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Sociology Beyond Societies: Mobilities for the Twenty-first Century. John Urry. New York: Routledge. 2000. 255 pages. $24.99.
In this ambitious book, Urry takes the reader on a fascinating tour of the aspects of globalization that he argues require sociologists to abandon the nation-state concept of society. Urry provocatively suggests that perhaps Margaret Thatcher "was oddly right when she said there is no such thing as society" (p. 6). According to Urry, society was not a particularly clear sociological concept to begin with, but in the contemporary era; its use has become especially problematic. Today, he argues, we are better off analyzing the social in terms of flows and networks; mobilities of people, objects, and human-object hybrids across and within societies. Marshaling evidence of weakening nation-states as sources of collective identity and political-economic power, Urry offers "a sociology beyond societies" grounded in metaphors of mobility rather than stasis.
Sociology Beyond Societies can be divided into three parts: a critique of conventional sociological concepts and metaphors; an extensive discussion of key phenomena that contemporary sociology should focus on; and an analysis of new forms of citizenship and their implications for societies and sociologists. In the opening chapters Urry discusses the limitations of sociologists' conceptions of society and suggests alternatives to the discipline's core concept. He believes that sociologists need to re-envision "sociations" via metaphors of movement that speak to the fundamental global transformations that are making society a less analytically useful concept. In chapters three to six, Urry explores alternative ways of approaching social phenomena. His primary concern is with the physical and mental mobility that increasingly characterizes postmodern lives and its implications for social groupings and for sociology. Historical and contemporary notions and experiences of travel, the senses, time, and place provide new empirical terrain for a revitalized sociological perspective. The point of detailed discussions of such topics as walking, "the hegemony of...