Seven Theses on Global Society: A Review Essay

Abstract

This article critically reviews the literature on global society through global, transnational and local lenses and suggests avenues for further research hitherto neglected in this literature. Accounts of local reactions to globalization are particularly important since this approach valorizes social actors' own understandings of and reactions to global discourses and agendas. I also emphasize the idea that prevailing wisdoms in this literature hold that globalization has expanded the horizon of possibilities for collective social action, without paying due attention to the constraints on social action at the local and the transnational levels.