If the world is a family, what kind of family is it?

This Foreword is concerned with the trope that figures the world as a family. What ideas about the family inform, and are informed by, it? What effects does it have on the way global issues, relations and contexts are understood? In the course of exploring those questions, consideration is given, in turn, to evocations of the human family, references to the family of nations and discussions of the need to take action for the sake of our children. The Foreword illustrates something of the variety of family types that have been mobilized in representations of the world as a family, and shows how the effects produced have been mixed. While familial language has a venerable place in emancipatory discourses, it also works to install a false notion of unity rooted in biological filiation that helps to preserve divisions, sustain hierarchies and promote depoliticized approaches to political problems.