This article looks at how the phenomenon that we are accustomed to refer to as "globalization" has affected and continues to affect two branches of Historical Macrosociology - Historical and Comparative Sociology (HCS), and the Political Economy of World Systems (PEWS) - while at the same time considering the limits of globalization itself. First, globalization is seen as constituting a world economic system, in detriment of nation states,- which would in fact strengthen PEWS and weaken HCS. Next, it is argued that the characteristics of "globalization" justify its novelty: from the point of view of the long duration, we are undergoing a period of expansion of economic relations at the world level, as in other moments in the past. The article concludes with the consideration that many of the limitations of HCS and PEWS are due to the centrality that they confer to the characteristically Western construct of the nation state, whereas the current wave of globalization owes much of its importance to the activity of non-Western countries, East Asia in particular.
globalization; historical macrosociology; world-system; social theories