Preliminary workshop details:
FUTURES OF GLOBAL RELATIONS
Lancaster University, 16th-17thMay 2017
Draft paper deadline, for internal circulation: Monday 24 April 2017.
If you are submitting a paper, please send it to
Aims
This workshop aims to bring into conversation key interlocutors that have argued for the international relations (IR) discipline to turn its focus from ‘things’ to ‘relations’, but that have done so in relatively isolated enclaves on the Chinese mainland and on Taiwan, and the West. By doing so, this workshop will:
1.contribute to the construction of a truly global IR, ‘worlding’ the discipline ‘beyond the West’ through engagement with Chinese thought on the mainland and on Taiwan;
2.provide a manifesto for a relational IR based on more than one dominant Western epistemology;
3.produce a special issue of a good journal with global reach;
4.engage junior colleagues in particular in skills-developing outreach activities;
5.build global relations between scholars of all levels of seniority with a view to establishing a wider network in the longer term.
Topic outline and significance
The relational turn in IR has gone from strength to strength in recent years. Much of the debate has taken off from the publication of Jackson and Nexon’s 1999 article ‘Relations before states: substance, process and the study of world politics’, which argued for an ontological approach to IR which privileges ‘relations’ over ‘things’.[1] Their arguments, and subsequent publications that build on them, principally draw on debates between collocutors located in Western institutions and in English language, which hark back to Dewey’s pragmatist philosophy developed in 1940-50’s United States. Alongside this Deweysian inspiration, feminist and queer theoretical discussions of IR have continued to focus on relationality, particularly through discussions of the performativity of sexgender, the inequality of power relations, and the ethics of care.[2] Despite significant efforts to explore intersectionality in these literatures, influential contributions have emerged from and have remained focused on the Global West.In the same time period, scholars from the Global East have been increasingly vocal in proposing a ‘Chinese school’ of IR theory, which many argue relies on a ‘Chinese ontology, the ontology of relations, instead of the western ontology of things’.[3] This line of thought understands relationality as the core of a Chinese contribution to theorizing world politics, and looks for its expression in concepts drawn from Chinese tradition, such as ‘All-underheaven’ (Tianxia)[4], ‘friendship/relations’ (guanxi)[5], ‘harmony’ (hexie)[6], and a ‘Daoist dialectic’ (Zhongyong/yin-yang dialectic)[7].
These two strands of thought appear to share key interests and aims, yet dialogue between the two has been sparse to date. The first line of debate, drawing on Jackson and Nexon and feminist contributions, rarely acknowledges or takes serious stock of contributions from China (or other traditions beyond the West). The second line of debate, drawing on Chinese concepts, rarely acknowledges that Western traditions (or other traditions beyond the West) also have an intellectual history which seeks to foreground relationality.
It is high time, therefore, that these two geographically situated clusters of discussion are brought into conversation. This workshop takes a big leap in such a direction by bringing together key interlocutors from the two debates. Key advocates and critics of both discussions are invited to take stock of discussion to date, and to draw out areas for mutual reinforcement, contradiction and contention. The aim is to thereby nourish future relational thinking that is more aware and inclusive with regards to relations between diverging (or converging) global epistemologies and ontologies.
Outputs, dissemination and further development
The immediate outcome of the workshop will be a special issue of a good journal. We will apply for local funds to publish the issue open access, in order to maximize availability to scholars in less wealthy parts of the academe.
This traditional outreach will be supplemented by a workshop report for circulation, supported by outreach on academic blogs and social media. Junior colleagues will be particularly encouraged to lead these activities.
Of course, there is a whole world of relations that is not included in the focus here on China and the West. The next step in this push to make the relations of international relations truly global will be to expand the discussions begun by this workshop to other epistemologies of the South. If workshop funding from CCKF is forthcoming, we will jointly submit a larger funding bid for a network that takes this next step. Provisional steps have been taken to develop such a bid for a larger workshop to take place at Lancaster University’s Ghana campus in 2018.
Proposed research schedule
Draft paper deadline, for circulation: Monday 24 April 2017.
