[MUSIC] Espace Mondial, what does it mean? This is, as you know, a French word. It's also a course, which has been offered to the students of the French Institute of SciencesPo, the famous and the well known French Institute where trained so many French politicians. Espace Mondial, I keep the French word because I would like to designate something a little bit different from what is currently offered in the American, or British, or many European universities. Of course, this course is very close to global studies. That's to say, a global vision of our world which tries to go further, to go beyond the classic vision of interstate relations. But Espace Mondial adds also a French touch. That's to say the French vision, which is coming the French culture and the French history, on what the world is now. This is implying new perspectives and also new context. New perspective, new perspective that's to say, global studies and here, Espace Mondial, will prompt us to reconsider action, to reconsider identity, to reconsider space and territory, to reconsider also the main dimensions of our world. To reconsider action, first of all, it's not possible now in our present world to conceive an action, even a local action, without situating it in a global context. That's to say the decision-making process, even at the individual level, is quite different from the traditional perspective we had about it. But it implies, also, that the world order is mainly made of billions of individual actions of so many interactions between individual actors or groups. That's to saying our world. We have presently 7 billion actors. That's to say, we can't consider the world from the initiatives taken by the only states. That implies also that we have to move to the non-state actors. NGOs, multi-national corporations, media, and so many aggregated translational actors, migrants are investors and so on. So action does not mean what it did mean previously. But your perspective is also a new vision of identity. We are now in a world of plural volatile identities. We are in a world in which the national commitment is no more the main parameter of the international decision and the international behavior of people. We are in a world in which alterity has a very complex meaning. That's to say, we have now to define the others, and the others are not only friends or enemies. Are no more the citizens of the same country and the citizens of other countries. We have so many transnational flows that identities are crossing. Identities are more and more complex and made of different kinds of allegiances and commitments. New perspective, it means also a new vision of space and territory. Previously, it was very easy to consider the world as made of the coexistence of nation-states. We are now in a world, which is more complex. First of all, because border lines are not so efficient as they were before. And so there are many transnational relations which are ignoring border lines. That's why the territorial sovereignty that existed previously doesn't exist as it was before. And also, we are observing so many regional integration processes in Europe, Latin America, Africa, and so on. And so what did the famous Japanese called Kenichi Ohmae called region states is one of the parameters of the very complex territorial order of our world. That's to say now we have transnational integration, regional integrations. But also, local spaces, which are getting more and more important and more and more relevant. We are in a global world. That's why space is something difficult that I try to express through this world of Espace Modial. And also, we have among these new perspectives to consider the multiple dimensions of our world. Do you know that every three hours, 2,800 people die of starvation in the world? That is to say, the equivalent of eight World Trade Center attacks every day. This is a fundamental parameter of our new world. This is a new dimension. Consider for instance that the football club, Manchester United, has a budget of 1,400,000,000 euros, when the FAO, which is specialized, as you know, for covering starvation in the world, has a budget which is limited to 600 million. Consider that the American attack on Iraq cost $1,000 billion, when the budget of the DPKO, that's to say, the Department of the United Nations, which is specialized in peace keeping, has the yearly budget of only $7 billion. That's to say that the dimensions of our world and of the international action are very diversified. And that we have to consider all these discrepancies as one of the main parameters of our Espace Modial. New perspectives, but also new intellectual context. I am a particle scientist, but however, I know now that for observing the world and the Espace Modial, I have to mobilize the knowledge. Which has been shaped by so many social sciences, it's impossible to have recurring vision of our world without taking into account economics, history, sociology, geography, anthropology, and so on. Of course, I'm not suspicious of all these disciplines, but my attempt is to consider the results of my colleagues in different fields and to make a synthesis that I will offer you during all these lectures. We have now to stand in a transdisciplinary behavior Vision for taking into account our present Espace Modial. Your new context is universalism. All of us, and especially among Western people, we are convinced that we are bringing universality. Of course, many human values are universal, but no one in the world invented universality. Universality is also made of plurality. And we have to consider this plural vision of the world for explaining war, power, peace, and so on. This implies to go back to comparison. These lectures will stress on comparison as the main way for investing our world, for explaining the social and political processes, and also to offer very modestly some solutions. And to turn your contest, we are in a world of mobility. The global world implies a mobile world, that's to say through immigration, but also through circulation of information of ideas and overall by multiple interactions, interplaying between actors. This mobility is at the core of this new vision of the world. This is a French thought. Of course, this French thought, as we will see together, is not so different from the others. But the specificity of this MOOC is to offer you a vision, which has been shaped through the long political and intellectual history of France. But ladies and gentlemen, I am not a native of an English-speaking country. I am Frenchman, and so I will use the English language for trying to get in touch with you. Please, forgive me for my bad English, but the main perspective is to change the view, and that is the real project of our MOOC. [MUSIC]
