Relational revolution and relationality in IR: New conversations

Abstract

There is a multifaceted relational revolution afoot in International Relations (IR) and in the social sciences more widely. This article suggests, via engagement with varied forms of relational thought and practice in IR, but in particular via engagement with ‘relational cosmology’ associated with the ‘natural’ as well as the ‘social’ sciences, that there are important reasons for relational thought and practice in IR and around it to be more attentive to dialogues on relationality across natural and social sciences. If relational thought in IR has challenged the colonial and bifurcated ontologies of the field, relational cosmology too assists in shifting ‘modern’ understandings of science and the cosmos by facilitating engagement with situated knowledges and deep-going relationalities across ‘nature’ and ‘society’, ‘human’ and ‘non-human’ communities. Relational cosmology may be productive in joining, and perhaps even in facilitating, conversations across multiple relationalities emerging from different parts of the world and in different fields of inquiry, and yet – reflecting its relational and pluriversal orientations – it is not proposed here as a new ‘meta-‘ or ‘grand-’ narrative for relational theorising or IR.

A relational approach to Indo‐Pacific strategies: South Korea's role in a networked regional architecture

“…Relational IR has drawn renewed attention in recent years through its association with the broader movement to advance a more global IR discipline (Acharya, 2014; Acharya & Buzan, 2019; Tickner & Wæver, 2009). To expand the disciplinary boundaries of IR beyond its Eurocentric foundation, scholars have drawn insight from non‐Western thought to uncover different processes that motivate and inform state behavior (Shih, 2021; Kurki, 2022; Nordin et al, 2019; Qin, 2018). While recognizing the “many flavors” of relational IR grounded in either non‐Western thought such as Confucianism, or in Western approaches and methods such as practice theory, pragmatism, and network analysis (Emirbayer, 1997; Jackson & Nexon, 2019, p. 582; McCourt, 2016), the aims of this article are more empirical than theoretical.…”

Animalising International Relations

“…For Kurki, taking relationality seriously is revolutionary for the discipline because it enables the necessary conversations to be had on posthumanism, decoloniality, ethics, science and democracy. 91 Following on from this, fifth, in an entangled and relational International Relations, more pluriversal understandings and practices are required. 92 These three latter possibilities, in our view, are all both necessary and interlinked.…”

Debating Uneven and Combined Development/Debating International Relations: A Forum

“…`Relationality' is thus not, as Milja Kurki has intimated (p.13), a synonym for multiplicity, but in some ways its opposite number, casting the world as `an unfolding relational `mesh'' (p.10) with every `thing' and `we' radically situated and intertwined. 99 'Global' is therefore also a poor stand-in for 'international' as the former taps instead into the dimension of the social that is singular.…”

“…[90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101][102][103]. Of course, this does not mean that communal politics necessarily must be -or historically has been -universally conducted through the medium of contemporary nationstates: Brieg Powel, 'Deepening 'Multiplicity': A Response to Rosenberg', International Relations 32, no.…”