Tamara Trownsell - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Tamara Trownsell
International Studies Perspectives, 2020
Difference, a central concern to the study of international relations (IR), has not had its ontol... more Difference, a central concern to the study of international relations (IR), has not had its ontological foundations adequately disrupted. This forum explores how existential assumptions rooted in relational logics provide a significantly distinct set of tools that drive us to re-orient how we perceive, interpret, and engage both similarity and difference. Taking their cues from cosmological commitments originating in the Andes, South Asia, East Asia, and the Middle East, the six contributions explore how our existential assumptions affect the ways in which we deal with difference as theorists, researchers, and teachers. This initial conversation pinpoints key content and foci of future relational work in IR.
Review of International Studies, Dec 13, 2021
Review of International Studies, Sep 29, 2022
Both relationality and separateness are aspects of our everyday lives. How we engage these phenom... more Both relationality and separateness are aspects of our everyday lives. How we engage these phenomena hinges on the particular existential assumptions that we take for granted. Within the discipline of International Relations (IR), both relationality and separateness have informed how global politics is studied and practiced. How states and their relations are conceived has, for instance, varied by the distinct degrees of privilege given to separation and interconnection: from notions of completely autonomous units like billiard balls to always emergent phenomena co-constituted through relations. The plurality of trajectories that inform this Special Issue illustrate how much broader the spectrum of relational engagement can be when we are cognisant of the impact of these existential assumptions on forms of life, knowing, and knowledge production in International Relations. By highlighting a spectrum of relational engagement, we raise important questions about the way the various knowledge frames in IR are acknowledged, legitimised, limited, and reproduced.
Review of International Studies
Both relationality and separateness are aspects of our everyday lives. How we engage these phenom... more Both relationality and separateness are aspects of our everyday lives. How we engage these phenomena hinges on the particular existential assumptions that we take for granted. Within the discipline of International Relations (IR), both relationality and separateness have informed how global politics is studied and practiced. How states and their relations are conceived has, for instance, varied by the distinct degrees of privilege given to separation and interconnection: from notions of completely autonomous units like billiard balls to always emergent phenomena co-constituted through relations. The plurality of trajectories that inform this Special Issue illustrate how much broader the spectrum of relational engagement can be when we are cognisant of the impact of these existential assumptions on forms of life, knowing, and knowledge production in International Relations. By highlighting a spectrum of relational engagement, we raise important questions about the way the various kno...
The contemporary IR craft homogenizes a pluriverse of time-spacescapes as if it were a "one-world... more The contemporary IR craft homogenizes a pluriverse of time-spacescapes as if it were a "one-world world. " We propose a strategy of recrafting to engender a nimble discipline for actively encountering 'the world multiply' and a generation of scholars capable of engaging various forms of knowing/being/sensing/doing. Worlding multiply requires: (1) taking seriously the plurality of worlds that emerge through distinct existential assumptions and (2) learning how to translate/read across time-spacescapes built through incommensurate ways of doing/being without reducing one to the other. We suggest conscientiously developing tools-new skills, concepts, ways of being-for encountering complexity in both pedagogy and scholarship.
International Studies Perspectives, 2020
Difference, a central concern to the study of international relations (IR), has not had its ontol... more Difference, a central concern to the study of international relations (IR), has not had its ontological foundations adequately disrupted. This forum explores how existential assumptions rooted in relational logics provide a significantly distinct set of tools that drive us to re-orient how we perceive, interpret, and engage both similarity and difference. Taking their cues from cosmological commitments originating in the Andes, South Asia, East Asia, and the Middle East, the six contributions explore how our existential assumptions affect the ways in which we deal with difference as theorists, researchers, and teachers. This initial conversation pinpoints key content and foci of future relational work in IR.
