If the question is on theories of globalization, there are many theories to refer

1. Social Imaginary theory- See Appadurai ( 1997)

2.Risk Society- Beck ( 1992)

3.Network Society- Castells (1996) 

4.Time-space distanciation- Giddens (1990)

5.Glocalisation- Robertson,( 1990)

6.McDonaldization- ( Ritzer ( 1996)

See some of my work on this in the article below

Article Globalisation and Construction of Local Culture in Rural Sri Lanka

I would add Wallerstein's World Systems Theory to the list. Also, Sylvia Wynter, "On Being Human as Praxis," and Foucault, "Archaeology of Knowledge."

I would recommend Castell's "The age of information" for a good theory of global society

It would be useful to know more deeply what you are looking for in this theories; meaning which is your interest, what do you want to explain.

One interesting perspective I like for my own is 'Economies of Signs and Space' by Scott Lash and John Urry (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/economies-of-signs-and-space/book203271). It is an interesting approach towards culture and economy, but I am not quite sure is what you are looking for.

Thank you, guys! But I am not looking so much for general theories of globalization (actually, I would go for Appadurai), but rather for some theory that can help me explain how social sciences in general and sociology in concrete were constituted the way they were - on a global level. I care especially for the current forms of exclusion of both knowledge and persons (maybe even regions). Do you know someone who goes this way? Maybe in another discipline...

Your question framed this way makes me think of the work of Andrew Abbott. You may want to look at his 2001 book "Chaos of Disciplines." Although I haven't read his new book, "Processual Sociology," as yet, it may also be important to your question.

Maybe the book Modernity and Its Futures (Understanding Modern Societies) Hall, Held, McGrew (1992). McGrew chapter: A global society? can give you some ideas with the links between politics, sociology and globalization, I know the book can be followed in international relations field. 

In the other hand, in cultural issues maybe Mattelart (2006) Diversidad cultural y mundialización (2006).

I hope those books can help you.

http://www86.homepage.villanova.edu/maghan.keita/readings%20proseminar/proseminar/mcgrew~global%20society.pdf

I would recommend you a global reading/application of Bourdieu's habitus theory.

Dear Nazmi,

that sounds like a good idea. I was thinking to include a bit of his fields (like the academic field) - but, as far as I know, Bourdieu is known to be quite "France-centric" and hard to universalize on a global level. Do you have any reference of people trying to do so?

I am not sure how any general theory could help you explain the constitution of current social science. This is a specific question to the sociology of science. It would be interesting to see how Bourdieu plays out with intersecting international and national fields but my guess is that instead of explaining anything, you would just re-describe it in Bourdieu's language. I don't think Luhmann is going to help much because explaining discipline-specific communication patterns or including the specific ways in which knowledge is produced in the social sicences is not a strengh of systems theory. Institutionalism focuses on national institutions rather than the inner workings on fields. None of these general theories can be sufficiently specified to explain particular processes in the social sciences. If you just want to 'discuss' things you can go with any of them. If you want to explain things, none of them is likely to be of much use.

Being a pessimist concerning the usefulness of general theory, I would go (and do go in my own project on community structures and knowledge flows in the political science sub-field 'international relations') with middle-range theories. My own starting point is built from a) the specific epistemic practices of social science research, and b) the few considerations on why national or regional sub-communities exist in some fields and countries. From there, we can move to studying local knowledge production and knowledge flows across sub-community boundaries, and attempt to explain them and the ways in which they reproduce boundaries.