Revisiting world society

This paper revisits Buzan’s book (From international to world society? English school theory and the social structure of globalization, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004), in the light of both the seven papers in this special issue, and the English School literature on world society written since then. The paper focuses on two themes. First, it addresses the different meanings in the usage of ‘world society’. It distils these down into three forms: normative, political and integrated world society, and shows how these relate to, and extend, the earlier taxonomy of interhuman, transnational and interstate domains. Second, it pushes forward on the question of how we might understand the concept of primary institutions in relation to world society. I show how some, but not all, of the primary institutions of interstate society have deep roots in world society. I then propose that the key primary institution for normative world society is collective identity, and for political world society, advocacy.