Sociology studies society; social theory analyses the social. These seemingly straight-forward statements mask a nest of conceptual and practical difficulties. The extent, dynamic and locale of societies have proved problematic. The status of the social, indeed its very existence, has proved hard to pin down. Such questions are well-rehearsed nowadays and are often presented in terms of “the end of the social?” Proponents of such a thesis adopt a range of positions and have variously argued that new forms of globalized, networked, complex, mobile societies have emerged which bear little resemblance to the stable nationstates which social theory has tended to assume (e.g. Castells 2000, Urry 2000) and upon which it was originally predicated. Others have questioned whether the concept of the social was ever adequate to describe the development and existence of the modern world (e.g. Latour 1993b). It has also been suggested that the social was always some kind of a simulacrum (Baudrillard 1983). Another slant has been offered by those who argue that the notion of the social was itself some kind of a historical, discursive, if not social, construction (e.g. Rose 1996). Some of the major concerns which animate such debates over the status of society and the social are evident in the following: