See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/343884748

Differing about Difference: Relational IR from around the World

Article in International Studies Perspectives · February 2021

DOI: 10.1093/isp/ekaa008

CITATIONS READS
38 829

8 authors, including:

Tamara Trownsell Arlene B. Tickner

Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) Universidad del Rosario
9 PUBLICATIONS 103 CITATIONS 60 PUBLICATIONS 1,513 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Amaya Querejazu Escobari Jarrad Reddekop

University of Antioquia Camosun College
19 PUBLICATIONS 232 CITATIONS 8 PUBLICATIONS 92 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Amaya Querejazu Escobari on 30 September 2020.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

International Studies Perspectives (2020) 0, 1–40

Differing about Difference: Relational IR

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

from around the World

TAMARA A. T ROWNSELL
Universidad San Francisco de Quito
A RLENE B. T ICKNER
Universidad del Rosario
A MAYA Q UEREJAZU
Universidad de Antioquia
J ARRAD R EDDEKOP
University of Victoria, Camosun College
G IORGIO S HANI
International Christian University
K OSUKE S HIMIZU
Ryukoku University
N AVNITA C HADHA B EHERA
University of Delhi
AND
A NAHITA A RIAN
University of Erfurt

Abstract: Difference, a central concern to the study of international rela-

tions (IR), has not had its ontological foundations adequately disrupted.
This forum explores how existential assumptions rooted in relational log-
ics provide a significantly distinct set of tools that drive us to re-orient
how we perceive, interpret, and engage both similarity and difference.
Taking their cues from cosmological commitments originating in the
Andes, South Asia, East Asia, and the Middle East, the six contributions
explore how our existential assumptions affect the ways in which we deal
with difference as theorists, researchers, and teachers. This initial conver-
sation pinpoints key content and foci of future relational work in IR.
Resumen: Las bases ontológicas de la diferencia, uno de los principales
temas que se abordan en el estudio de las relaciones internacionales, no
han sido cuestionadas lo suficiente. En este foro, exploramos cómo las pre-
suposiciones existenciales arraigadas a la lógica relacional proveen un con-
junto de herramientas completamente distinto que nos permite percibir,
interpretar y relacionar la similitud y la diferencia de otra forma. Tomando
como referencia las cosmovivencias encontradas en los Andes, Asia del
Sur, Asia Oriental y Oriente Medio, en las seis colaboraciones se analiza
cómo las hipótesis existenciales influyen en la forma en la que estudiamos
la diferencia como teóricos, investigadores y docentes. En esta primera

Trownsell, Tamara A. et al. (2020) Differing about Difference: Relational IR from around the World. International
Studies Perspectives, doi: 10.1093/isp/ekaa008
© The Author(s) (2020). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Studies Association. All
rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com
2 Differing about Difference

conversación, se señala el contenido fundamental y el centro de atención

del futuro trabajo relacional en el ámbito de las RR. II.
Extrait: Les bases ontologiques de la différence, l’une des principales
préoccupations de l’étude des relations internationales, n’avaient jusqu’ici

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

pas été décomposées de manière adéquate. Cette tribune presse explore
la façon dont les suppositions existentielles ancrées dans les logiques re-
lationnelles offrent un ensemble d’outils considérablement distincts et
nous incitent à réorienter la manière dont nous percevons, interprétons
et approchons à la fois la similarité et la différence. Les six essais ex-
aminent la façon dont nos paris existentiels affectent les manières dont
nous traitons la différence en tant que théoriciens, chercheurs et en-
seignants en s’appuyant sur des points de repère issus d’engagements
cosmologiques intervenant dans les Andes, en Asie du Sud, en Asie de
l’Est et dans le Moyen-Orient. Ce premier échange a permis d’identifier
les principaux contenus et axes du futur travail relationnel dans les
relations internationales.
Keywords: post-Western IR, post-colonialism, de-colonialism, rela-
tionality, difference
Palabras clave, RR. II. posoccidentales, poscolonialismo, descolo-
nialismo, relacionalidad, diferencia
Mots clés, relations internationales post-occidentales, post-
colonialisme, décolonialisme, relationalité, différence

Differing about Difference: An Introduction

T AMARA A. T ROWNSELL
Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador
A RLENE B. T ICKNER
Universidad del Rosario, Colombia

Security, war, peace, globalization, states, international organizations, world order,

international law: whether “real” things, processes, or theoretical orientations char-
acteristic of the study of international relations (IR), all rest upon assumptions
about the Other, in particular the different Other. This supposition, in turn, is
rooted in the discipline of IR’s ontological commitment to separation as the fun-
damental condition of existence, which leads us to see the world as consisting of
bounded, fixed entities that boast existential autonomy. The resulting ontological
panorama reinforces an “either–or” logic that hierarchically places elements in or-
der for them to make sense to one another. Through this lens, opposites are there-
fore interpreted in terms of superiority and inferiority and ultimately that which is
different is otherized and perceived as an existential threat.1 One of the main ten-
dencies of the binary dynamic described is that it spurs the drive to dominate, which
runs quite counter to the discipline’s overall goals of fostering peace and decreasing
conflict.

