  In this paper we unify previous developments on higher operads and
multitensors into a single framework in which the interplay between
multitensors on a category V, and monads on the category of graphs enriched in
V, is taken as fundamental. The material presented here is the conceptual
background for subsequent work in which the Gray tensor product of 2-categories
and the Crans tensor product of Gray categories are exhibited as existing
within our framework, and in an explicit construction of the funny tensor
product of categories is generalised to a large class of Batanin operads.
