World Society

Georg Krücken is professor for Science Organization, Higher Education and Science Management at the German University of Administrative Sciences in Speyer. After undergraduate und graduate studies in sociology, philosophy, and political sciences at Bielefeld University and the University of Bologna, he received his Ph.D. in sociology from Bielefeld University in 1996, where he worked as an associate professor until 2006. From 1999 to 2001 he was a visiting scholar at the Department of Sociology at Stanford University. He taught as a guest professor at the Institute for Science Studies, University of Vienna, and at the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations, Sciences Po, Paris. His research interests include neo-institutional theory, science studies, organizational studies, and the management of higher education.Gili S. Drori (Ph.D., Sociology Stanford University 1997) is a lecturer in Stanford University's International Relations Program and the Director of the International Relations Honors Program. Her research interests include the comparative study of science, social progress and rationalization, globalization, and governance. She also wrote on world culture, global health, technology entrepreneurship, and higher education. These interests inform her recent books: Science in the Modern World Polity: Institutionalization and Globalization (Stanford, 2003 co-authored with John W. Meyer, Francisco O. Ramirez and Evan Schofer), Global E-litism: Digital Technology, Social Inequality, and Transnationality (Worth, 2005), and Globalization and Organization: World Society and the Expansion of Formal Organization (OUP, 2006 co-edited with John W. Meyer and Hokyu Hwang).

This title gathers Meyer's widely-scattered work, reviewing four decades of scholarship, and adding several original pieces from his current work. It gathers substantive commentary on social processes, from stratification to globalisation to socialisation, and on key social institutions, from science to religion to law to education.

Part I: Overview