Introduction -- Part I. World Society Theory: 1. The 'world' and 'society' in 'world society' -- 2. World society and social differentiation: segmentation, stratification, and functional differentiation -- Part II. Emerging World Politics: 3. The system of world politics -- 4. Forms of world politics -- Part III. Reflections and Roads Ahead: 5. Reflections on theorising world politics -- 6. Limitations, loose threads, further research; Concluding remarks: scrambles amongst world politics.