Review of International Studies, 2021
A pluriversal encounter that includes interlocutors from other ways of knowing and being requires... more A pluriversal encounter that includes interlocutors from other ways of knowing and being requires recrafting how we commonly approach ontology in IR. Our shared ontological register only acknowledges separation as the fundamental existential assumption, and not all lifeways depart from this assumption. The article prods us to move beyond considering ontology as the study of being, a more substantialist reading, to include other fundamental existential commitments so that we can address how distinct presuppositions shape and are shaped by how we perceive and engage existence. With this reorientation, the article first establishes how even relational approaches in the discipline, including variations of constructivism, poststructuralism, and new materialism privilege separation as the primordial condition of existence to the exclusion of any other option. A conceptual toolset is then elaborated to examine how a singular commitment to separation constitutes an ontological parochialism ...
PhD Dissertation, 2013
Rather than taking the generally assumed parameters and tenets of the field of International Rela... more Rather than taking the generally assumed parameters and tenets of the field of International Relations and of knowledge production in general for granted, this dissertation examines these assumptions in light of a contrasting mirror to gauge the likelihood of being able to generate knowledge that can respond to the concerns of this field, diminish the likelihood of war, and augment the chances for peace. The final conclusion is that the methodological approaches currently engaged within this field will not be able to respond in any significant way to the field’s goals due to the ‘eternally’ privileged thrust toward imbalance afforded through the separation-based ontological lens generally shared and employed to constitute the time-spacescape of Western-style academia. I show this through an elaborate contrast between the fruits afforded through the ontology of separation against those generated through an ontology of complete interconnectedness. For this contrast I draw on certain key principles of Andean philosophy as one particular manifestation of what becomes possible when collectively applying the lens of complete interconnectedness. For these principles to serve as an appropriate contrast, however, their common (re-)interpretations as found in both historical chronicles of the conquest and contemporary anthropological works need to be thoroughly re-expanded based on a lens of complete interconnectedness due to the reductionist effects of the lens of separation, which was used to document them. Once we get a glimpse of the more robust picture generated through this lens and its implications, we are then able to discern how even the relational methodological approaches applied within the field of IR and in academia more broadly still adhere to certain separation-based parameters that preclude them from accessing, and therefore being able to use, the full implications of robust monism, which include being able to ontologically privilege balance instead of imbalance as well as explaining how we are compelled to fall into the vicious cycles of epistemic violence, of resorting to a teleological framework for engaging reality, and expressing ourselves in terms of domination and submission.
Uluslararası İlişkiler Dergisi, 2021
The contemporary IR craft homogenizes a pluriverse of time-spacescapes as if it were a "one-world... more The contemporary IR craft homogenizes a pluriverse of time-spacescapes as if it were a "one-world world." We propose a strategy of recrafting to engender a nimble discipline for actively encountering "the world multiply" and a generation of scholars capable of engaging various forms of knowing/being/sensing/doing. Worlding multiply requires: (1) taking seriously the plurality of worlds that emerge through distinct existential assumptions and (2) learning how to translate/read across time-spacescapes built through incommensurate ways of doing/being without reducing one to the other. We suggest conscientiously developing tools-new skills, concepts, ways of being-for encountering complexity in both pedagogy and scholarship.
International Studies Perspectives, 2021
Difference, a central concern to the study of international relations (IR), has not had its ontol... more Difference, a central concern to the study of international relations (IR), has not had its ontological foundations adequately disrupted. This forum explores how existential assumptions rooted in relational logics provide a significantly distinct set of tools that drive us to reorient how we perceive, interpret, and engage both similarity and difference. Taking their cues from cosmological commitments originating in the Andes, South Asia, East Asia, and the Middle East, the six contributions explore how our existential assumptions affect the ways in which we deal with difference as theorists, researchers, and teachers. This initial conversation pinpoints key content and foci of future relational work in IR.