1
Inayatullah and Blaney (2004) provide various illustrations of how this has been the case historically and within
the discipline of IR, and they even speculate that the stiffest opposition to their efforts to connect theoretically with
IR “was Western culture’s experience with difference itself, a power stream of which has treated difference as a kind of
degeneration of God’s original perfection” (viii).
 TAMARA A. TROWNSELL ET AL. 3

As a collective committed to “doing IR differently,”2 we believe that this situa-

tion calls for revisiting the many extant strategies on hand for addressing difference
and similarity (Inayatullah and Blaney 2004, 23; see also Tickner and Wæver 2009;
Tickner and Blaney 2012; Behr 2014). Specifically, we propose altering our most

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

basic existential assumptions as a potentially more constructive approach. An on-
tological switch at the foundational level constitutes a distinct form of worlding
(Agathangelou and Ling 2004, 42–45), as it changes the bases on which existence
is engaged, and thus begets markedly distinct logics. When we shift to assuming in-
terconnection as the primordial condition of existence, relations are seen first and
what are typically seen as separate categories through a separation-based lens are
now understood as components of and secondary to relation. In this way, similar-
ity and difference are understood as complementary opposites bound together as
an inseparable whole. Doing IR differently and relationally therefore implies see-
ing the Other and alternative forms of knowing and being not in terms of “better”
or “worse,” but as critical elements of that whole. In other words, shifting the on-
tological commitments that we take for granted gets us beyond the re-production of
patterns to forging new pathways for doing IR and engaging difference and sameness
differently.
This radical re-focus, in which categories are not understood to be predetermined
and given but rather, dynamic and resulting from ever-changing relations, proffers
certain benefits. Most simply, a relational approach and its concomitant both-and
logic can foster more inclusive encounters across difference and similarity. Second,
by broadening our spectrum of possible forms of knowing, the both-and logic in-
vites us to learn from these other forms through empathy instead of through the
fear of existential threats (cf. Arian this forum). Getting out of the either–or hierar-
chical thinking and into a both-and mindset also allows us to recognize this diversity
as key for knowing who we are (Querejazu this forum). As expressed in various cos-
mological concepts arising from different parts of the world, including dharma, ayni,
ubuntu, advaita, and dao (cf. Querejazu, Reddekop, Shani, and Behera this forum;
Ling 2014; Ncgoya 2015; Shahi 2018), the dichotomy of self-other or we-they can
be transcended through relationality, allowing for more nuanced understandings
of the complex phenomena taking place across the globe and helping us overcome
ontological, epistemological, and methodological parochialism within IR.
Admittedly many other critical scholars before us have called on the discipline
to overcome the pervasiveness of the either-or logics. Among them, Weber’s (1999,
2014) pathbreaking work in queer IR theory deserves special attention. We find
key similarities and differences between Weber’s and our projects. Both projects
identify binary, either-or thinking as conceptually and pragmatically limiting. Fur-
thermore, by pointing to alternative, more spacious logics, the two projects embrace
a new range of conceptualizations, practices, and worldings through conscientious
work at the level of existential commitments. Since a both-and logic is not exclu-
sionary, the distinctions are seen as complementing one another. First, the sources
of relational thought differ. Weber arrives at a both-and logic through queer the-
ory, itself embedded in the tradition of post-structuralism. The contributions in this
forum highlight the pluriversal character of both-and dynamics by drawing on dis-
tinct registers emerging out of longstanding non-Western cosmological traditions.
The sources engaged with by our contributors illustrate how the shifts promoted by
2
This group project materialized in January 2016 at a workshop called “Alternative Cosmologies and Knowledge
Systems in International Relations” in Delhi, India and was formalized on July 24, 2018 in the “Doing IR Differently”
writing workshop in Galapagos, Ecuador. Sponsors for the Delhi workshop included the Institute for Research on India
and International Studies, the World International Studies Committee, and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of
Asian Studies. The Galapagos workshop was made possible primarily by the Universidad San Francisco de Quito with
help from International Studies Perspectives and the World International Studies Committee. Special thanks are owed to
those who made these encounters a logistical success: Amya Agarwal and Radhika Aggarwal in India and Daniela Dávila,
Nickolas Carrillo, and Lorena Rodríguez in Ecuador.
4 Differing about Difference

Weber have already operated in temporo-spatially specific ways among diverse peo-
ples of the world that have historically embraced interconnection as an existential
starting point. At the heart of this forum is thus a shared commitment to introduc-
ing relational approaches to IR that stem from different geocultural traditions as

