conditions.
We must also avoid the other extreme of dissolving the social into myriad concepts of
individual imaginings ofthe global. These boundless possibilities of a post-modernist aesthetic effectively devalue the role of sociology in seeking to make sense of contemporary
social life. More important they promote a fashionable nihilism which has a self-fulfilling
role in negating the reality of society.
Our own exploration of the interplay of globalization and sociological concepts arrives
at two broad conclusions, one substantive, the other procedural. In the first case we have
identified the persistent pressure on older concepts to accommodate shifting and deterritorialized forms of social relationships. We found it in the imagined and virtual community, we
saw it in the way new cultural expressions work through enhanced possibilities of social
networking. Our concepts of extended and generalized milieux equally seek to capture new
but already commonplace routines of everyday life under globalized conditions.
In each case it is the real life structuration ofthe social which becomes the focus of concern.

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384 Martin Albrow et al.

From that point of view the attention Giddens has given recently to the idea of the pure
relationship as an element in self-help literature is worthwhile, but his own programme for
structuration theory as he outlined it in The Constitution of Society (1984) requires more attention to be directed to the making of structures of relationships in the proliferating new social
formations which span boundaries and criss-cross the globe. Social descriptions of the globalized world must grasp the nature of megalopolis, computer dating, video link-ups, interactive
art, virtual reality, data banks, backyard sales, new age travellers.6
It is then the 'social''perse which globalization problematizes for people in general and not
just sociologists, and it is that to which dieory must revert. We acknowledge that globalization opens up a whole range of what Appadurai aptly calls '-scapes', 'deeply perspectival
constructs', 'multiple worlds which are constituted by the historically situated imaginations
of persons and groups spread around the globe' (Appadurai, 1990, pp. 296-297). But we
would, for that reason, add the 'socioscape' to his ethnoscape which for him is an essentially
moving landscape of persons. We need also to pinpoint the relative, even momentary stabilities of forms of social relationship, networks, groups and organizations under globalized
conditions.
Our second broad conclusion relates to the ways in which new concepts are framed and
how we may identify generative principles for further conceptual work. The problematics
of conceptual shifts and historical change are not new. They have been recognized explicitly
at least sinceJ. G. Herder in the 18th century (Cohen, 1966 [1962], p. 10). Nor has this
recognition been confined to idealist accounts. John Stuart Mill linked conceptual change
explicitly to imperialism.7 We consider it a major overall impact of globalization that we can
consider this issue on a new plane. A review of our own account suggests at least eight
possible creative conceptual strategies are currently at work:
1.

2.

3.

4.

"The operationalization of older abstract conceptsfor a managed global world. There is a new
concreteness about the use of concepts like human rights, health, communication, even
humanity in the context of the work of world organizations. As far as a concept like
community is concerned it takes on a different resonance in the 'world community of
nations'. There is then a global level in which the practicalities of managing the world
create pragmatic solutions to conceptual uncertainties which globalization creates at a
national level.
The assimilation of local concepts to a transnational, global discourse. This has in the past been
seen as purely a phenomenon of Western conceptual imperialism as in the example of
Bengal cited by Mill (footnote 7). But we may cite as an example the Islamic Jihad,
which may well highlight Western phenomena in a way concealed to the West's selfunderstanding. Social science has long involved the cross-cultural modification of concepts of Western nations. Global relations multiply the sources from which conceptual
inputs can be made into a fully internationalized sociology.8
The abstraction of older conceptsfrom territorial reference. Ideas which took shape in historic,
territorially bounded nation states are detribalized, become abstract and are then resited
with no intrinsic territorial reference, as with community. This accompanies the questionability of the notion of boundedness itself, as with culture. With milieu, the intrinsic
reference to the use of territory becomes generalized. Giddens uses the term 'disembedding' to refer to the detachment of social relationships from particular contexts of time
and place. The point is that with the new technological possibilities they do not have
to be re-embedded in any particular territory less than the globe as a whole.9
The idealization of older concepts. In part this de-territorialization of concepts, if unrelated
to their amendment and reconstitution, can lead to their idealization as shibboleths for
emerging interests and foci for potential group formation. This is clearly the case with

