Beyond nation-state paradigms: Globalization, sociology, and the challengeof transnational studies

Globalization has made it increasingly necessary to break with nation-state centered analysis in macrosociologies. Social structure is becoming transn ationalized, and an epistemological shift is required in concurrence with t his ontological change. A new interdisciplinary transnational studies shoul d be predicated on a paradigmatic shift in the focus of social inquiry from the nation-stare as the basic unit of analysis to the global system as the appropriate unit. Sociology's fundamental contribution to a transnational studies should be the study of transnational social structure. This article does not establish a new transnational paradigm. Rather, it surveys and cr itiques nation-state-centrism in extant paradigms, provides a rationale for a new transnational approach, and proposes a research curriculum of a new transnational studies that may contribute to paradigmatic reconceptualizati on.