Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T05:06:27.098Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Global conversations: Relationality, embodiment and power in the move towards a Global IR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 July 2019

KARIN M FIERKE  and
VIVIENNE JABRI
KARIN M FIERKE*
Affiliation:
School of International Relations, University of St. Andrews, Arts Faculty Building, The Scores, St. Andrews KY16 9AX
VIVIENNE JABRI*
Affiliation:
Department of War Studies, King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS.
*
*Email: [email protected]
†Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

The ‘global turn’ in International Relations (IR), like postcolonial and decolonising approaches, moves away from the Eurocentric dominance of the discipline, and towards the inclusion of plural perspectives on global politics. The article investigates what such a call means in epistemological and ontological terms by focusing on the concept of ‘global conversations’. In section I, we show that the concept of ‘global’ conversations necessarily shifts from an individual ontology to a relational ontology of intra-action within a global space. In section II we explore why ‘conversation’, as distinct from dialogue fits more comfortably with this relational shift and has practical implications for how the engagement takes place. The third section engages in an exploration of some of the obstacles to global conversation, and not least the emotional obstacles, in light of historically embedded and embodied relations of power that shape who can speak and who is silenced or heard. The final section then engages in a discussion of the types of practical engagement and research that might flow from this analysis. In moving beyond ‘dialogue’, the article reveals the intersection of power, language, emotion and embodiment in the constitution of ‘global conversations’, and how these in turn come to constitute the global, its normative structuring, contestations and transformation.

Keywords

Global IRglobalconversationrelationallyintra-action
Type
Articles
Information
Global Constitutionalism , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , November 2019 , pp. 506 - 535
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acharya, Amitav. 2011. “Dialogue and Discovery: In Search of International Relations Theories Beyond the West.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 39(3):619–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Acharya, Amitav. 2014. “Global International Relations (IR) and Regional Worlds: A New Agenda for International Studies.” International Studies Quarterly 58(4):647–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Acharya, Amitav and Buzan, Barry. 2007. “Why Is There No Non-Western International Relations Theory? An Introduction.” International Relations of the Asia Pacific 7(3):2–26.Google Scholar
Acharya, Amitav and Buzan, Barry. 2009. Non-Western IR Theory: Perspectives on and Beyond Asia. London and New York, NY: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Acharya, Amitav and Buzan, Barry, eds. 2010. Non-Western International Relations Theory: Perspectives on and Beyond Asia. London and New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ahmed, Sarah. 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Ali, Rozina. 2017. “The Erasure of Islam from the Poetry of Rumi.” The New Yorker.Google Scholar
Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Barkawi, Tarak and Laffey, Mark. 2006. ‘‘The Postcolonial Moment in Security Studies.’’ Review of International Studies 32(2):329–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernstein, Richard J. 2008. “The Conversation that Never Happened (Gadamer/Derrida).” The Review of Metaphysics 61(3):577–603.Google Scholar
Bilgin, Pinar. 2014. “Dialogue of Civilisations: A Critical Security Studies Perspective.” Perceptions: Journal of International Affairs. XIX(1):9–24.Google Scholar
Bohr, Niels. [1961] 2010. Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge. New York, NY: Dover.Google Scholar
Booth, Ken. [1979] 2014. Strategy and Ethnocentrism. London and New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Brave Heart, Maria Yellow Horse. 2000. “Wakiksuyapi: Carrying the Historical Trauma of the Lakota.” Tulane Studies in Social Welfare 21-22:245–65 available at: <http://discoveringourstory.wisdomoftheelders.org/ht_and_grief/Wakiksuyapi-HT.pdf>..>Google Scholar
Chacko, P. 2016. “The Decolonial Option: The Ethics of Self-Securing.” In Ethical Security Studies, edited by Nyman, Jonna and Burke, Anthony, 189–200. London and New York, NY: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000. Provincialising Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Chan, Stephen, Mandaville, P. and Bleiker, R., eds. 2001. The Zen of International Relations. London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dallmayr, Fred. 2004. “Beyond Monologue: For a Comparative Political Theory.” Perspectives on Politics 2(2):249–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Damasio, Antonio. 2000. The Feeling of What Happens: Body, Emotion and the Making of Consciousness. London: Vintage.Google Scholar
Damasio, Antonio. 1994. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain . New York, NY: Putnam Publishing.Google Scholar
Datta-Ray, Deep K. 2015. The Making of Indian Diplomacy: A Critique of Eurocentrism . Oxford and New York, NY: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Der Derian, James. 1987. On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western Estrangement. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1981. Dissemination, translated by Johnson, Barbara. Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dussel, Enrique. 1993. Eurocentrism and Modernity (Introduction to the Frankfurt Lectures). Boundary 2 20(3):65–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eun, Yong-Soo. 2018. “Opening the Debate over ‘Non-Western’ International Relations.” Politics, online edition, 1–14.Google Scholar