If you are submitting a paper, please send it to
16-17 May: Workshop at Lancaster University, UK. See detailed schedule below.
18 May to 1 July: Papers revised in view of workshop comments. Manifesto drafted and circulated under DrNordin’s lead, based on workshop discussion.
1 July – 1 August: Participants read and comment on Manifesto draft. Revision of draft.
August 2017: Submission of full special issue for journal peer review.
Preliminary workshop schedule
Day 1, 16 May 2017
9.00-9.30 Registration
9.30-9.45 Welcome
Prof. Andrew Atherton, Deputy-VC Lancaster University
Dr Astrid Nordin, Associate Director, Lancaster University Institute of Social Futures
9.45-10.30Session 1.1: Relationality in Western traditions - presentations
Prof. Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, American University, US and Dr Daniel Nexon, Georgetown University, US
Prof. MarysiaZalewski, Cardiff University, UK
10.30-10.50 Morning tea
10.50-12.30 Session 1.2: Relationality in Western traditions – comments and discussion
12.30-13.30 Lunch
13.30-14.15 Session 2.1: Relationality in Chinese traditions – presentations
Prof. Shih Chih-yu, Professor, National Taiwan University, Taiwan
Prof. Qin Yaqing, Chinese Foreign Affairs University, PRC (via Skype)
14.15-14.35 Afternoon tea
14.35-16.15 Session 2.2: Relationality in Chinese traditions – comments and discussion
18.00 Workshop dinner
Day 2, 17 May 2017
9.15-9.25Recap of previous day and objectives for the day ahead
Dr Astrid Nordin, Associate Director, Lancaster University Institute of Social Futures
9.25-10.30Session 3.1: Relationality in East-West hybridity - presentations
Prof. L. H. M. Ling, Professor, New School, US
Dr Astrid Nordin, Lecturer, Lancaster University, UK
10.30-10.50 Morning tea
10.50-12.30 Session 3.2: Relationality in East-West hybridity – comments and discussion
12.30-13.30 Lunch
13.30-15.10 Session 4.1: Facilitated manifesto construction
15.10-15.30 Afternoon tea
15.30-16.30 Session 2.2: Planning session for network establishment
Preliminary paper titles and abstracts
Session 1: Relationality in Western traditions
- Daniel Nexon (Associate Professor, Georgetown University, US) and
Patrick Thaddeus Jackson (American University, US)
Reclaiming the social: relationalism in anglophone international studies
At its heart, relationalism is a scientific ontology emphasizing process rather than substance and transaction rather than essence; it is a wager about how things *are* in the world, intended to explain otherwise-puzzling outcomes and occurrences. This core wager can be cashed out in a number of different ways. Since its explicit importation into anglophone international studies, relational thinking has shown up in three major analytic languages: first, network theory—including formal social-network analysis and variants of relational realism; second, practice-turn theorizing—in some combination of field-theoretic and pragmatist approaches; and third, post-structuralist work that focuses on the productive power and conditions of possibility created by discursive configurations—such as relations among signs and signifieds. More recently, scholars have brought assemblage and actor-network approaches into the mix, to some extent blending the second and third of these analytic languages with a broadly social-constructionist sensibility. But in one way or another, all of these varieties of relational work may be read as seeking to reclaim “the social” from “the cultural” for the purpose of producing better explanations of international phenomena, shifting our focus from ideas and interests to position and connection.
The growth of relational thinking derived from non-western social ontologies appears to stress different practical concerns, and therefore presents a potentially profound cognitive challenge to the sensibilities that animate anglophone relational theory in the study of world politics. This paper will seek to promote a dialogue with those non-western social ontologies and the traditions from which they derive by mapping relationalism in contemporary anglophone scholarship in international studies, thus enabling fruitful comparisons and contrasts and highlighting areas of overlap as well as areas of distinction.