Resumen: Las bases ontológicas de la diferencia, uno de los principales temas que se abordan en el estudio de las relaciones internacionales, no han sido cuestionadas lo suficiente. En este foro, exploramos cómo las pre-suposiciones existenciales arraigadas a la lógica relacional proveen un con-junto de herramientas completamente distinto que nos permite percibir, interpretar y relacionar la similitud y la diferencia de otra forma. Tomando como referencia las cosmovivencias encontradas en los Andes, Asia del Sur, Asia Oriental y Oriente Medio, en las seis colaboraciones se analiza cómo las hipótesis existenciales influyen en la forma en la que estudiamos la diferencia como teóricos, investigadores y docentes. En esta primera Trownsell, Tamara A. et al. (2021) Forum: Differing about Difference: Relational IR from around the World. International Studies Perspectives,
Signature Pedagogies in International Relations, 2021
This chapter reviews pertinent elements of “existential calisthenics,” a signature pedagogical pr... more This chapter reviews pertinent elements of “existential calisthenics,” a signature pedagogical program that prepares students to become ontologically agile. With the precept that this project in no way seeks to become an overarching singular pedagogical strategy, the first half of the chapter explores the central assumptions, values and beliefs that drive the impulse to foster ontological pluralism and agility, before reviewing some concrete pedagogical strategies in the second.
Sur Idea, 2021
This article analyzes the contemporary artwork of Favio Caraguay through the prism of Andean phil... more This article analyzes the contemporary artwork of Favio Caraguay through the prism of Andean philosophy.
https://www.e-ir.info/2019/01/08/recrafting-international-relations-through-relationality/
Books by Tamara Trownsell
International Relations in the Anthropocene: New Agendas, New Agencies, and New Approaches (ed. by David Chandler, Franziska Müller, and Delf Rothe) , 2021
Literatures on the Anthropocene in International Relations (IR) (and elsewhere) often cite the co... more Literatures on the Anthropocene in International Relations (IR) (and elsewhere) often cite the conceptual and ontological separation of humanity from nature as fundamental to the dominant modern worldview and generative of the many ecological crises characteristic of this epoch. One central entailment of this worldview has been anthropocentrism, which expresses the idea that humans are the most important beings on the planet and even in the cosmos. As a way to defamiliarize ourselves from anthropocentrism and begin exploring some possible alternatives, this chapter will focus on interrogating what we call fundamental ontological assumptions about the primordial conditions of existence. The chapter looks at two complementary opposite sets of assumptions concerning the basic conditions of existence: separation, and what we call robust relationality or interconnection. It elaborates how we understand these contrasting sets of assumptions and their consequences. Finally, it examines how these assumptions inform different possible ways of approaching, understanding, and responding to the crises of the Anthropocene.
International Studies Perspectives, 2020
Difference, a central concern to the study of international relations (IR), has not had its ontol... more Difference, a central concern to the study of international relations (IR), has not had its ontological foundations adequately disrupted. This forum explores how existential assumptions rooted in relational logics provide a significantly distinct set of tools that drive us to re-orient how we perceive, interpret, and engage both similarity and difference. Taking their cues from cosmological commitments originating in the Andes, South Asia, East Asia, and the Middle East, the six contributions explore how our existential assumptions affect the ways in which we deal with difference as theorists, researchers, and teachers. This initial conversation pinpoints key content and foci of future relational work in IR.
Review of International Studies, Dec 13, 2021
Review of International Studies, Sep 29, 2022
Both relationality and separateness are aspects of our everyday lives. How we engage these phenom... more Both relationality and separateness are aspects of our everyday lives. How we engage these phenomena hinges on the particular existential assumptions that we take for granted. Within the discipline of International Relations (IR), both relationality and separateness have informed how global politics is studied and practiced. How states and their relations are conceived has, for instance, varied by the distinct degrees of privilege given to separation and interconnection: from notions of completely autonomous units like billiard balls to always emergent phenomena co-constituted through relations. The plurality of trajectories that inform this Special Issue illustrate how much broader the spectrum of relational engagement can be when we are cognisant of the impact of these existential assumptions on forms of life, knowing, and knowledge production in International Relations. By highlighting a spectrum of relational engagement, we raise important questions about the way the various knowledge frames in IR are acknowledged, legitimised, limited, and reproduced.
Review of International Studies
Both relationality and separateness are aspects of our everyday lives. How we engage these phenom... more Both relationality and separateness are aspects of our everyday lives. How we engage these phenomena hinges on the particular existential assumptions that we take for granted. Within the discipline of International Relations (IR), both relationality and separateness have informed how global politics is studied and practiced. How states and their relations are conceived has, for instance, varied by the distinct degrees of privilege given to separation and interconnection: from notions of completely autonomous units like billiard balls to always emergent phenomena co-constituted through relations. The plurality of trajectories that inform this Special Issue illustrate how much broader the spectrum of relational engagement can be when we are cognisant of the impact of these existential assumptions on forms of life, knowing, and knowledge production in International Relations. By highlighting a spectrum of relational engagement, we raise important questions about the way the various kno...
