'Society' as a Contested Concept: Globalization and Sociological Debate on the Nature of Society.

'Society' has been the most important concept in social sciences in general and in sociology in particular, but at the same time, its ontological and epistemological status has been a controversial issue amongst social theorists. The controversy ranges from scholars who decompose society to its 'individual components' and altogether negate the existence of any 'collective whole' in the Durkheimian sense, to those who question the very existence of territoriallybounded society in the face of globalization. A current trend in this debate has questioned the ability of classical sociological theories in understanding the macro and micro level changes in society accompanied with globalization. This paper presents an overview of how society has been viewed by sociologists and the philosophic underpinnings of their views on it. It is being argued that although the processes of globalisation may have rendered the notion of 'society' questionable yet we are far from writing the obituary of the concept as defined by classical sociologists. Going against the current thought of 'the death of society' or 'sociology beyond society', the paper argues that classical sociologists especially methodological collectivists' notion of society is still relevant for making sense of the lives of a large number of people living especially in the rural areas of the developing world as they have yet to become truly 'globalised!'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]