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

a way to expand the range of imaginable conceptual possibilities and logics and to
build a more sophisticated set of tools for engaging complexity more effectively.
Another benefit of robustly relational approaches is that they allow us to move
beyond anthropocentric understandings of how the world works. Through this lens
we can see how other beings and collectives also actively participate in worlding (see
Reddekop and Behera this forum). While most of the critique of anthropocentrism
in IR has arisen in the post-human and new materialist literatures, both ultimately
rely on an objective reality existing outside through the principles of critical and
speculative realism. In other words, their relational claims are still subsumed to
substantialist existential commitments (as demonstrated in their insistence to still
treat objects qua objects, even if these objects’ agency is now being recognized)
(cf. Bennett 2010; Coole and Frost 2010; Hodder 2012; Morton 2013; Cohen 2015).
In contrast, indigenous-based approaches have shown that it is possible to be
deeply relational and non-anthropocentric at the same time, and have proffered sev-
eral non-anthropocentric re-conceptualizations of central IR concepts, such as gov-
ernance (Kuokkanen 2019; Grey and Kuokkanen 2019), nation (Yampara Huarachi
2001; Blaser 2010), treaty (Simpson 2012), sovereignty (Corntassel and Woons
2017), and land (Laduke 1999; de la Cadena 2015). With this ontological revamp-
ing, these supposedly standardized categories at the core of the discipline of IR
start to look and be understood very differently across distinctly constituted polit-
ical communities. We share a deep respect and appreciation for these efforts to
expound on relational ways of thinking and being in indigenous, aboriginal, and
other ancestral contexts. At the same time, we recognize the ontological and cos-
mological diversity that characterizes the world. Acknowledging and working with
such worldly diversity of perspectives offers the possibility to trace the co-creative
processes that emerge through the frictions of contrast and to examine reflexively
our participation in these co-becomings (see especially Querejazu this forum).
The post-Western IR literature offers additional inputs that are fundamental to
the spirit of this forum.3 Much gratitude is owed to Inayatullah and Blaney (2004)
for injecting doubt into how we engage difference and sameness in IR and for open-
ing space for reformulations such as those included here. In their subsequent efforts
to think world politics differently, Tickner and Blaney (2012, 2013) ask participat-
ing scholars to review how certain disciplinary concepts of IR have been dealt with
in distinct parts of the world and what alternative registers for “claiming” the in-
ternational from the disciplining function of IR may exist. Our forum echoes such
exercises in some ways, as the authors explore how “difference” has been engaged
“in ‘y’ part of the world” but with the important distinction that here the pieces are
explicitly hinged through a common existential commitment to relationality. This
dimension allows them to converse more directly and it provides a number of cru-
cial insights outlined in the conclusion. Additionally, the geocultural-cosmological
traditions play an important role in shaping the particular expressions of relational
logic due to the very specific and unique accumulations of interactions anchored
in each of these respective time-places. For this reason, we do not assume that these
logics work in the same way from one context to another.
Because the forum looks to forms of knowing and being from various parts of
the world that share relational existential commitments, we also see ourselves as
3
Although sources of inspiration are varied and widespread, representative texts from these debates include Chan
(1994), Tickner (2003), Agathangelou and Ling (2004), Acharya and Buzan (2007), Qin (2007), Bilgin (2008), Tickner
and Wæver (2009), Mgonja and Makombe (2009), Acharya and Buzan (2010), Nayak and Selbin (2010), Acharya
(2011), Hutchings (2011), Shilliam (2012), Tickner and Blaney (2012), Shimizu et al. (2013), Ling (2014), Shih and
Huang (2018), and Rutazibwa and Shilliam (2018).
 TAMARA A. TROWNSELL ET AL. 5

responding to Nayak and Selbin’s (2010, 166) call “to fundamentally reimagine
the ontological presuppositions which have guided and disciplined IR” by decen-
tering it both geoculturally and ontologically. In this way too, we hope to support
Shilliam’s (2015, 24) provocation that we “cultivate knowledge” through deep re-

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

lationality. This collection of essays also complements other like-minded relational
exercises, such as Ling’s (2014, 138–152) comparative relational work with Carolina
Pinheiro between Confucianism and Andean philosophy. Here we build on their ef-
forts by pulling into the conversation other cosmological traditions such as Sanatan
dharma, Sikhi, Kyoto School Buddhism, and Islam.
It is important that an exercise such as the one that we propose takes heed of
a warning issued by Hutchings (2011, 646) to those wanting to question the eth-
nocentrism and parochialism in IR. She cautions against repeating the patterns of
feminist efforts to challenge “sexism and patriarchy in IR,” which ran into the fol-
lowing scenario:
From the perspective of mainstream IR, the power of the tradi-
tional binary understanding of sex and gender, regardless of fem-
inist claims to pluralism, has meant that the game of dialogue
remains the sameness-difference game. Either feminist IR is a differ-
ent way of doing things—in which case it is not really IR at all—or
feminist IR is the same way of doing things, in which case it adds an
interesting variable into the explanation of events, but shifts nothing
in terms of ontological and epistemological assumptions.
Even though we are responding to the discipline’s shortsightedness in terms of
how it conceptualizes difference and the Other, by intentionally shifting towards ex-
istential assumptions rooted in a relational both-and logic, we are not seeking to ex-
clude previous traditions but to introduce alternative possibilities. In this sense, we
are not looking for our efforts to revolutionize the core of IR, although the either-
or scenario that Hutchings describes can easily depict how conventional scholarship
may choose to understand what we are proposing.4 Nevertheless, we will continue
to insist that we are both doing IR and doing it differently through an ontological
decentering.
Along with the diversity of perspectives examined in the forum, a geocultural de-
centering also transpires through the authors’ diverse backgrounds. For example,
of the five cis-gender women contributing to this piece, one senior scholar, Navnita
Chadha Behera, was born and educated in India through her master’s degree and
completed her PhD in IR in the UK. Since the mid-1990s, she has been back teach-
ing in India. The second senior scholar, Arlene B. Tickner, was born and educated
in the United States, but her entire academic career has transpired in Latin Amer-
ica. Tickner and Behera have enjoyed over 15 years of sustained collaboration and
mutual support even though they have yet to co-author a single text together. Amaya
Querejazu in turn was born and educated in Bolivia through her undergraduate
education and then moved to Colombia to complete her MA and PhD in Political
Science where she remained to teach thereafter. Of Iranian descent but raised and
educated in the Netherlands, Anahita Arian is currently teaching in Germany after
recently completing her PhD. Finally, Tamara Trownsell was born and educated in
4
Hutchings’ description is important because it reveals the ontological consistency of mainstream IR. Both the
strategy of exclusion in the “sameness-difference” game and the way in which sex and gender are understood are based
on the same either-or logic which is a fruit of assuming separation. Importantly, an either-or logic is only possible
when the complementary opposite phenomena are understood in “categorical” and “embodied” ways. Within the post-
colonial feminist literature, Trinh Minh-ha has called this game the “apartheid type of difference” (Minh-ha cited in
Barad 2014, 169–170). To disrupt the binary and to figure “difference differently,” Minh-ha proposes that “a non-
binary conception of difference is ‘not opposed to sameness, nor synonymous with separateness’”; “differences as well
as similarities” are conceived as lying “within the concept of difference.” By re-focusing on the ontological, we seek to
avoid “reiterat[ing] the same problematic logics” (Barad 2014, 170).
6 Differing about Difference

