ABSTRACT

We are inhabitants of a world of multiple processes and tendencies. As Bhaskar (1993, p. 261)

argues, this world is characterised ‘by complex, plural, contradictory, differentiated, disjoint but

also coalescing and condensing development and antagonistic struggles’. World history is not a

smooth, linear development to any direction, however rational that direction may be. As pro-

cesses are subject to regression, entropy, and roll-back, we cannot expect real geo-historical pro-

cesses to be anything but a messy affair.