How “National” is Social Theory? Critical notes on some worrying trends in the recent theorizing of Richard Munch

World sociology would lose in the comprehensiveness of its perspective and the variety of its approaches to social reality if the American standardization of a professionalized discipline continued its ascendancy. European sociology needs to resist this trend just as Europe inevitably has to resist the McDonaldization of its culture as a whole in order to preserve diversity for itself and for the world. (Munch 1991: 329). It is only in the transatlantic context of comparisons and relationships that the idea of a “European” identity can gain credence at all. (Scaff 1994: 219, 217)