the United States, but remained to live and teach in Ecuador after conducting her
PhD field research due to a fluid integration into the culture.
Of the three cis-gender men, two are senior scholars. The first, Giorgio Shani, is a
global citizen of South Asian and European descent, raised in the United States, ed-

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

ucated in London, and currently teaching in Japan. Kosuke Shimizu was born and
raised in Japan with both strong feminist tendencies and Buddhist principles. After
completing his PhD in IR in New Zealand, he has been researching and teaching in
Japan ever since. Finally, while born, educated, and currently teaching Indigenous
Studies in an Indigenous-led and -centered college department in Canada, Jarrad
Reddekop completed an interdisciplinary PhD in Theory and Criticism based on
field research among Amazonian Quichua populations. One important observation
about these distinct life paths is that almost all challenge the easy (categorical) sup-
position of correspondence between identity, geographical location, upbringing,
education, and research interests.
No less significant, a third form of decentering is central to this forum in that the
senior scholars involved in this collective have been expressly interested in support-
ing the voices and arguments of the less experienced ones and in placing them in
more prominent spaces within the forum. The creation of a small collective whose
members have come to know each other through sustained interaction, and whose
shared commitment to relational ways of thinking has nurtured a supportive, in-
timate, and non-threatening environment for developing ideas and for bringing
them to fruition, has proven crucial to overcoming the power hierarchies that nor-
mally operate within academic practice (see Tickner 2013, 229).
The six brief contributions that follow offer rich ground for handling difference
differently, both in our thinking and research, and in our teaching. Together, they
show how a shared ontological commitment to the principles of relationality can
generate new kinds of conversations and crucial insights, notwithstanding the varied
traditions in which they are anchored. In fact, seeing how similar concepts and log-
ics play out distinctly across the cosmological traditions of Sanatan dharma, Sikhi,
Kyoto School Buddhism, Islam, and Andean cosmopraxis encourages more compar-
ative work. Additionally these interventions show how we might complement well-
established separation-based tools and build a more diverse toolbox more capable
of engaging the complexity of today’s world.
In the opening essay, Amaya Querejazu develops a basic explanation of relation-
ality through Andean philosophy. She then points to how we might ontologically
re-orient ourselves to engage with difference differently by contrasting the logics
stemming from complementary-opposite existential assumptions. Next, based on
an Amazonian Quichua articulation of Andean philosophy, Jarrad Reddekop re-
views how this deeply relational approach reconfigures the notions of humans, non-
humans, nations, territory, and difference. Building nicely on Querejazu’s essay, he
shows how the ontological and conceptual gap, that divides the term “human” and
its non-anthropocentric Quichua corollary “runa,” generates a vast set of implica-
tions for how we understand unfolding relations with humans, other species, and
land. Furthermore, in discussing runa as “someone like us, a relative with whom
we can empathize,” Reddekop also prepares the ground for Arian’s more explicit
discussion of empathy in the fifth essay.
Giorgio Shani’s contribution most explicitly examines the influence of cosmo-
logical commitments on ways of life, political organization, and theorizing. Al-
beit deriving from a completely distinct cosmological tradition, his piece on Sikhi
elucidates many of the fruits of relational logics already discussed in Querejazu’s
and Reddekop’s essays, such as how a deeply relational “both-and” logic fosters a
higher tolerance for multiplicity and the ability to simultaneously embrace distinct
cosmological traditions (cf. Behera this forum). Next, Kosuke Shimizu presents
us with a dilemma: What happens in the encounter between separation-based
logics and relational ones? Musing on the interactions between the relational
 TAMARA A. TROWNSELL ET AL. 7

philosophers of the Kyoto School and political leaders in Japan during the inter-
war period, his is the story of how the beautiful language of relationality was tacti-
cally deployed to justify Japanese imperialism. He warns against the risks that can
accompany relational approaches by critiquing how this relational philosophy was

