Our contemporary political landscape is organised around the idea of the nation-state and, as Habermas (1998) (among many others) has argued, this idea is seen to have its origins in the system of sovereign states that came into being in Europe in 1648 with the Treaty of Westphalia. The history of the modern nation-state is then understood to be further shaped by the American and French Revolutions in the late eighteenth century. Within Europe, there are seen to be two routes to modern statehood. The first was the evolution of nation-states ‘within the boundaries of existing territorial states’ (Habermas 1998: 397), as was the case for most North and Western European states. The second was in establishing a nation and then a state, as exemplified by the projects of Germany and Italy in the late nineteenth century and the subsequent formation of states in Central and Eastern Europe in the twentieth. These initial formations, he continues, were followed in the period of mass decolonisation in the mid- to late-twentieth century by the establishment of ‘postcolonial’ states. A final moment in the history of nation-states is then presented as the secession of states from the Soviet Union in the aftermath of its collapse in the late twentieth century.

With the 50th anniversary of the journal, this special issue takes stock of the progress that has been made within sociology to become a more globally oriented discipline and discusses the new challenges for the future that emerge as a consequence. From its inception, classical sociology was primarily concerned with the European origins of processes of modernity that were to become global. There was little discussion of how the global might be understood in terms of structures, processes and social movements not directly identified as European but nonetheless contributing to modernity. The challenge for sociology has been to take into account these other phenomena and to rethink its core categories and concepts in light of newly understood alternative formations of the global and the social movements that bring them about.

Historical sociology can be understood both as a specific sub-field of sociology and as providing general conceptual underpinnings of the discipline, to the extent that it provides an understanding of the specificity of the modern state and the perceived emergence of modernity within Europe. The association of modernity with Europe (and with a European history limited to the selfidentified boundaries of the continent) is commonplace and pervasive within the social sciences and humanities. What such an understanding fails to take into consideration, however, are the connections between Europe and the rest of the world that constitute the broader context for the emergence of what is understood to be the modern world and its institutions, such as the state and market. In this article, I suggest that integral to this misunderstanding, and its reproduction over time, is the methodology of comparative historical sociology as represented by ideal types. In contrast, I argue for ‘connected sociologies’ as a more appropriate way to understand our shared past and its continuing impact upon the present. I examine these issues in the context of historical sociological understandings of nation-state formation.

This book provides a fresh examination of the cosmopolitan project of post-war Europe from a variety of perspectives. It explores the ways in which European cosmopolitanism can be theorized differently if we take into account histories which have rarely been at the forefront of such understandings. It also uses neglected historical resources to draw out new and unexpected entanglements and connections between understandings of European cosmopolitanism both in Europe and elsewhere. The final part of the book places European cosmopolitanism in tension with contemporary postcolonial configurations around diaspora, migration, and austerity. Overall, it seeks to draw attention to the ways in which Europe’s posited others have always been very much a part of Europe’s colonial histories and its postcolonial present.

This book provides a fresh examination of the cosmopolitan project of post-war Europe from a variety of perspectives. It explores the ways in which European cosmopolitanism can be theorized differently if we take into account histories which have rarely been at the forefront of such understandings. It also uses neglected historical resources to draw out new and unexpected entanglements and connections between understandings of European cosmopolitanism both in Europe and elsewhere. The final part of the book places European cosmopolitanism in tension with contemporary postcolonial configurations around diaspora, migration, and austerity. Overall, it seeks to draw attention to the ways in which Europe’s posited others have always been very much a part of Europe’s colonial histories and its postcolonial present.

This contribution addresses the impact of postcolonial critiques on sociology by drawing parallels with the emergence of feminism and queer theory within the academy. These critiques were facilitated by the expansion of public higher education over the last five decades and the article also addresses the implications of the privatisation and marketisation of the university on the processes of knowledge production.

The Haitian Revolution is not only one of the most important foundational moments in the emergence of the modern world, but also one of the most neglected within the social scientific literature. In this article, I ask what can be learnt, both from its omission from accounts of events claimed to be of ‘world historical’ significance, and from how social theory would need to be re-thought once we took such events seriously. In particular, I want to examine what is at stake in such rethinking and how we might consider alternative formulations through an approach I call ‘connected sociologies’.