This essay is a byproduct of the government program "IPEA/CAPES Chairs for Development," implemented at the Federal University of Piauí through the establishment of the Octavio Ianni Chair, thus having Octavio Ianni (1926–2004) as its Patron. Its focus is on the phase of studies oriented towards globalization, globality, and/or globalism, beginning in the early 1990s. It represents one of the many possible analyses of our Patron’s work dedicated to the theme of globalism and its capacity to shape the emerging society that gradually asserts itself on humanity's historical horizon. This society, like a pendulum, oscillates between the symbolic realms of metaphor, analogy, and/or utopia and the empirical realm of concrete geo-historical reality.

In this way, the essay presents Octavio Ianni's sociological perspective on globalism, as well as the foundations of a Sociology of Development on a World Scale. For heuristic purposes, it breaks down the subject into four interconnected processes (social, economic, political, and cultural) to then reconstruct them within their actual interchanging flows. This approach allows for a concise explanatory and interpretive framework that highlights the richness of Octavio Ianni’s sociological thought in addressing the historical and epistemological challenges that simultaneously shape and render intelligible the emergence of world modernity.