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

used politically to attain the very ends of subjugating and incorporating the differ-
ent other. Critical for identifying important questions that need to be examined for
a relational theoretical agenda, the Kyoto School’s case is analyzed at length in the
conclusion.
If Shimizu’s piece contemplates our responsibility as relational scholars in engag-
ing the world of politics and the potential ramifications of our theorizing on how
different others are engaged, the last two essays call our attention to the potential
of our role as teachers in fostering an appreciation for difference in the classroom.
In her essay, Anahita Arian draws on “The Children of Adam” by the Persian poet
Sa‘di to discuss how one might cultivate an “ethics of understanding” through the
human faculty of empathy to engage more constructively distinct and oftentimes
contradictory positions in texts and among students. Where Arian aims to foster an
appreciation for the diversity of thought and being in the world through empathy
in her classroom, Navnita Behera conscientiously injects multiplicity into hers as a
way to bridge book knowledge with lived local knowledge. She intentionally holds
space to contemplate the simultaneous existence of both less-familiar IR concepts
and the distinct empirical realities of India, of both the learned “official” history
and other historical registers. Her students walk away with an appreciation both for
the richness of their own contexts infused with multiple Indian cosmological tradi-
tions and for the potential contributions of predominant renditions of history and
central disciplinary concepts, although in a more situated, less universalizing way.
By making these distinctions more conspicuous, students glean a more complex
toolset with which to actively “encounter” (in Querejazu’s sense) differing accounts
of world politics, IR as a discipline, and “reality” in general. Moreover, by fostering
the self-confidence to diverge conceptually and theoretically from the cannons, she
unleashes potential for enriching scholarly diversity and theoretical development.
Overall, each of the six contributions concretely illustrates how changing our
fundamental assumptions about existence can disrupt many of the ontological com-
monsense assumptions that we use for thinking about and engaging with difference
(and similarity). Each in its own way nudges us to stretch our minds, bodies, and
sensory channels when teaching, researching, living, and engaging politically. The
forum’s conclusion engages in more detail with these key insights.

Why Relational Encounters?

A MAYA Q UEREJAZU
Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia

Encounters are part of life. One might say that encounters are life. After all, we are
what we are as a result of countless encounters, and what we will become depends
on our engagement with others. Encounters, then, are a potentially unique site
from which to do IR differently. The more we come face to face with difference, the
deeper and more complex our transformation will be, given that difference is what
makes us confront who we are and our ways of experiencing life. Encounters shape
life in anything but an ordered and tidy way, yet we often opt to simplify such messi-
ness through knowledge, theories, and methodologies that attempt to capture real-
ity in manageable and discrete categories and abstractions that can be systematized
into binaries composed of opposite poles (good/bad, I/other, nature/culture). By
focusing on the poles, we tend to look more at the results of the encounter, that is,
what we are after the encounter has taken place. However, from the perspective of
8 Differing about Difference

relationality, the goal is to concentrate on the encounters themselves, not what

causes them or what they produce, and to see them as relating processes of becom-
ing, that is, to bodily become the place where different identities coexist as pluriver-
sal beings (cf. Shani, Reddekop, and Behera this forum). To do so, we need to

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

embrace relationality as a useful and potentially better-equipped ontological frame-
work, not with the purpose of opposing it to other ontologies, but to enhance the
possibilities that appear by taking relations as standpoint.
That reality can be systematized into existing binaries reflects ontological assump-
tions. The most important one is that beings are independent entities that can exist
on their own, and are therefore essences that coexist with each other, but are basi-
cally separate from one another. These atomistic ontologies pose separation as an
ordering principle, a premise that has been increasingly problematized and criti-
cized, particularly because binary thinking conditions us to think of difference in a
certain way (Latour 2007, 23; Descola 2011, 94; Blaser 2013, 24). This logic relies
on two basic principles: identity and non-contradiction (A = A therefore is not B),
through which the encounter of two different entities (A + B) produces a different
result separable from its components (C). The outcome of such logics is that for
one pole to be true, the other must be untrue and other results cannot be possible.
Under this logic, encountering difference or contradictions threatens the integrity
that we assume a category or entity to have. This “formula” is a valid form of depict-
ing reality but not the only one. The problem is not in the formula itself but in how
the formula is carried out in practice, how it is “worlded” (Ling 2014, 2; Haraway
2016, 35). The problem is that difference is used—consciously or unconsciously—
to create power relations to deepen and produce difference as a problem, even in
cases where it is not.
Inayatullah and Blaney (2004, 98) argued that IR does not escape from this West-
ern/modern logic of possibility, because it reproduces the binary inside/outside
producing subjectivities (Walker 2006, 58) that defines difference as a problem. As
a result of a double movement, difference becomes either inferiority or the possi-
bility of a common humanity. According to the authors, this offers a very limited
option to be part of international politics, because both logics are conceived and
defined by the same totalizing rationality: a world of independent entities (states,
individuals) or a cosmopolitical order, each one appearing as opposite to the other.
This either-or logic poses difference as the specific result of the encounter
A + B = C in particular and restraining ways. Through the ontology of separation,
C is the result of “melting” difference and becomes real only as a different separate
entity, independent of A and B. Racial and social discrimination are examples of
this: the result of the encounter of different white/western/superior with a non-
white/nonwestern/inferior creates a third and separate outcome: hybrid, syncretic,
half-blood (A + B = C). Characterizing the outcome of encounters with terms like
syncretism, acculturation, inculturation, assimilation, and hybridity is problematic
because they refer to a process of inclusion, absorption, and submission of differ-
ence into a logic defined by binary atomist ontology that fixes identities and pre-
sumed roles accordingly. All of them are synthesis, fusions that represent a certain
different identity according to which our expectations are conditioned of what that
result should be. It has also been argued that encounters are a “zero-sum game.”
Winners are the ones who after the encounter end up having a dominant posi-
tion over the other, or have the power to define the outcome/nature of the en-
counter. Shani (this forum) illustrates this in the Western transformation of sikhi
into Sikhism. This of course discourages encountering difference, because it leads
us to presume that the losing party has no agency in how the encounter takes place
or what it produces. In both cases, difference becomes a problem.
Mediated by power relations, this ontological formula becomes political and con-
tingent and needs to be provincialized so that other alternative ontological formu-
las can be taken into account as part of reality as politics. Because “it matters what
 TAMARA A. TROWNSELL ET AL. 9

