Description
Relationality is embedded in our daily lives. How we relate to one another conditions how we see ourselves and how we are seen. This roundtable, based on a forthcoming Review of International Studies Special Issue, addresses two challenges. First, what happens if we conceive relationality in a manner that ontologically begins by assuming interconnection as prior to the existence of entities. Second, it seeks to pluralize the sources of relational thinking in IR by showcasing how different cosmological traditions in the Americas, Asia and Australia view relationality. This epistemological plurality affords us an opportunity to expand, enrich and enlarge the debate on relationality in IR by making it "pluriversal". The term "pluriversal" refers to the entanglement of different cosmologies, each with their distinct understanding of the relationship between human beings and the cosmos. Pluriversal relationality examines how these different cosmologies are constructed, how they relate to one another and how they are transformed through interaction. This roundtable thereby seeks to make an important and distinctive intervention to: 1) non-western, post-western, and decolonial IR explorations of the pluriverse, 2) current IR debates on relationality and also the cosmological turn and 3) mainstream constructivist thought and practice of relational theorizing.
