ABSTRACT
The world is not a society; it is perhaps becoming one. The starting points for this text is dual. It is not possible, using one single explanatory process, to give a satisfactory account of the contemporary world, but yet, the quest for a uniting theory can on no account be abandoned. Cultural distance, geopolitical domination, the world-economy and elements of a world-scale society are the factual base of the four models that are proposed: the world as a set of worlds, the world as a field of forces, the world as a hierarchical network, the world as a society. Each of those models has a particular geographical style. The relation between models is partly diachronic but also synchronic, with, in each place of the world, complex simultaneous interactions between different rationales. Beyond ephemeral fashions the difficulty in foreseeing the future, even the near future, of such a complex whole, calls for prudence but also imagination. Complexity, forecasting and taking account of the ethical dimension prevail, not because they proceed from sympathetic intentions but because in the final analysis they are in a better position to give an account of the world as it is. In this sense, if the ‘idealists’ are to be listened it is only because they are in fact more realist than the ‘realists’.