worlds world worlds” (Haraway 2016, 33), we should question what happens if we
start with relationality to address the problem of difference in the moments of en-
counters. Doing so means starting from the premise that relations are the funda-
mental condition of existence because they transform and define existence as a

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

constant becoming. Everything is related and nothing exists in isolation.
In relationality, beings are composed of complementary opposites. Nothing exists
without the opposite which is by definition, different. Therefore, for life to take
place, for beings to fully exist, difference is needed. Day is not without night, dark
is not without light, and so on. Relationality brings the opportunity to consider
encounters as a centerpiece from which to give sense to existence as complexity
and contradiction, due to their creative and transformative capacity (see Reddekop
this forum). In a constant process of becoming, encounters renovate identities by
providing insights and knowledge for understanding change and dynamism that
constitute realities. There are no great divides, unless they are the result of a rupture
or a major disruption of the relation until some balance is reached.
This seems like a simple idea, but it fundamentally challenges key claims about
the sovereign self, the sovereign state, and many core concepts of the study of inter-
national politics, or the false problems of Western/global IR (Shani, Behera in this
forum). Approaching encounters relationally gives us meaningful tools not only to
value and assess the outcomes with alternative notions but also to appreciate the
encounter itself as the crucial moment or process of making sense of us and of
the other in a more comprehensive way. It prepares us to see the in-between pos-
sibilities of coexistence among different forms of being. Ultimately encounters of
difference trigger life. It is in that moment where actors not only are redefined but
also redefine.
The lack of total separation between opposites has tremendous implications.
Here, I just want to mention one: the “problem” of difference or how we can engage
difference. Each world contains methods for collaborating with difference, and yet,
as scholars of IR we are not well equipped to know them. The Andean world is a
relational world, not only the one that I know the most, but also the one that made
me question who I am. It has at least two notions that provide important insights of
what these encounters can mean.
Tinku is the encounter of opposites, yet it should not be understood as just
that. Tinkus have a cosmic function or goal: to facilitate reaching a cosmic equi-
librium of forces. In the encounter itself, relations trigger the transformation of the
forces/entities/beings into becoming something else. This cannot be subsumed to
the notion of synthesis, because it is already being affected by other relations that
impede ever being able to fix identities. The cosmic balance is of most importance,
and as relationality states, can only be achieved through the reciprocity between
complementary opposites. With this in mind, encounters of difference and with
difference are necessary because they are the engine of life.
The second notion, taypi, refers to the -in between- dimension, process, space
of mediation, and connection where difference can encounter and negotiate,
where the transformation and the becoming happens. The significant meaning
that these rich notions give to handling difference is just a glimpse of what the
Andean world and all the worlds in the planet that experience life relationally have
to offer.
Relationality produces a constant dynamic of encounter, appropriation (creative
impulse of agency) and transformation (Arnold 2018, 26); it is an ongoing process
that is never complete (Bouysse-Cassagne 2004, 60). This approach to difference
moves us beyond the zero-sum game or syncretic results, opening space to com-
prehend other logics. For example, we can understand the active role played by
what appear to be passive actors in an encounter: They take something from the
other, not with the purpose of assimilation or mimicry, but in an impulse of self-
redefinition and appropriation. They make out of something different something
10 Differing about Difference

that is their own in the sense of personalization. For example, indigenous people
who migrate to cities and become “westernized,” are both-and (not either-or) in-
digenous and western. They apprehend both worlds and transform themselves, be-
coming existentially versatile or ontologically “bilingual.” Depending on the context

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

in which they find themselves, they will highlight their indigeneity or their western
features without being both simultaneously. This provides a very different way of
understanding agency.
Postcolonial approaches have criticized the symbolic violence behind the move-
ment of fixing identities. As an alternative, relationality illustrates how identities do
not have to be a somewhat forced labeling (Shani and Behera this forum). Andean
tinkus and taypis show how the encounter makes it possible for people who engage
with difference to be transformed and yet at the same time be the same, depending
on the relations.
We do not have to necessarily innovate new methodologies but learn from ex-
isting ones. After all, millions of people in the world live according to relational
frameworks and have engaged with relational encounters of difference for cen-
turies. Relationality makes alternative results of the encounter possible. Since noth-
ing exists on its own and every existence is conditioned by a series of relations,
fractal identities partially connected (Strathern 2004, 39) become possible. This
fractality implies that identities are in constant transformation, therefore reality is a
constant becoming. Furthermore, in terms of relating difference and opposites, it
admits alternatives to the either-or scenario. The alternative of both-and in simul-
taneity becomes possible (cf. Shani and Behera this forum). Instead of fixing iden-
tities in categories such as hybrid or half-blood, identities can be defined in terms
of both western/nonwestern depending on context, time, space, and relation. In
other words, it makes it possible for beings to become and play different roles that
cannot be fixed but are transformed.
Of course this does not mean that encounters with difference are free from ten-
sions and conflicts. Yet relationality allows us to conceive of such tensions as dynamic
and creative instead of just falling into normative interpretations and expectations.
Every encounter implies making sense of what goes on, and that process is defined
by ontological beliefs. However, beliefs demand efforts of opening up and loosen-
ing, hence transformation (Verran 2002, 730). Relational ontologies enable us to
realize that encounters matter not only for producing other possible outcomes but
because they are the creative source of reality that we might have overlooked in IR.
Relational encounters are cosmopraxis (practice of being in and with the cosmos
in relation with other times and other beings) or worldings. The point can be very
simple: we not only need difference to be, but we are because we are different, and
we can be different in plural, and also pluriversal ways (cf. Shani, Reddekop, Behera
this forum), that without erasing difference, show that the “problem” of difference
is no more.