Fierke, Karin M. 2019. “Contraria Sunt Complementa: Global Entanglement and the Constitution of Difference.” International Studies Review 21(1):146–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fierke, Karin M. 2017. “Consciousness at the Interface: Wendt, Eastern Wisdom and the Ethics of Intra-Action.” Critical Review 29(2):141–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gani, Jasmine. 2017. “The Erasure of Race: Cosmopolitanism and the Illusion of Kantian Hospitality.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 45(3):425–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. “Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight.” In The Interpretation of Cultures by Geertz, Clifford. New York, NY: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Gilroy, Paul. 2004. After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture. London and New York, NY: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Going International. 1983. Managing the Overseas Assignment. Going International Series. San Francisco, CA: Copeland Grigg Productions. Available at: <www.griggs.com/videos/giser.shtml>..>Google Scholar
Gone, Joseph P. 2013. “Redressing First Nations Historical Trauma: Theorizing Mechanisms for Indigenous Culture as Mental Health Treatment.” Transcultural Psychiatry 50(5):683–706.Google ScholarPubMed
Grovogui, Siba. 2001. “Come to Africa: A Hermeneutics of Race in International Theory.” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 26(4):426–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gyasi, Yaa. 2016. Homegoing. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. 1992. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, translated by Lenhardt, Christian and Nicholson, Shiery Weber. Cambridge: Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. 1998. The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hamati-Ataya, Inanna. 2018. “The Sociology of Knowledge as Postphilosophical Epistemology: Out of IR’s ‘Socially Constructed’ Idealism.” International Studies Review 20(1):3–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartstock, Nancy. 1987. “The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Historical Materialism.” In Feminism and Methodology, edited by Harding, Sandra, 157–80. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Hellmann, Gunther and Valbjorn, Morton. 2017. “Problematizing Global Challenges: Recalibrating the ‘Inter’ in IR Theory.” Forum, International Studies Review 19(2):279–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobson, John. 2004. The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchings, Kimberly. 2011. “Dialogue between Whom? The Role of the West/Non-West Distinction in Promoting Dialogue in IR.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 39(3):639–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Inayatullah, Naeem and Blaney, David. 2004. International Relations and the Problem of Difference. London and New York, NY: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jabri, Vivienne. 2013. The Postcolonial Subject: Claiming Politics/Governing Other in Late Modernity. London and New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jabri, Vivienne. 2007. “Solidarity and Spheres of Culture: The Cosmopolitan and the Postcolonial.” Review of International Studies 33(4):715–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jabri, Vivienne. 1999. “Explorations of Difference in Normative International Relations.” In Women, Culture and International Relations, edited by Jabri, Vivienne and O’Gorman, Eleanor, 39–60. Boulder, Co: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus and Nexon, Daniel H.. 1999. “Relations before States: Substance, Process, and the Study of World Politics.” European Journal of International Relations 5(3):291–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus. 2011. The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations. London and New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jung, Hwa Yol. 2002. Comparative Political Culture in the Age of Globalisation: An Introductory Anthology. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Katz, Jack. 2012. “Emotions Crucible.” In Emotions Matter: A Relational Approach to Emotion, edited by Spencer, Dale, Walby, Kevin and Hunt, Alan, 15–39. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kurki, Milja. 2015. “Stretching Situated Knowledge: From Standpoint Epistemology to Cosmology and Back Again.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43(3):779–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larson, Gerald James and Deutsch, Eliot, eds. 1988. Interpreting Across Boundaries: New Essays in Comparative Philosophy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 1987. Science in Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern, translated by Porter, Catherine. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lepore, Jill. 2018. These Truths: A History of the United States. New York, NY: WW Norton & Co.Google Scholar
Ling, Lily HM and Chong, Alan 2018. ‘‘The Silk Roads: Globalization before Neo-Liberalization: Introduction to the Special Issue.’’ Asian Journal of Comparative Politics 3(3):189–93.Google Scholar
Ling, Lily HM. 2018. ‘Three-ness: Healing World Politics with Epistemic Compassion’ Politics 1–15.Google Scholar
Ling, Lily HM. 2013a. The Dao of World Politics. Towards a Post-Westphalian Worldist International Relations . London and New York, NY: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ling, Lily HM. 2013b. “Worlds beyond Westphalia: Daoist Dialectics and the China Threat.” Review of International Studies 39(3):549–68.Google Scholar