The contemporary IR craft homogenizes a pluriverse of time-spacescapes as if it were a "one-world... more The contemporary IR craft homogenizes a pluriverse of time-spacescapes as if it were a "one-world world. " We propose a strategy of recrafting to engender a nimble discipline for actively encountering 'the world multiply' and a generation of scholars capable of engaging various forms of knowing/being/sensing/doing. Worlding multiply requires: (1) taking seriously the plurality of worlds that emerge through distinct existential assumptions and (2) learning how to translate/read across time-spacescapes built through incommensurate ways of doing/being without reducing one to the other. We suggest conscientiously developing tools-new skills, concepts, ways of being-for encountering complexity in both pedagogy and scholarship.
International Studies Perspectives, 2020
Difference, a central concern to the study of international relations (IR), has not had its ontol... more Difference, a central concern to the study of international relations (IR), has not had its ontological foundations adequately disrupted. This forum explores how existential assumptions rooted in relational logics provide a significantly distinct set of tools that drive us to re-orient how we perceive, interpret, and engage both similarity and difference. Taking their cues from cosmological commitments originating in the Andes, South Asia, East Asia, and the Middle East, the six contributions explore how our existential assumptions affect the ways in which we deal with difference as theorists, researchers, and teachers. This initial conversation pinpoints key content and foci of future relational work in IR.
Review of International Studies, 2021
A pluriversal encounter that includes interlocutors from other ways of knowing and being requires... more A pluriversal encounter that includes interlocutors from other ways of knowing and being requires recrafting how we commonly approach ontology in IR. Our shared ontological register only acknowledges separation as the fundamental existential assumption, and not all lifeways depart from this assumption. The article prods us to move beyond considering ontology as the study of being, a more substantialist reading, to include other fundamental existential commitments so that we can address how distinct presuppositions shape and are shaped by how we perceive and engage existence. With this reorientation, the article first establishes how even relational approaches in the discipline, including variations of constructivism, poststructuralism, and new materialism privilege separation as the primordial condition of existence to the exclusion of any other option. A conceptual toolset is then elaborated to examine how a singular commitment to separation constitutes an ontological parochialism ...
PhD Dissertation, 2013
Rather than taking the generally assumed parameters and tenets of the field of International Rela... more Rather than taking the generally assumed parameters and tenets of the field of International Relations and of knowledge production in general for granted, this dissertation examines these assumptions in light of a contrasting mirror to gauge the likelihood of being able to generate knowledge that can respond to the concerns of this field, diminish the likelihood of war, and augment the chances for peace. The final conclusion is that the methodological approaches currently engaged within this field will not be able to respond in any significant way to the field’s goals due to the ‘eternally’ privileged thrust toward imbalance afforded through the separation-based ontological lens generally shared and employed to constitute the time-spacescape of Western-style academia. I show this through an elaborate contrast between the fruits afforded through the ontology of separation against those generated through an ontology of complete interconnectedness. For this contrast I draw on certain key principles of Andean philosophy as one particular manifestation of what becomes possible when collectively applying the lens of complete interconnectedness. For these principles to serve as an appropriate contrast, however, their common (re-)interpretations as found in both historical chronicles of the conquest and contemporary anthropological works need to be thoroughly re-expanded based on a lens of complete interconnectedness due to the reductionist effects of the lens of separation, which was used to document them. Once we get a glimpse of the more robust picture generated through this lens and its implications, we are then able to discern how even the relational methodological approaches applied within the field of IR and in academia more broadly still adhere to certain separation-based parameters that preclude them from accessing, and therefore being able to use, the full implications of robust monism, which include being able to ontologically privilege balance instead of imbalance as well as explaining how we are compelled to fall into the vicious cycles of epistemic violence, of resorting to a teleological framework for engaging reality, and expressing ourselves in terms of domination and submission.
