Martin Albrow - From Max Weber's Sociology of Law to a Sociology of „Global Governance“

According to Albrow, our "Global Age" may be far removed from the modernity of Max Weber's time but his analytic and comparative sociology is exemplary for grasping new realities. In his lecture, Martin Albrow will explain why he believes Weber's approach to Herrschaft to be of limited use for current conditions, but his sociology of law still provide the best basis for understanding how individual human rights have come to be a world-wide standard of validity for social order within and across borders.

Martin Albrow studied history and sociology at the London School of Economics and the University of Cambridge, where he obtained his doctorate degree in 1971. Before being appointed professor for sociological theory at the University of Wales in 1976, he worked, inter alia, as assistant to Norbert Elias at the University of Leicester. Since 1988, he held numerous visiting professorships and fellowships in Europe and the United States, including at the London School of Economics, the University of Munich, the State University New York, as well as the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC. His book "The Global Age" was awarded the University of Rome's European Amalfi prize for sociology and social sciences in 1997. Martin Albrow is honorary vice-president of the British Sociological Association and member of the International Futures Forum.

Martin Albrow is one of the most outstanding and earliest globalization theorists and a renowned English-language expert on Max Weber. Since October 2012, Martin Albrow is Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities "Law as Culture", where he is working on the topic of "Globalization, multiculturalism and principles of global governance".