Why Runa?
J ARRAD R EDDEKOP
Centre for Studies in Religion and Society, University of Victoria, Canada
Camosun College, Victoria, Canada

The Amazonian Quichua term runa is usually translated as “human.” The meaning
of each of these terms, however, differs significantly. In the gap of translatability
between human and runa can be discerned a difference in fundamental ontolog-
ical assumptions made about existence and about beings. Much as the figure of
the human configures us as selves, positions us within the cosmos, and imagines
interactive and normative horizons along certain lines, so does the term runa for
 TAMARA A. TROWNSELL ET AL. 11

traditional Quichua people—though it does so differently. Emerging from a pro-

foundly relational ontology, runa as a concept offers a window into seeing how cer-
tain questions or problems that are consequential and familiar to the world-framing
enacted in IR, might be negotiated differently. These include the distinction and

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

interrelation between “human” and “nonhuman” and their respective natures as
entities; the constitution of selves and communities; the nature of boundaries be-
tween (groups of) entities; the nature of encountered difference; and possibilities
for relating to that difference (cf. Querejazu this forum). Critical literatures of
various genres (de/coloniality, poststructuralism, posthumanism, and on the an-
thropocene) have shown how particular conventions in posing and resolving such
questions inform the dominant worldview, structures, and limits constituting IR.
More rarely, however, are the immanent logics of alternative ontologies engaged
directly—though we may acknowledge their effacement in a world of sovereign
states and in IR as the study of states’ interactions (King 2017). My goal here is
to explore briefly this comparative terrain, building on scholarly literatures and
fieldwork.
The figuration of the human that persistently underlies IR’s dominant imagi-
naries hails from the philosophical, legal, and moral heritage of Western thought
(Gilson 1991, 13; Douzinas 2000, 184; Latour 2002, 5–16). The human here is usu-
ally conceived as a class of atomistic entities (assumed to be finite, relatively stable,
fixed, bounded) with certain defining properties/faculties (reason, language, free
will, etc.) that set the human morally and existentially apart into an exceptional po-
sition relative to others (plants, animals, minerals). This class of beings exists within
a singular, universal field of knowability, insofar as the act of knowing is conceived
as approaching a universal, God-like vantage-point through reason, to which things
appear in their truth. Amazonian Quichua thinking by contrast is “perspectivist”
(Viveiros de Castro 2004, 471). The fundamental cosmological terrain here is a re-
lational field of selves with no Archimedean point. Selves are at once localized and
limited in their experience but also continually composed, grown, and mutually
differentiated through relationships (cf. the process of tinku in the taypi described
above by Querejazu, this forum).
The notion of runa reflects this perspectivism: it means most properly someone
like “us” (from a Quichua point of view), a relative, someone with whom it is pos-
sible to empathize. The term accordingly serves as an ethnonym but can also be
expanded outwards in various ways (Viveiros de Castro 1998, 476; Swanson 2009,
62). To recognize someone as a runa in the restrictive sense implies processes of
relating with them as a relative—spending time together, sharing food and mutual
feelings of conviviality and caring. An important contrasting term is auca—people
outside the sphere of those bonds of caring. Aucas are actual or potential enemies,
“outsiders” for and from whom no empathy exists or seems possible (Swanson 2009,
62). The term has referred for example to neighboring Amazonian groups like the
Achuar or Waorani, with whom they share histories of hostilities.
The scope of runa thus falls short of enclosing all “human” beings, but also ex-
tends beyond the “human” to include “nonhuman” beings depending on the con-
text. Other species are described in origin stories as having once lived as runa but
subsequently having transformed into the different bodily forms they take today.
This process is recounted as transpiring through histories of heartbreak and anger,
and breakdowns in relationships (Swanson 2009, 57; Swanson and Reddekop 2017,
685). These tensions are resolved through the creation of distance, as the various
runa withdraw into the relative privacy and inscrutability of their present forms.
The difference present in the bodily strangeness of other species is interpreted, in
other words, so as to foreground the problem of what this means for and in terms of
the inter-resonance of relationships that can be had across it. Species barriers reflect an
extreme degree of alienation—entailing communicative opacity, emotional dis-
tance, and other blockages that contrast with the kind of mutual empathy felt
12 Differing about Difference

between close relations. Nonetheless, underneath and in their own way of seeing,
other species are runa, are “like us.” This grounds the notion that, if only one could
empathize enough, this commonality would become apparent—and through this
process it remains possible to open communicative and empathetic windows across

