World Society (1972) by John Burton, founder in 1963 of the Conflict Research Society (CRS)
John Burton was a member of the Australian delegation to the San Francisco conference on the United Nations in 1945. Tony de Reuck’s Conflict in Society (1968) [critical review] was an edited collection associated with the founding of the Conflict Research Society (CRS) in 1963. In it, Burton refers to ‘global society’. His book World Society came out in 1972. NOT The Study of World Society: a London Perspective (1974) was a paper co-authored with CRS colleagues John Groom, Chris Mitchell and Tony de Reuck. There followed Chris Mitchell’s Structure of International Conflict (1981) and Michael Banks and John Burton’s Conflict in World Society (1984). John Burton had moved from UCL to the University of Kent. The journal Paradigms was established in 1987, in 1995 renamed Global Society. In 2018 it contained a tribute to John Groom by Andrew Williams and Steven Chan. Also in 2018 Gordon Burt had a conversation with Oliver Ramsbotham, Tom Woodhouse, Hugh Miall and Herb Blumberg about World Society. Gordon Burt, chair of CRS 2008-2015, wrote Values, World Society and Modelling Yearbooks (VWSM) for 2014, 2015 and 2017; and regularly adds to his Values, World Society and Modelling website.
Martin Shaw’s Global Society and International Relations: Sociological Concepts and Political Perspectives appeared in 1994 (Polity) and online in 2000. The IR section of The Oxford Handbook of Political Science includes From International Relations to Global Society, by Michael Barnett and Kathryn Sikkink (2011). The Encyclopedia of Globalisation includes World Society Theory by Connie McNeely (2012). Corina Iftode reviews The Concept of ‘World Society’ in International Relations (2017). Christopher Muscato has a lesson transcript on Global Society: Definition & Concept (2021).
["... June 1963 when a meeting was convened at Windsor which resulted in the formation of the Conflict Research Society"
Preface, page vii, Conflict in Society (1968) [critical review]
But in this cupboard on my left are the actual papers: 1963 it is!]