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The Impact of Globalization on Sociological Concepts 385

the imagined community and is the basis of Robertson's reinterpretion of fundamentalism. It is this theme which Giddens takes up in his account of the 'pure relationship'.
5. The disaggregation of older concepts into analytical components. Taking the example of culture,
its analysis into meaning, symbolic form, social context (and their further analysis)
permits conceptual disaggregation which eludes old boundaries and allows new realities
to emerge. Components like affectivity or symbolic form re-emerge as elements of
commercial production processes.
6. The extension of old concepts to embrace new realities. W e found that the reembedding of the
milieu under globalized conditions prompted new formulations: the 'generalized' and
'extended' milieu. Even a notion Uke the extended family takes on further intensification
and extension. World-wide communication enhances the possibility of fulfilling all
kinds of kin obligations which would otherwise be eroded. Re-embedding through
distance communication rather than proximity can therefore follow disembedding.10
7. The synthesis of new concepts. A direct consequence of globalization is the concrete unity
of real networks of relations spanning the globe. Kinship is not the least reliable of these
relations, newly embedded in telephone, fax, cheap air transport and money transfer
arrangements. Univers alism, a core principle of modernity, is transcended by the concreteness of global social relations. We should therefore expect new formulations to
capture these.
8. The reflexive reconstruction of the social. Globalization does not merely have impact on
sociological concepts, it is a process in which sociological thought is an element in the
overall transformation of people's lives. Far from a breakdown of the social we see a
reconstitution of it in such a way whereby individuals can both move through generalized milieux, or alternatively attach themselves to global phenomena in local settings.
To that extent globalization reduces the abstractness of actual relationships, not by
reverting to face to face proximity but by embedding them in media. This is the foundation bodi of the global level of world society today but also of the globalization of
personal relationships.
Conclusion
It is scarcely surprising that the the sheer variety of sources of conceptual change in the
globalized world should have occasioned concern for the enterprise of sociology as a discipline with a coherent conceptual framework. Fragmentation is die feature of discourse about
society as much as of society itself. We share the concern. Globalization theory is itself an
indicator of the active response sociology can make to die new conditions. There is no reason
on our account to think that it is inherently inadequate for die task.
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Notes
1. Earlier versions of this paper have been presented to the Department of Sociology, London Guildhall
University and to the Department of Sociology and Social Policy, Roehampton Institute, London.
We are grateful for helpful comments made on those occasions and to the anonymous referees of the
journal.
2. Of course that concept can appear in theory before its widespread actualization, and also before it
acquires a name. Ortega y Gasset exaggerated but also anticipated recent developments as well as the
idea we now call 'globalization''... we can attribute to-day to any point on the globe the most effective ubiquity. This nearness of the far-off, this presence of the absent, has extended in fabulous proportions the horizon of each individual existence' (1932, p. 27).
3. It is this kind of work which Albrow anticipates as necessary in the most recent stage of sociology's
development as a globalized discipline, where it has resisted attempts to force it into indigenous moulds
(Albrow and King, 1990, p. 7).
4. The theme paper for the G7 countries' jobs conference at Detroit, March 14th and 15th 1994 addressed the 'conventional wisdom' of globalization directly. It is a key issue for current OECD work
on employment and unemployment.
5. The use of the term the 'black Atlantic' by Gilroy (1993) for example, to describe the cultural links
between black people in Africa, the Caribbean, North America and Britain which transcend local and
national boundaries could provide a useful basis for an analysis of disembedding and deterritorialization in this context.
6. Inspirations like Robert Bellah's 'lifestyle enclave' (Bellah et al. 1985, pp. 71-75) seek to capture the
totality of some newly emerging forms of social organization. Such enclaves may seek to distinguish
themselves by their global reference points. This is one of the diemes of Douglas Coupland's novel
Generation X (1991).
7. John Stuart Mill described, what he called the natural history of the variations in the meaning of terms.
He recounted how terms might be narrowed or expanded in their application in response to changes
in the world around, or as a result of travel and conquest. He instanced the application of English
concepts of landed proprietorship to Bengal as producing social disorganization greater than any
produced by ruthless barbarians (Mill, 1872 [1843], p. 239).
8. The Editor of International Sociology defined the fostering of such inputs as part of the specific policy of
that journal (see Albrow, 1991).