Friends, there are no Friends? An Intimate Reframing of the International (original) (raw)
Related papers
Friendship and International Relations
Every form of social community involves friendship. When we look around, international politics presents us with numerous examples. We may cite the 'Franco-German friendship', the Anglo-American 'special relationship', and the former 'Sino-Soviet friendship'. The Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 proclaimed 'sincere Amity' among its signatories. Furthermore, the UN Charta is dedicated to promote 'friendly relations among nations'. While we find many instances of friendship discourse in international politics we know remarkably little about them. How can we conceptualize and study friendship in international relations? How is international friendship practiced and what empirical cases exist? This edited volume puts forward the argument that international friendship is a distinct type of interstate and international relationship, and that as such, it can contribute to capture aspects of international politics that have long remained unattended. To this end, Simon Koschut and Andrea Oelsner offer a framework for analyzing friendship in international politics by presenting a variety of conceptual approaches and empirical cases of international friendship.
Friendship and Positive Peace: Conceptualising Friendship in Politics and International Relations
Politics and Governance
In recent years, the study of friendship has gained traction in political science. The aim of this article is threefold: (1) to offer an overview of the status of friendship studies and how it relates to the emotional turn in international relations, (2) to present a wide variety of different approaches to studying friendship, and (3) to highlight the contribution that a friendship perspective can make to other fields, such as Peace and Conflict Studies. From Aristotle and Plato onwards, we trace the development of the concept of friendship, and present several theoretical conceptualisations and methodological approaches that can be readily applied when making sense of friendship, both on a personal level between elite actors, and on the international level between states. We end by drawing attention to the merit of the study of friendship specifically for the field of Peace and Conflict Studies, where it helps to address the lacuna of research on positive peace.
Recrafting International Relations through Relationality.pdf
8 2019 , 432 views Image by Sebastian Baumer How we relate to others should be a central concern of the field of International Relations. However, independent political communities-statesand their interrelations have historically been the focus of the discipline of International Relations (IR), thus limiting the forms of interaction that potentially constitute the field . [1] Postpositivist accounts have repeatedly indicated the disjuncture between the conceptual constructs that IR scholars use to make sense of the world historically and the way people practice their lives, which in the end is the substance of global politics. Many critical projects including Global IR have challenged the research produced through atomistic understandings of the world, and attempts have been made to integrate other ways of knowing into the discipline . While the 'critical turn' has made IR a more plural discipline by opening space for examining different types of relations, they have still been founded on modern, western 'ontological' assumptions about existence that have undercut their ability to reap the full benefits of other more robustly relational ways of existing . Because the kind of plurality practised has not effectively dealt with distinctly relational ways of living and forms of knowing in their own terms , the call that we are making here is not just about adding other perspectives to the IR cauldron. We are aspiring for a deep plurality, in which IR scholars learn to effectively engage with difference at the ontological, methodological and practical levels. Since the issue at hand is about ontological-cosmological commitments, we proffer our particular understandings of these terms. By ontology , we mean those basic assumptions about the nature of existence that are operative within any given tradition of living and thinking. In this sense ontology is closely linked to the cosmological in that they both reflect how we conceptualize our relationship with the cosmos and our place in it (Shani 2017). They are distinct in that cosmology refers more to origin stories and to cultural, spiritual and religious practices while ontology expresses the assumptions about the primordial condition of existence that provides the underlying logic of cosmological accounts and as such of all the other cultural fruits that emerge from them. Here we focus on ontology, because it helps draw attention to and provincialize many of the fundamental assumptions made in the dominant IR tradition, many of which have become invisible or merely commonsensical by being consonant with prevalent shared meaning systems and through longstanding and conventional use. The general inability both in the field and discipline of international relations to recognize when and how one and others are engaging existence from very distinct ontological points of departure has had a serious impact in terms of both politics and knowledge production. Promoted through globally replicated institutions including academia, media, churches, etc., conceptualizing and practicing existence based on separation has become so naturalized that other more relational forms of being have been silenced and excluded. Conflict over what counts as real arises since those applying the predominant assumptions cannot even fathom that these other ways of being can be possible, legitimate or valid. As such living in one's own or a group's terms becomes a struggle when they are not aligned with the more predominant logic. Several consequences of being blind to these relational ways of living and being manifest themselves politically. First these life expressions