Lukács, György. 1967 [2000]. History and Class Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Mallavarapu, Siddhart 2009. “Development of International Relations Theory in India: Traditions, Contemporary Perspectives and Trajectories.” International Studies 46:1–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maxwell, Krista. 2014. “Historicizing Historical Trauma theory: Troubling the Trans-generational Transmission Paradigm.” Transcultural Psychiatry 5(3):407–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mkhwanazi, Ezekiel SN. 2017. “Consciencism as an Expression of Ubuntu.” In Disentangling Consciencism: Essays on Kwame Nkrumah’s Philosophy, edited by Ajei, Martin Odei, 261–78. Lanham, MD: Lexington BooksGoogle Scholar
Nardin, Terry, ed. 1996. The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and Secular Perspectives. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J. 2018. Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonization. London and New York, NY: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newkirk, Vann R. 2017. “Black Charlottesville Has Seen This All Before.” The Atlantic (18 August) available at: <https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/black-community-charlottesville-response/537285/>.Google Scholar
Norris, Christopher. 1996. Reclaiming Truth: Contribution to a Critique of Cultural Relativism. New York, NY: Lawrence and Wishart.Google Scholar
Norval, Aletta. 1998. “Memory, Identity and the (Im)possibility of Reconciliation: The Work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa.” Constellations 5(2):250–65 available at: <http://center.theparentscircle.org/images/48db7e0e1d2242aa910592912b5b6203.pdf>.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ngcoya, Mvuselelo. 2015. “Ubuntu: Toward an Emancipatory Cosmopolitanism?” International Political Sociology 9:248–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nyman, Jonna and Burke, Anthony, eds. 2016. Ethical Security Studies. London and New York, NY: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oláh, Dániel. 2017. ‘The Amazing Arab Scholar who Beat Adam Smith by a Millennium.’’ Evonomics available at: <www.evonomics.com>.Google Scholar
Prussing, Erica. 2014. “Historical Trauma: Politics of a Conceptual Framework.” Transcultural Psychiatry 51(3):436–58.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Qin, Yaqing. 2016. “A Relational Theory of World Politics.” International Studies Review . 18(1):33–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Qin, Yaqing. 2007. “Why Is There No Chinese International Relations Theory?” International Relations of the Asia Pacific 7(3):313–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sabaratnam, Meera. 2011. “IR in Dialogue … but Can We Change the Subject? A Typology of Decolonising Strategies for the Study of World Politics.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 39(3):781–803.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York, NY: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Said, Edward. 1993. Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto and Windus.Google Scholar
Sawyer, Ralph, ed. 2008. The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China . New York, NY: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Shilliam, Robbie. 2015. The Black Pacific: Anti-Colonial Struggles and Oceanic Connections. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Shilliam, Robbie. 2010. “Non-Western Thought and International Relations.” In International Relations and Non-Western Thought, edited by Shilliam, Robbie, 1–11. London and New York, NY: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Song, Xinning. 2001. “Building International Relations Theory with Chinese Characteristics.” Journal of Contemporary China 10(26):61–74.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1988. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Nelson, Cary and Grossberg, Lawrence. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 2000. “Translation as Culture.” Parallax 6(1):13–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Starr, S Frederick. 2013. Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steger, Manfred B. 2006. Searching for Satya through Ahimsa: Gandhi’s Challenge to Western Discourses of Power. Constellations 13(3):332–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Theodosius, Catherine. 2012. ‘“Feeling a Feeling’ in Emotion Management.” In Emotions Matter: A Relational Approach to Emotions, edited by Spencer, Dale, Walby, Kevin and Hunt, Alan, 63–85. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Tickner, Arlene and Waever, Ole, eds. 2009. International Relations Scholarship around the World. London and New York, NY: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valbjorn, Morten. 2017. ‘‘Dialogues: On the Purpose, Procedure and Product of Dialogues in Inter-National Relations Theory.’’ International Studies Review 19(2):291–6.Google Scholar
Wa Thiong’o, Ngũgĩ. 2012. In the House of the Interpreter. London: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Wang, Hung-Jen. 2013. The Rise of China and Chinese International Relations Scholarship. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Wang, Hung-Jen. 2017. “Traditional Empire–Modern State Hybridity: Chinese Tianxia and Westphalian Anarchy.” Global Constitutionalism 6(2):298–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wang, Robin R. 2012. Yin and Yang. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google ScholarPubMed
Wendt, Alexander. 2015. Quantum Mind and Social Science . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiener, Antje. 2018. Contestation and Constitution of Norms in Global International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiener, Antje. 2014. A Theory of Contestation. New York, NY: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiener, Antje. 2008. The Invisible Constitution of Politics: Contested Norms and International Encounters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1958. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. 1996. “Communication and the Other: Beyond Deliberative Democracy.” In Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, edited by Benhabib, Seyla, 120–36. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar