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Course title: World society: National policies, global governance and transnational
sociology
Course code: GTS 3
Discipline: Sociology
Teacher responsible: Prof. Pertti Alasuutari
Visiting lecturers: Dr. Ali Qadir, Dr. Marjaana Rautalin, Jukka Syväterä, Dr. Nelli
Piattoeva, Valtteri Vaha-Savo
Number of ECTS: 10
Type or level of studies: 32 lecture hours and 32 seminar hours for a semester (over
two periods)
Learning outcome: Thorough introduction to world society theory and discursive
institutionalism to understand global governance and synchronization of national
policies
General description: The course deepens the students’ understanding of the
functioning of world society and the role of epistemic governance in it. In addition to
showing how world culture is seen in the global spread of world models, the course
approaches the circulation of global ideas from the perspective of national actors,
especially policymakers. In the national political fields, actors justify new policies by
international comparisons and by the successes and failures of models adopted in
other countries. Consequently, national policies are synchronized with each other.
Yet, because of the way such domestication of global trends takes place, citizens
retain and reproduce the understanding that they follow a sovereign national
trajectory.
The lectures introduce the key ideas of the Stanford School of New Institutionalism
coupled with Foucault-inspired governmentality approach and the advances made in
discursive institutionalist research. Through required reading the students will get a
holistic view on neoinstitutionalist global sociology.
Evaluation: 2-3 essays, 1 presentation, and final exam.
Language of instruction: English
Number of students: 6 – 20
Course material: Extended compulsory and optional reading lists, including
handouts. These include:
Alasuutari, Pertti (2013) "Spreading global models and enhancing banal localism: The
case of local government cultural policy development." International Journal
of Cultural Policy 19(1):103-119.
Alasuutari, Pertti and Ali Qadir (2014) "Introduction." Pp. 1-22 in National
Policymaking: Domestication of Global Trends, edited by Alasuutari, Pertti
and Ali Qadir. London: Routledge.
Alasuutari, Pertti and Ali Qadir (2014) “Epistemic governance: An approach to the
politics of policy-making.” European Journal of Cultural and Political
Sociology 1(1): 67-84.
Alasuutari, Pertti, Ali Qadir and Karin Creutz (2013) "The Domestication of Foreign
News: News Stories Related to the 2011 Egyptian Revolution in British,
Finnish and Pakistani Newspapers." Media Culture & Society 35(6): 692 712.
Dobbin, Frank, Beth Simmons and Geoffrey Garrett (2007) "The Global Diffusion of
Public Policies: Social Construction, Coercion, Competition, or Learning?"
Annual Review of Sociology 33(1):449-472.
Meyer, John W., Francisco O. Ramirez, David John Frank, and Evan Schofer (2007)
"Higher education as an institution." Pp. 187-221 in Sociology of Higher
Education: Contributions and Their Contexts, edited by P. J. Gumport.
Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Meyer, John W. (2004) "The Nation as Babbitt: How Countries Conform." Contexts
3(3):42-47.
Meyer, John W., John Boli, George M. Thomas and Francisco O. Ramirez (1997)
"World Society and the Nation-State." American Journal of Sociology
103(1):144-181.
Meyer, John W. and Ronald L. Jepperson (2000) "The 'Actors' of Modern Society:
The Cultural Construction of Social Agency." Sociological Theory 18(1):100.
Qadir, Ali (2014) “Culture and history in the domestication of global trends of higher
education in Pakistan.” Pp. 147-163 in National Policy-Making:
Domestication of Global Trends, edited by Alasuutari, Pertti and Ali Qadir.
London: Routledge.
Regev, Motti (2007) "Cultural Uniqueness and Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism."
European Journal of Social Theory 10(1):123-138.
Schofer, Evan, Ann Hironaka, David John and Wesley Longhofer (2012)
"Sociological institutionalism and world society." Pp. 57-68 in The WileyBlackwell Companion to Political Sociology, edited by Amenta, Edwin, Kate
Nash and Alan Scott. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Sending, Ole Jacob and Iver B. Neumann (2006) "Governance to Governmentality:
Analyzing NGOs, States, and Power." International Studies Quarterly
50(3):651-672.