- MarysiaZalewski (Cardiff University, UK)
Thinking feminism; thinking relationality
Two streams of thought frame my thinking for this paper. One is inspired by the fluidity and disruptive impulse of feminist theory; the second is motivated by an eclectic constellation of questions about the work of creativity, the disciplinary and methodological constraints around writing, and the abused potential for properly pursuing scholarly work in corporatized institutions which are, ironically, saturated in climates of ‘liquid fear’. To unpack these opening comments a little: one of the earliest feminist writers in the discipline of International Relations – J. Ann Tickner – was one of the first to notice, and importantly explicitly state, that International Relations was not about the ‘International’, and nor was it about ‘Relations’. Moreover, she wrote one of the first explicitly ‘feminist IR’ essays (or recognised as such) which was published in the journal Millennium and in an edited collection (Grant & Newland: 1991) - ‘Hans Morgenthau’s principles of political realism: a feminist reformulation’. Taking on one of the central ‘father figures’ of the discipline, her essay offered a ‘feminist reformulation’ of his 6 principles. She argued that these principles, assumed to be objective and universal, were in fact partial as they were based on assumptions about human nature which privileged masculinity. Invoking Carol Gilligan’s ground-breaking work critiquing the work another ‘father figure’ (in the discipline of psychology) – Lawrence Kohlberg. The latter notoriously based his theories of moral development entirely around the behaviours and practices of males. Tickner suggested there were alternative (or additional) ways to imagine how the international system of politics ‘worked’ drawing on feminist thinking and traditionally understood ‘feminine’ ways of acting and behaving. Key here is that much of this ‘feminist reformulation’ worked with ideas about relationality – or forms of connection between things (ideas, concepts, behaviours, emotions) in contrast to the (masculine) model of linearity, objectivity, rationality and cold calculation. This very much suggests that the conceptual, emotional and material work of relationality has a firm base in feminist theorising. I want to return to, or rather pick up on some of this thinking to consider the questions underpinning this workshop.
The cluster of questions which form the second stream of my thinking for this paper (the work of creativity, disciplinary and methodological constraints around writing and the problem of the corporate University) make me curious about the possibilities of shifting dominant knowledge forms which are so deeply embedded in toxic systems. If creativity is the product of ‘wasted time’ (Einstein), the time managed, mechanistic enterprise of the University suggests there are increasing epistemic and emotional obstacles to the valiant endeavour to resist, reject or simply ignore the rationalist ethics of westernized, individualistic thinking practices. In this presentation I will draw on the main threads of the conundrums and questions I raise here to weave a narrative which speaks to the ‘relational turn’ in IR.
Session 2: Relationality in Chinese traditions
- Qin Yaqing (Professor, Chinese Foreign Affairs University, PRC)
Practicality, Rationality, and Relationality
The logic of practicality rests on the ontology of practice and holds that background knowledge, rather than representational knowledge, constitutes the prime mover of social action. While supporting the ontology of practice, this paper argues that it is wrong to parallel background knowledge and representational knowledge in a dualistic structure as alternative bases of action. From the perspective of the Chinese zhongyong dialectics, the two types of knowledge are in fact two sides of the same story, inclusive of and complementary with each other: The former provides the ontological foundation while the latter foregrounds and reinforces the former, both reflecting the ways of life, including doing, thinking, and speaking, of a certain community of practice. Production of representational knowledge is practice and the community of academicians, as a community of diplomats, is one of practice, too.
A civilization-based cultural community is the prototype of communities of practice. The logics of consequences and appropriateness go to the category of representational knowledge, which rests on the background knowledge embedded in Western cultural communities. Rationality is a key concept there, sustaining the two logics of consequences and appropriateness: the former by instrumental rationality and the latter by normative rationality. No matter whether it is interests that select or norms that select, they must work through individual rationality, without which the selecting mechanism stops working. It is exactly this concept of rationality, individual rationality in particular, that has grown out of the practice of Western cultural communities over hundreds of years, reflecting their ways of life, articulated and represented in and through the doing of Western academicians for generations, and reinforcing the foundation on which much of social knowledge production has been done.