are often "othered" and "minimized" by treating them as myths (Law 2015), legends, superstitions, or stories about how people communicate with other beings. Denigration also becomes evident when examining public policies that do not even articulate, let alone protect, these relational ways of life. Among humans, groups abound that have not been deemed worthy of civil rights protections in the process of statebuilding for not engaging the world in sufficiently "civilized" manners (Sawyer 2004). Others have been the targets of state-led violence through national forced sterilization or "population control" initiatives . Beyond the human, these excluded groups have clamored to protect other beings that do not translate easily into traditional legal frameworks. For example, while indigenous groups were able to get the rights of nature officially acknowledged in Ecuador's 2008 constitution, an effective implementation of these rights has yet to be seen. Efforts to maintain a healthy relationship with the beings of land, water, air, plants and animals often come into direct conflict with "national interests," international treaties, foreign direct investment and forms of international cooperation, as can be clearly seen in last year's indigenous struggles at Standing Rock in the United States. In the end, the ontological nature of these clashes has been clearly echoed in the zapatistas' claims to a world of many worlds when stating, "We are another resistance, we are another reality." [2] In addition to the important political implications in the field of international relations, the discipline itself has yet to consider seriously relational ways of knowing and being. Because the problematics typical of IR and the tools generated to deal with them have been identified and named through the same predominant set of existential assumptions, the conceptual capacity of the discipline to grasp and respond to these ways of knowing is limited. In fact the predominant understanding of ontology within the discipline of IR has been referred to as "scientific ontology" (Patomäki and Wight 2000, Jackson 2011). Here scholars fight over what exists in the world without a prior discussion as to how it is ontologically that we arrive at a place where we insist on the existential autonomy of categories in the first place. This means that we keep studying these cosmologies through ontologically incommensurate filters (not based on similar existential assumptions) thinking that in this way we will still be able to understand them and then use the knowledge generated through reduced filters to find effective strategies for engagement. Yet our ontological parochialism still translates Recrafting International Relations through Relationality e-ir.info/2019/01/08/recrafting-international-relations-through-relationality/
European Review of International Studies, 2016
This article argues that the symbolic interactionist sources of the first generation of constructivists in IR theory are worth recovering because of their ability to address what constructivists have always wanted to understand – the social construction of world politics. Symbolic interactionism is more or less implicit in key claims of canonical works of the first generation of constructivism in International Relations (IR) theory. However, constructivism lost some of its potential to address everyday experiences and performances of world politics when it turned to norm diffusion and socialisation. The second generation of constructivists generated rich insights on the construction of national identities and on patterns of foreign policy, but did not fully exploit constructivism's analytical potentials. Contrary to what most IR scholars have come to believe, symbolic interactionists saw the self as a deeply social – not a psychological or biological – phenomenon. Symbolic interactionism is interested in how inherently incomplete and fragile selves are constructed and deconstructed through processes of inclusion, exclusion and shaming. Today, third generation constructivists are returning to the sociology of Erving Goffman and Harold Garfinkel and other symbolic interactionists to address problems of identity, power and deviance in international politics.
Oxford Encyclopedia of Foreign Policy Analysis (Ed. Cameron Thies), 2017
This contribution discusses how international friendship affects the making and conduct of foreign policy, an angle that is largely neglected in the FPA and IR literature. Yet because friendship constitutes the Other as familiar rather than foreign and implies a significant degree of trust, it cannot be ignored. Analysts need to pay careful attention to the various ways close bonds develop and 'work' across state boundaries. More specifically, they need to understand how seeking friends can be an explicit goal of foreign policy and how established friendships function by studying their discursive, emotional and practical expressions and their impact on decision-making in concrete situations and as a disposition for cooperation in the long term. Tracing these bonds and associated practices, especially the informal ones, across levels is an analytical challenge. The aim of this article is to offer some guidance. It starts with presenting a reading of international friendship as a particular relationship of mutually agreed role identities embedded in a strong cognitive, normative and emotional bond revolving around a shared idea of order. In a second step, we highlight three types of practices unique to this relationship: providing privileged/special access, solidarity and support in times of need, as well as resolve and negative Othering against third parties. The third section then discusses how friendship bonds and associated practices can be observed across three levels: political leaders, government bureaucracies, and civil society, illustrated through examples from (primarily) Franco-German and US-UK relations. In doing so, the article does not simply offer a summary of existing accounts, but seeks to advance the still young literature on international friendship.
