Beyond International Relations and toward International Relationality?
| Published date | 01 September 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00471178241268408 |
| Author | Ronnie D. Lipschutz |
| Date | 01 September 2024 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178241268408
International Relations
2024, Vol. 38(3) 427 –434
© The Author(s) 2024
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DOI: 10.1177/00471178241268408
journals.sagepub.com/home/ire
Beyond International Relations
and toward International
Relationality?
Ronnie D. Lipschutz
Sustainable Systems Research Foundation
University of California Santa Cruz
Abstract
This article provides a review and commentary on the articles in this special issue, which offer
alter-IRs as approaches to bringing climate change into international relations theory and practice
as a force or phenomenon that can transform theory and practice. I summarize the articles, as
I read them, and suggest that this is a largely futile task. Is description of new ontologies and
epistemologies sufficient to bring climate change into IR in a meaningful way? If the discipline is
so constrained by its deeply rooted ontology and epistemology, why make the effort to attempt
this transformation? And given that our task as philosophers is to ‘change the world’, what are
the theories and practices that will make this happen?
Keywords
affect, climate change, international relationalities, ontology, sovereignty
The contributors to this special issue take on two problematic questions: First, can
International Relations (IR) as a (sub)discipline effectively integrate the political and
social challenges posed by climate change into its ontological and epistemological
frameworks? And second, can those working in or in relation to IR identify interventions
that can directly change practices in international relations (ir)?
For those who practice international relations – diplomats, the military, high-level
decisionmakers, agency staff – the institutional frameworks and structures within which
those activities take place are given, even if they don’t always work so well. Mid-level
analysts and visiting professors who have been educated into mainstream IR often dis-
cover that what they have been taught and what they teach bears little resemblance,
Corresponding author:
Ronnie D. Lipschutz, University of California Santa Cruz, 213 Dickens Way, Santa Cruz, CA 95064-1077,
USA.
Email: rlipsch@ucsc.edu
1268408IRE0010.1177/00471178241268408International RelationsLipschutz
research-article2024
Article
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