Anxiety and possibility: the many future(s) of COVID-19
| Author | Bahar Rumelili |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221149629 |
| Published date | 01 March 2023 |
| Date | 01 March 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Forum on COVID-19 and Anxiety in International Relations |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221149629
International Relations
2023, Vol. 37(1) 144 –148
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/00471178221149629
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Anxiety and possibility: the
many future(s) of COVID-19
Bahar Rumelili
Koç University
Abstract
This is the introduction to the forum, Anxiety and possibility: the many future(s) of COVID-19.
It summarizes the contributions within a common framework and situates them in the extant
literature.
Keywords
anxiety, international change, ontological security
As we hit the third year mark of the COVID-19 pandemic, analyses of its possible impact
on international relations remain wide-ranging. A variety of articles and symposia
recently published in leading journals of the International Relations (IR) discipline have
suggested COVID-19 is either unlikely to have a transformative impact at all1 or exacer-
bate the existing trends of ethnic nationalism and interstate rivalries,2 securitization-
albeit in more diversified form,3 and rising inequalities between the Global North and
South.4 Yet, at the same time, in the socio-economic disruption caused by the pandemic,
some leading thinkers have identified seeds of radical change toward alternative interna-
tional orders based on care, solidarity, and cooperation.5
This Forum makes these contradictory futures associated with COVID-19 its starting
point and theorizes them as simultaneously enabled by a human agency that is condi-
tioned by anxiety. In doing so, the contributors build on a recently developing IR litera-
ture on anxiety.6 Briefly, this literature on anxiety has re-connected the wider IR literature
on ontological security – whose main premise is that international actors also seek a
Corresponding author:
Bahar Rumelili, Department of International Relations, Koç University, Rumelifeneri Yolu, Sarıyer, Istanbul
34450, Turkey.
Email: brumelili@ku.edu.tr
1149629IRE0010.1177/00471178221149629International RelationsRumelili
research-article2023
COVID-19 and Anxiety
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