Towards global relational theorizing: a dialogue between Sinophone and Anglophone scholarship on relationalism (original) (raw)
Related papers
Chinese Concepts and Relational International Politics
2018
The rise of China troubles the taken-for-granted epistemological and ontological constitution of International Relations (IR) theory. The Greek term ‘theoria’ implied travelling to foreign locales with the aim of gaining illumination that can then simultaneously inform and transform the ‘home’ of the traveler. Yet, instead of travelling, IR theory engages in silencing. This paper undertakes an interpretative journey of China’s IR concepts. In particular, it looks at the notion of guanxi – one of the two terms that goes into the Chinese phrase for International Relations (guoji guanxi). The contention is that ‘relationality’ renders a more accurate translation of guanxi in English. In the process, the paper uncovers the practices of ‘international relationality’ as an opportunity to redefine the ‘international’ as a co-dependent space where two or more actors (despite their divergences) can interface into a dialogical community.
All Azimuth, 2021
In recent years, the "relational turn" in International Relations (IR) theory has attracted extensive attention. However, the limitations of the substantialist ontology of mainstream (Western) IR theory means that it encounters difficulties and dilemmas in interpreting the evolving international system. Against the background of the rapid development of globalization and regional integration, the reality of world politics is constantly changing, and increasingly shows obvious characteristics of interconnection and high interdependence. In this context, there is insufficient research comparing the Western and non-Western versions of the "relational turn". Relational ontology may be able to provide a bridge between Chinese Confucian philosophy, Western philosophy, Western sociology, and mainstream western IR theories capable of generating productive synergies. However, there are major theoretical and cultural obstacles to be overcome if a reconciliation of the Western and Chinese versions of relationalism is to be achieved.
Theory, Locality and Global IR: Qin Yaqing’s Relational Theory and Euro-Chinese Relations
Master's Thesis, 2021
International Relations has recently been met with proposals to globalize the discipline. Despite the recent interest in pursuing a “Global IR,” many non-Western International Relations Theories have not been properly analysed nor operationalized. This research analyses and operationalizes one Chinese IRT – Qin Yaqing’s Relational Theory - applying it on a case in Euro-Chinese relations. The paper asks how does Relational Theory characterize and explain EU-Chinese relations? The paper also answers two sub-questions, one concerning disciplinary development and other regarding Euro-Chinese IR: By operationalizing the theory, what can we learn for future efforts in building Global IR? To what extent can Relational Theory also explain the conceptual gap between Europe and China? The research studies the case mainly through the lens of three concepts: relationality, ‘renqing’ reciprocity and normativity. In an explorative case-study, these concepts are used to study the recent setbacks in China-CEE 16+1 format. Paper then concludes that renqing may be too culture-specific while normativity may have been understated in Qin’s work and China’s approach to the CEE. The theory thus characterizes the Euro-Chinese relations as divided by not only political cultures but also worldviews. Relationality may still provide a useful tool for European theory-crafting, but the paper sees current decentring approaches as merely interdisciplinary.
Relationality and Its Chinese Characteristics
hina’s expanding outreach and diversifying roles have provided a novel context for the ongoing reconsiderations of world politics. As a result, inquiries into how China thinks and in what way its history and traditions inform the idiosyncrasies of China’s international outlook have grown into a cottage industry both in International Relations (IR) and across the full spectrum of the humanities and social sciences. In this setting, Beijing’s external relations draw attention both because of their agency and due to the specificities of China’s individual engagements. What has remained overlooked, however, is that such preoccupation with China has been paralleled by the emergence of a relational turn in IR. One could argue that this is not a mere coincidence. Relationality in IR has become prominent not least because of its simultaneous appropriation by both the so-called Western and non-Western (especially, Chinese) perspectives on world affairs. In this respect, the claim is that the relational turn has become a defining feature of the so-called post-Western IR theorizing – namely, things in global life are not merely interconnected, but they gain meaning and significance within complex webs of entanglements and encounters with others. The relationality lens helps outline the contested terrain of post-Western IR as a space for dialogical learning, which promises a world that is less hegemonic, more democratic, international and equitable.
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/
Guanxi or What is the Chinese for Relational Theory of World Politics
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
The phenomenon of China's rise has urged some to look for International Relations (IR) theories with 'Chinese characteristics'. A number of these have been associated with the 'relational turn'. Yet, attempts to bring the Anglophone and the Sinophone strands of the relational turn have failed to transcend the bifurcating metanarrative of the mainstream. To rectify this trend, the analysis engages the literatures on guanxi, the relational turn, and Chinese IR and develops a normative claim about the underlying relationality of knowledge production in post-Western IR. The contention is: (i) that the criticism of substantialism offered by the Anglophone literature on the relational turn fails to overcome its Eurocentrism; (ii) that by subscribing to the epistemic duality of the West vs. the non-West, the Sinophone literature has aborted the political promise of the concept of guanxi. The study deploys guanxi to amplify the intrinsic relationality both of global life and the realms of IR.