Just as rationality is based on the practice of Western cultural communities, relationality is a key concept abstracted from long-time practice of Confucian cultural communities, which see the world as one of relations. It is a most important part of the background knowledge of Confucian cultural communities and has been naturally represented over thousands of years. It is indeed the Confucian counterpart of the Cartesian rationality. The relational theory focuses on human relations and holds that relationality is the key to understanding social phenomena and meaningful human actions. Rationality, rooted in Western practice and articulated and represented by generations of academic practitioners, has become the theoretical core of many mainstream social theories, while relationality is an underdeveloped concept and its logic has not been systematically explored. This paper discusses the logic of relationality as both a neglected and a complementary base for human action, conspicuous in Confucian societies and applicable far beyond.
The relational theory assumes that the world is one of relations and the social world one of human relations. It does not deny the argument that identity shapes interest, which in turn motivates action. The logic of relationality, however, posits that actors are actors-in-relations in the first place, thus stipulating that their identities are constituted by social relations and their self-interests shared with other-interests. As such, they base their actions on relations and makes decisions according to their relationships to specific others, with the totality of her relational circles or the “relational sphere” as the background. It also posits relational rationality, arguing that rationality, instrumental or normative, is important, but it is conditioned by relationality, for without clarifying what relationship an actor has with the specific other(s) she simply does not know what interest she has and what norm she is to follow. Interests and norms are defined in terms of relationships. It further posits that the best possible environment for the realization of self-interest, as well as for the prosperity of the collectivity, is Mencius optimality, or a community of harmonious human relations.
- Shih Chih-yu (Professor, National Taiwan University, Taiwan):
Hangingonwithout a Solution:Patience and Trust in Chinese International Relations
Nation states do not always try to resolve disputes that involve them and others. Sometimes, even no solution can become the goal for a prolonged period.In reality, even nation states that are not epistemologically used to non-solution have no difficulty in displaying patience in practice from time to time. This is not unusual at all where no party is able to force a solution. However, where there is an asymmetry in power, patience would make a curious agenda.This paper will discuss the role of patience as mechanism of relationality in international relations and elaborate the analytical utility of patience as regards theorization away from the power determinant.
Specifically, the paper will rely on the notions of trust and relationality to divide patience into four different conditions, each adopting a policy disposition toward non-solution and attached by case studies. The paper will argue that, once relationality is incurred discursively, decision makers tend to enhance patience. This does not preclude a return to the realist style power calculus. However, the paper will not treat those triggers that lead them into either power or relationality. The paper only considers how trust and the view on relationality affect the state of patience.
Session 3: Relationality in East-West hybridity
- L. H. M. Ling (Professor, New School, US):
Methodological Abundance: A Subaltern Antidote to Methodological Parsimony
Conventional International Relations (IR) takes parsimony for rigor in methods. In “explaining as much as possible with as little as possible...,” a leading manual in IR stresses, “the leverage we have over a problem is very high.” Four key assumptions set this claim: (1) we live in an atomistic universe where neither entities nor their explanations engage with one another; (2) to the extent that a structural or historical legacy applies, it produces outcomes that are singular, invariable, and universal, rendering them highly calculable; after all, (3) explanations serve only to predict and control because (4) these lead to stability and security, thereby ensuring power. A paradigm shift occurs only when it can account for old anomalies and new. Knowledge thus proceeds with one paradigm subsuming or replacing another. Such is parsimony in social science.
But what about Otherlogics or worldviews? As an Andean activist, Humberto Cholango, wrote to Pope Benedict XVI in 2007: “We are still here.” He elaborates: “[We] have always been here, and will continue to be here [because] we learned how to merge our beliefs and symbols with the ones of the invaders and oppressors.” In other words, native ways of being have endured despite five centuries of colonialism and imperialism precisely by hybridizing with the “foreign,” the “strange,” or the “alien.” The assumptions above, then, do not hold. That is, (1) messy hybridities, not a neatly quantifiable singularity, proliferate even under conditions of sustained coercion, thereby (2) creating mutually- embedded and mutually-shaping dynamics that (3) confound simple-minded notions of prediction and control; and (4) the lack of such leads to greater instability and insecurity that requires ever-increasing assertions of power to maintain a minimum sense of power. Clearly, the Protestant Ethic has limits both politically and epistemically.