ERIS – European Review of International Studies, 2017
This article argues that the symbolic interactionist sources of the first generation of constructivists in IR theory are worth recovering because of their ability to address what constructivists have always wanted to understand-the social construction of world politics. Symbolic interactionism is more or less implicit in key claims of canonical works of the first generation of constructivism in International Relations (IR) theory. However, constructivism lost some of its potential to address everyday experiences and performances of world politics when it turned to norm diffusion and socialisation. The second generation of constructivists generated rich insights on the construction of national identities and on patterns of foreign policy, but did not fully exploit constructivism's analytical potentials. Contrary to what most IR scholars have come to believe, symbolic interactionists saw the self as a deeply social-not a psychological or biological-phenomenon. Symbolic interactionism is interested in how inherently incomplete and fragile selves are constructed and deconstructed through processes of inclusion, exclusion and shaming. Today, third generation constructivists are returning to the sociology of Erving Goffman and Harold Garfinkel and other symbolic interactionists to address problems of identity, power and deviance in international politics.
Friendship among Nations: History of a Concept. Manchester University Press, 2017
Manchester University Press, 2017
This is a sample chapter available at http://d2yvuud5fila0c.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/17130631/friendship-among-nations.pdf This is the first book-length study of the role that friendship plays in diplomacy and international politics. Through an examination of a vast amount of sources ranging from diplomatic letters and bilateral treaties, to poems and philosophical treatises, it analyses how friendship has been talked about and practised in pre-modern political orders and modern systems of international relations. The study highlights how instrumental friendship was for describing and legitimising a range of political and legal engagements with foreign countries and nations. It emphasizes contractual and political aspects in diplomatic friendship based on the idea of utility. It is these functions of the concept that help the world stick together when collective institutions are either embryonic or no more.
Friendship among nations: History of a concept
Contemporary Political Theory
As a leading friendship scholar, Evgeny Roshchin's latest work, Friendship Among Nations: History of a Concept has been long awaited. Roshchin takes a unique position in the current debates in friendship studies, his conceptual approach being in stark contrast to the more dominant structural, individual, and state-centred approaches. While offering one of the more theoretical approaches to the study of friendship in politics, Roshchin's work also succeeds in revealing the deeper meaning behind the praxis of friendship in politics. Friendship Among Nations builds on Roshchin's previous works where he draws upon conceptual history to illustrate the development of the concept of friendship in international diplomacy, from the ancient era up to modern history, highlighting that modern conceptualisations are deeply indebted to both ancient and mediaeval ones. That means Roshchin's findings are highly relevant to both for our own theoretical understanding of friendship, and for what friendship practically means when it is invoked in the context of international treaties. In a field overwhelmingly concerned with the positive side of friendship, Roshchin's conceptual approach stands out both in its realistic outlook, and in what it has to teach us about the negative side of the utilitarian aspect of friendship. Chapter 1 critically discusses the history of political thought since Aristotle's seminal demarcation between pleasure, utility, and virtue-friendship. Chapter 2 details the conceptual development of friendship agreements in the 16th and 17th century. Chapter 3 illustrates the development of a normative approach of friendship, and Chapter 4 analyses the slow disappearance of utility friendship in the 17th and 18th century. This all builds towards Chapter 5, which showcases the implications of ancient assumptions underlying modern understandings of friendship. These are brilliantly illustrated by Roshchin in his analysis of both bilateral friendship treaties and the friendship treaties signed between the native populations and colonialising powers. Starting with Aristotle, friendship scholars have differentiated between one higher form of friendship, commonly denoted as virtue-friendship, and one or more