China and International Theory: The Balance of Relationships
China and International Theory, 2019
China and International Theory: The Balance of Relationships 1st Edition Chih-yu Shih et al. Summary Major IR theories, which stress that actors will inevitably only seek to enhance their own interests, tend to contrive binaries of self and other and ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. By contrast, this book recognizes the general need of all to relate, which they do through various imagined resemblances between them. The authors of this book therefore propose the ‘balance of relationships’ (BoR) as a new international relations theory to transcend binary ways of thinking. BoR theory differs from mainstream IR theories owing to two key differences in its epistemological position. Firstly, the theory explains why and how states as socially-interrelated actors inescapably pursue a strategy of self-restraint in order to join a network of stable and long-term relationships. Secondly, owing to its focus on explaining bilateral relations, BoR theory bypasses rule-based governance. By positing ‘relationality’ as a key concept of Chinese international relations, this book shows that BoR can also serve as an important concept in the theorization of international relations, more broadly. The rising interest in developing a Chinese school of IR means the BoR theory will draw attention from students of IR theory, comparative foreign policy, Chinese foreign policy, East Asia, cultural studies, post-Western IR, post-colonial studies and civilizational politics. Table of Contents Introduction: Relating China to International Relations Part 1: Balance of Relationships 1. Relationality vs. Power Politics 2. Relational Policy of Small States 3. Relational Policy of Major Powers Part 2: Philosophical Resources 4. Relational Ontology 5. Buddhist State of Nature 6. Cyclical Perspective on History Part 3. Processes of BoR 7. Cultural Memory 8. Psychological Efficacy 9. Institutional Style Part 4. Identities of the Theory 10. Plausible Post-Western Theory 11. Plausible Chinese Theory 12. Plausible Western Theory In Lieu of Conclusion. Four Caveats Preface During the development of the balance of relationships (BoR) as simultaneously a theory undergirding an international system and a strategic agency, we face the challenge of engaging in and contributing to two major dialogues at the same time––international relations theory in general and the relational turn in particular. Further complicating this challenge is the fact that the second dialogue involves a readership across the Anglosphere and the Sinosphere, with both spheres similarly focusing on why and how relations are necessary in international relations but from different cultural backgrounds. In this light, our intension is for our theory to transcend the familiar binaries of China and the West, great and small powers, rationality and relationality, as well as those reflecting political rivalries. Nevertheless, our prime purpose is to illustrate how Chinese intellectual resources can enhance the understanding of international relations and foreign policy practices everywhere. Through doing so, we hope to tackle the misreading and misconstruction of Chinese international relations. Consequently, our writing seeks to construct bridges across seemingly incongruent epistemological traditions. This book accordingly offers a composite agenda comparing and reconciling relational imaginations of different kinds through the notion of the balance of relationships. We have opted to focus mainly on unpacking the concepts, ideas and epistemology that undergird BoR theory. Thus, we took out extensive case chapters. Nevertheless, we rely on examples to scope out its potential application to make sense of real-world phenomena that familiar IR theories struggle to explain. Such a double-headed mission complicates not only the writing but also the coordination among authors. I am grateful to my eight younger colleagues who fearlessly agreed to join the collective writing of this book, which trespasses multiple fields and critically moves outside familiar scopes of thinking. Our professional teaching spreads over the disciplines of political science, postcolonial studies, modern Chinese history, intellectual history, philosophy, East Asian and Chinese studies, and ethnic studies. In terms of nationality, we come from Japan, the Netherlands, Taiwan, and Thailand. We have received doctoral training or taught in Australia, China, Germany, India, Japan, the Netherlands, Thailand, Taiwan, the UK, and the US for extensive periods respectively in our careers. All these factors meant parallel and long processes of negotiation and coordination. However, as the existence of this work now shows, in the end we managed to merge all these diverse perspectives together and establish our own balance of relationships among ourselves. We realize that it is unconventional to have nine coauthors as opposed to nine authors of separate chapters. I rather enjoyed the processes of cooperation and coordination, however. As I have always initiated the idea and the writing of a chapter, my coauthors joined at different points upon my invitation and yet inevitably contributed across the writing of different chapters. We interacted intensively. At least four of us participated in finalizing all chapters. Relying on our other collaborative projects or workshops, I was able to improvise meetings with coauthors every once in a while over the past few years. The major sponsor for the writing of the book was nevertheless a three-year writing grant I received from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan