Towards a social-relational dialectic for world politics

Abstract

Dialectics remains an underutilized methodology in contemporary IR theory, which represents a significant limitation to the study of world politics, particularly in understanding processes of transformation and change -an oversight that this article intends to redress. This article has two primary goals. First, it aims to reconstruct and build upon the small but robust debate concerning the validity of dialectics in IR that has been championed previously by Alker and Biersteker, and Heine and Teschke, respectively. Second, it contrasts dialectical and deterministic approaches to IR, as exemplified in Coxian Critical Theory and neo-realism, as a means to showcase the merits of the former as an approach to the study of social change in world politics. The ultimate aim of the article is to offer the groundwork of a social-relational dialectical approach to world politics that is focused on the intersubjective engagements between human beings, which can be developed in future research. Through such an analytic, the dialectical processes in social life are shown to be open-ended and the article rejects any understanding of 'inevitable' progress/regress or teleological end point. On the one hand, this account of dialectics promises greater analytical potential for understanding processes of change in world politics but, on the other, indicates the potential for the irrational toleration of contradiction and antagonism as an accepted feature of social life. Ultimately, the article argues that the skilled dialectician should emphasize human agency and intersubjectivity within a social-relational dialectical approach to world politics.

Recognizing (mis)recognition from the inside and the outside: some criteria for ‘seizing’ a slippery concept

“…Our book illustrates the 'utility' of these dignity categories for the understanding of international conflict, and especially interstate conflict though there is no reason to exclude from such considerations other kind of actors such as those already engaged in cosmopolitanism (Brincat 2011). A total reciprocity of images would finally negate any 'difference' and identity and there would be no need of recognition.…”

Dialectics and World Politics: The Story So Far …

“…Yet despite the flurry of debate that followed, IR theory quickly resumed its ambivalence to dialectical analysis. Nevertheless, an undercurrent of new scholarship has arisen that canvasses both theoretical and practical applications of dialectics: Rosenburg (2013) has utilised Trotsky's uneven and combined development as a distinctly dialectical way of understanding key problems in social and international thought; Ling (2013b) has developed a unique Daoist dialectical approach to world politics; Patomäki (2006) has furthered a Critical Realist approach to dialectics and global futures; and I have begun to outline an open-ended and social-relational dialectic for world politics (see Brincat, 2009Brincat, , 2011.…”

Dialectics in critical international relations theory

“…Accordingly, Ling pioneered a unique Daoist dialectical approach to world politics (2013) and was, before her untimely passing, completing a work exploring the dialectical relation between Daoist yin/ yang theory and the seven categories of anekāntavāda argumentation (from Jainist philosophy, which we will briefly discuss in the next section). 4 These explorations have been allied ways of furthering an open-ended, negative, and social-relational dialectic for world politics (see Brincat, 2009Brincat, , 2011Brincat & Ling, 2014). With this impetus, in 2015 a joint project on Dialectics in World Politics (2015) was able to draw together a range of dialectical approaches in IR, ranging from Marxism and Critical Realism, to Daoism and Postcolonial theory (Brincat, 2014).…”