The One-World World
The One-World World (OWW) is not the world as it is. It is the world as it appears to those whose knowledge systems have achieved institutional dominance. The OWW assumes that cultural differences are merely different perspectives on a single underlying reality, that scientific method is the privileged access to that reality, and that political disagreement is a matter of interests rather than of worlds. Escobar's work has systematically challenged this assumption, demonstrating through ethnographic engagement with Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities that what appear as perspectival differences are often ontological differences — different worlds, not different views of one world.
In the AI Story
The concept entered Escobar's vocabulary through engagement with the ontological turn in anthropology, particularly the work of John Law, who coined the term. The foundational claim is that modern thought has systematically suppressed ontological plurality by reframing it as cultural or epistemic plurality — as different beliefs about the same reality rather than as different realities. The reframing is not innocent. It positions Western science as the neutral arbiter of the single reality and positions non-Western knowledge systems as belief systems that can be studied anthropologically but cannot be engaged ontologically.
AI systems encode the OWW at a foundational level. Their training corpora predominantly represent Western knowledge production. Their evaluation criteria reflect Western epistemic priorities. Their ontological commitments — that knowledge is propositional, that language is the primary medium of intelligence, that the world consists of discrete entities with specifiable properties — are the ontological commitments of the OWW. The 2025 CHI study demonstrating that models default to Western philosophical frameworks when asked about ontology was an empirical confirmation of the theoretical claim.
The OWW operates through specific mechanisms. Universal categories (human rights, development, intelligence, productivity) are defined by the dominant tradition and applied globally. Alternative ontologies are treated as folk beliefs rather than as rival accounts of reality. Institutions — legal, educational, medical, technological — are built on OWW assumptions and impose them through their operations. The communities that encounter these institutions are not asked whether their ontology is compatible; they are absorbed into the OWW through the infrastructure of daily life.
The pluriversal alternative does not propose replacing the OWW with another single world. It proposes recognizing that the world has always been plural and that the OWW's universality has always been an imposition. The task is not to choose between worlds but to build institutions — including AI systems — that can sustain multiple worlds in productive coexistence rather than absorbing them into a single framework.
Origin
The term was coined by the sociologist of science John Law and adopted by Escobar as a shorthand for the ontological assumption he had been challenging throughout his career. It received systematic treatment in Designs for the Pluriverse (2018).
It draws on Escobar's decades of engagement with Latin American social movements whose resistance to development was often framed, by the communities themselves, in terms of defending their world against absorption into another.
Key Ideas
Ontological hegemony. The OWW is not a neutral description but a specific ontology that has achieved institutional dominance.
Perspective as evasion. Framing ontological difference as perspectival difference suppresses the depth of the disagreement.
Infrastructural imposition. The OWW is maintained not through argument but through the institutions that operate on its assumptions.
AI as OWW technology. The training corpora and evaluation criteria of AI systems encode the OWW and export it globally.
Pluriversal alternative. The task is not to replace the OWW but to build institutions capable of sustaining multiple worlds.
Appears in the Orange Pill Cycle
Further reading
- John Law, 'What's Wrong with a One-World World?' Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory 16:1 (2015).
- Arturo Escobar, Designs for the Pluriverse (Duke University Press, 2018).
- Marisol de la Cadena and Mario Blaser (eds.), A World of Many Worlds (Duke University Press, 2018).
- Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Cannibal Metaphysics (Univocal, 2014).