Uluslararası İlişkiler Dergisi, 2021
The contemporary IR craft homogenizes a pluriverse of time-spacescapes as if it were a "one-world... more The contemporary IR craft homogenizes a pluriverse of time-spacescapes as if it were a "one-world world." We propose a strategy of recrafting to engender a nimble discipline for actively encountering "the world multiply" and a generation of scholars capable of engaging various forms of knowing/being/sensing/doing. Worlding multiply requires: (1) taking seriously the plurality of worlds that emerge through distinct existential assumptions and (2) learning how to translate/read across time-spacescapes built through incommensurate ways of doing/being without reducing one to the other. We suggest conscientiously developing tools-new skills, concepts, ways of being-for encountering complexity in both pedagogy and scholarship.
International Studies Perspectives, 2021
Difference, a central concern to the study of international relations (IR), has not had its ontol... more Difference, a central concern to the study of international relations (IR), has not had its ontological foundations adequately disrupted. This forum explores how existential assumptions rooted in relational logics provide a significantly distinct set of tools that drive us to reorient how we perceive, interpret, and engage both similarity and difference. Taking their cues from cosmological commitments originating in the Andes, South Asia, East Asia, and the Middle East, the six contributions explore how our existential assumptions affect the ways in which we deal with difference as theorists, researchers, and teachers. This initial conversation pinpoints key content and foci of future relational work in IR.
Resumen: Las bases ontológicas de la diferencia, uno de los principales temas que se abordan en el estudio de las relaciones internacionales, no han sido cuestionadas lo suficiente. En este foro, exploramos cómo las pre-suposiciones existenciales arraigadas a la lógica relacional proveen un con-junto de herramientas completamente distinto que nos permite percibir, interpretar y relacionar la similitud y la diferencia de otra forma. Tomando como referencia las cosmovivencias encontradas en los Andes, Asia del Sur, Asia Oriental y Oriente Medio, en las seis colaboraciones se analiza cómo las hipótesis existenciales influyen en la forma en la que estudiamos la diferencia como teóricos, investigadores y docentes. En esta primera Trownsell, Tamara A. et al. (2021) Forum: Differing about Difference: Relational IR from around the World. International Studies Perspectives,
Signature Pedagogies in International Relations, 2021
This chapter reviews pertinent elements of “existential calisthenics,” a signature pedagogical pr... more This chapter reviews pertinent elements of “existential calisthenics,” a signature pedagogical program that prepares students to become ontologically agile. With the precept that this project in no way seeks to become an overarching singular pedagogical strategy, the first half of the chapter explores the central assumptions, values and beliefs that drive the impulse to foster ontological pluralism and agility, before reviewing some concrete pedagogical strategies in the second.
Sur Idea, 2021
This article analyzes the contemporary artwork of Favio Caraguay through the prism of Andean phil... more This article analyzes the contemporary artwork of Favio Caraguay through the prism of Andean philosophy.
https://www.e-ir.info/2019/01/08/recrafting-international-relations-through-relationality/
International Relations in the Anthropocene: New Agendas, New Agencies, and New Approaches (ed. by David Chandler, Franziska Müller, and Delf Rothe) , 2021
Literatures on the Anthropocene in International Relations (IR) (and elsewhere) often cite the co... more Literatures on the Anthropocene in International Relations (IR) (and elsewhere) often cite the conceptual and ontological separation of humanity from nature as fundamental to the dominant modern worldview and generative of the many ecological crises characteristic of this epoch. One central entailment of this worldview has been anthropocentrism, which expresses the idea that humans are the most important beings on the planet and even in the cosmos. As a way to defamiliarize ourselves from anthropocentrism and begin exploring some possible alternatives, this chapter will focus on interrogating what we call fundamental ontological assumptions about the primordial conditions of existence. The chapter looks at two complementary opposite sets of assumptions concerning the basic conditions of existence: separation, and what we call robust relationality or interconnection. It elaborates how we understand these contrasting sets of assumptions and their consequences. Finally, it examines how these assumptions inform different possible ways of approaching, understanding, and responding to the crises of the Anthropocene.