Challenges for a Global Sociology

The idea of a national sociology may appear strange to U.S. sociologists accustomed to thinking of their sociology as universal, but fromoutside the United States our sociology can look quite provincial, expressing the peculiarities of our exotic society. Indeed, each nation has its own distinctive field of sociology–we can define the features of a French, German, English, Indian, South African, Russian, Brazilian, Portuguese, or Chinese sociology. It isn't surprising that sociologists have produced distinctive national sociologies, given that sociology has always been bound by the nation–state and defined national society as its basic unit of analysis.