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Global conversations: Relationality, embodiment and power in the move towards a Global IR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 July 2019

KARIN M FIERKE  and
VIVIENNE JABRI
KARIN M FIERKE*
Affiliation:
School of International Relations, University of St. Andrews, Arts Faculty Building, The Scores, St. Andrews KY16 9AX
VIVIENNE JABRI*
Affiliation:
Department of War Studies, King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS.
*
*Email: kf30@st-andrews.ac.uk
†Email: Vivienne.Jabri@kcl.ac.uk
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Abstract:

The ‘global turn’ in International Relations (IR), like postcolonial and decolonising approaches, moves away from the Eurocentric dominance of the discipline, and towards the inclusion of plural perspectives on global politics. The article investigates what such a call means in epistemological and ontological terms by focusing on the concept of ‘global conversations’. In section I, we show that the concept of ‘global’ conversations necessarily shifts from an individual ontology to a relational ontology of intra-action within a global space. In section II we explore why ‘conversation’, as distinct from dialogue fits more comfortably with this relational shift and has practical implications for how the engagement takes place. The third section engages in an exploration of some of the obstacles to global conversation, and not least the emotional obstacles, in light of historically embedded and embodied relations of power that shape who can speak and who is silenced or heard. The final section then engages in a discussion of the types of practical engagement and research that might flow from this analysis. In moving beyond ‘dialogue’, the article reveals the intersection of power, language, emotion and embodiment in the constitution of ‘global conversations’, and how these in turn come to constitute the global, its normative structuring, contestations and transformation.

Keywords

Global IRglobalconversationrelationallyintra-action
Type
Articles
Information
Global Constitutionalism , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , November 2019 , pp. 506 - 535
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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