from 2014 through 2017. A few summer and winter camps specifically contrived to introduce the balance of relationships to younger generations were organized in the Center of International China Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Division of Area Studies at the University of Tokyo, the Department of Political Science of National Taiwan University, and the Institute of International Relations of Shanghai Tongji University. With the support of the editors of the Worlding the West Series of Routledge and the publication of this book, we wish to engender likewise passion in the Anglosphere to reflect upon China and international theory in even more comprehensive and sophisticated ways. Chih-yu Shih Author(s) Bio Chih-yu Shih, the primary author of this book, teaches international relations theory, anthropology of Knowledge, and cultural studies as National Chair Professor and University Chair Professor at National Taiwan University. Access to his current research—Intellectual History of China and Chinese Studies—is at http://www.china-studies.taipei/ Together, his writings on IR theory, intellectual history, and ethnic citizenship challenge familiar social science and humanity categories. His co-authors—Chiung-chiu Huang (National Cheng-chi University), Pichamon Yeophantong (University of New South Wales, Canberra), Raoul Bunskoek (National Taiwan University), Josuke Ikeda (Toyama University), Yih Jye Jay Hwang (Leiden University), Hung-jen Wang (National Cheng-Kung University), Chih-yun Chang (Shanghai Jiaotong University), and Ching-chang Chen (Ryukoku University)—have all published critically on Asia in IR in general and on China, Japan, Taiwan and ASEAN in specific. They have come cross each other through different joint projects involving critical IR, post-Western IR, homegrown IR, global IR, Asian IR and Chinese IR. Their careers include professional posts in India, Germany, Thailand, Japan, the US, Taiwan, the Netherlands, Australia, and China. Chiung-chiu Huang is Associate Professor at the Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies, National Chengchi University, Taiwan. Pichamon Yeophantong is Senior Lecturer at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy, Australia. Raoul Bunskoek is a Ph. D candidate in the Department of Political Science at National Taiwan University, Taiwan. Josuke Ikeda is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Human Development, University of Toyama, Japan. Jay Yih-Jye Hwang is Assistant Professor at Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs, Leiden University College, The Netherlands Hung-jen Wang is Associate Professor at Department of Political Science, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. Chih-yun Chang is a Research Fellow at the Department of History, Shanghai Jiaotong University, China. Ching-chang Chen is Associate Professor at Department of Global Studies, Ryokoku University, Japan. Routledge April 8, 2019 Reference - 320 Pages - 3 B/W Illustrations ISBN 9781138390508 - CAT# K399572 Series: Worlding Beyond the West
The mission of relational IR and the translation of the Chinese relational school
International Politics, 2024
Currently, the challenge facing Chinese relational IR is, above all, the unavailability of a linguistic prototype to transcend cultural specificity, that is, a cosmologic pattern intelligible to both Chinese and non-Chinese scholars. Even if one were available, it cannot readily communicate since the relational consciousness of the time is registered in asserting and defending differences. Consequently, inclusiveness is reduced to simply another self-centric statement. On the other hand, at the strategic level, Chinese foreign policy, the signature of which is presently the Belt & Road Initiative, invokes the metaphor of gift-giving to oblige the ironic acceptance of China’s self as a territorial stranger. Such a stranger self is indicated primarily by the pretentiously rigid One China principle.3 That said, the coexistence of interconnected and exclusionary kinds of territoriality will ultimately compel a critical, i.e., emancipative, interrogation of the expansion of relations and pluriversal exchanges of Chinese relational IR.
Reappraising the Chinese school of international relations: a postcolonial perspective
Review of International Studies , 2021
This article aims to revisit the enterprise of the Chinese School (CS) of IR and discuss how it should be viewed and handled in the discipline, specifically from within the analytical framework of the power/resistance nexus put forward by Foucault, Bhabha, and Spivak. The argument of this article is twofold. Firstly, the CS attempts to reinvigorate traditional Chinese concepts (that is, humane authority, the Tianxia system, and relationality), which mimick Western mainstream IR. These concepts channel the CS into a realist notion of power, a liberal logic of cosmopolitanism, and a constructivist idea of relationality. Thus, the CS uses against the West concepts and themes that the West currently use against the non-Western world. Nevertheless, as the second part of the argument will demonstrate, the enterprise of the CS can still be justified because it can be regarded as a reverse discourse; mimicking yet altering the original meanings of the taken-for-granted concepts, ideas, and principles used by mainstream IR scholars. Moreover, with the judicious use of strategic essentialism, the CS can potentially be one local group in a wider effort to contest diffused and decentred forms of Western domination through linking various struggles to form a unified 'counter-hegemonic bloc' of post-Western IR in the discipline.