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

these barriers.
That nonhuman beings are runa also tells us something about the kind of selves
runa are: relationally constituted and capable of transformation. In their with-
drawal, plants and animals transform into different bodies that, decoupled from
old relations, develop new ways of intersecting with the environment: new ways
of moving and eating and speaking, new modes of being-in-relation with others
that compose how they now are. Each species community encloses within itself a
private language, experiences of attraction, and distinctive styles of being that oc-
cupy a niche within the distribution of styles composing a local territory. Lessening
these barriers of opacity requires spending time in the forest, interacting with other
species, becoming familiar with the land in an embodied way by eating its foods and
taking its medicines. Doing so entails a limited transformation of our own selves and
the bodily modes of being we inhabit (Viveiros de Castro 2004, 468; Swanson and
Reddekop 2017, 690). Individuals and collectivities adapt to become like the be-
ings they spend time with, attentively study and try to understand. These relations
grow the self and one’s imaginative, interactive, and empathetic capacities (Ingold
2000, 93–106; Swanson and Reddekop 2017, 694–695). It is possible in this way to
become a relative (aylluyashka) of the forest. Such processes also mediate and shape
relations among “human” relatives.
Following the notion of runa, it is therefore possible to see how relational thought
and practice can give rise to an understanding and constitution of community as
profoundly interwoven with local ecologies of beings in co-adaptive ways. Modes of
dialogic attunement to the doings of nonhuman runa are foregrounded, articula-
ble, and part of interpretations of everyday events and experiences of selfhood. In
traditional Amazonian thinking, relationships with other species are thus not sepa-
rate from the normal concerns, extension, or rhythm of social life (Descola 1996,
93). The land is not a passive stage for human events, a sum of mute resources
or lower life forms. Differences and boundaries between species are important in
that they allow for privacy and distances necessary for the world to function, but
they are not absolute and may be lessened in ways that are enriching (Swanson and
Reddekop 2017, 691, 696). Rather than rigid lines and categories, we see a shift-
ing field of potentially transformative intersections, becomings, and positionings.
A relative play of proximity and distance is negotiated in degrees, and it is not de-
cided abstractly or instantaneously but navigated through the timing and rhythm of
emergent relationships, around which a sophisticated normative vocabulary exists.
It is notable that the differences between runa and non-runa peoples, who speak
other languages and are from elsewhere (including those specifically thought of
as aucas), are often analogized to differences between species. This entails distinc-
tive interpretations of what such differences amount to. Thus while Quichua peo-
ple have historical and conceptual frameworks for encountering and relating with
(something like) Others, the concepts, structures, horizons, and dangers involved
are distinct from familiar Western ones pertaining to analogous problems. This is
quite far from modern Western tropes concerning “the in/human” or the danger
of viewing human groups as “animal-like”—as in settler colonial logics justifying
the dispossession of indigenous peoples (Kanji 2017, 65), but also racist ideologies
more broadly. In the familiar Western case, groups may be likened to animals qua
a lower category within a stable, hierarchical sorting of atomistic beings. A group
may be viewed as too primitive or animalistic to warrant the moral or political con-
siderations due to those living in a properly “human” way. Assimilation into the col-
lective habitus of “humanity” (if this is deemed possible) thus becomes a condition
of recognition. Because of the human exceptionalism subtending this in/human
 TAMARA A. TROWNSELL ET AL. 13

classification, it validates either the application of moral norms or permits their suspension.
At the same time, this anthropocentric codification of human–animal relations is
affirmed and underwrites the broader order of things.
Otherness in Quichua thinking is, I think, closer to how Behera (this forum)

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

describes it within the Hindu tradition: as a range of possible empirical forms of
difference (including other species) with whom relationships (at varying degrees of
proximity) are possible. If dharma refers to a moral law governing all relations with
otherness (Behera this forum), in Quichua thinking there are norms around culti-
vating and having mature and orderly relationships that apply much more broadly
within a varied, inter-resonant cosmological field than if they were limited to one
category of (atomistic, human) beings. It is notable that the difference encoun-
tered in other species is thought as a rule to be both good and fascinating in its
strangeness, often admirable and a potential source of learning, and part of the
interdependent vibrancy that makes life possible (cf. Querejazu this forum).
Aucas lie at an extreme end of this spectrum in relationships with otherness, but
not outside of it. Here repulsion, anger, and estrangement prevail. If all societies
grapple with relations of violence and war, auca has been a term that codifies such
experiences for Quichua people, signifying an emotional and empathetic distance
that makes killing thinkable. But to call someone an auca is not to render them as
“sub-human.” This is so even while, as Taussig (1987, 230–236) has described, the
figure of auca today often appropriates imageries and differentiations emergent
from colonial histories, including of “wilder,” unbaptized Indigeneity.
Like other examples of Quichua classification, auca concerns the cohering of
selves into mutually distanced forms of existence. Aucas are identified with the sacha
or forest, and analogized to animals, but animals are not sub-human beings. Rela-
tional perspectivism does not produce the verticality or stability of the Great Chain
of Being. The association of aucas with animals or the forest suggests rather mutual
communicative opacity, possible dangerousness, and a legacy of mutual emotional
coldness or alienation akin to that felt between species. It may also suggest a per-
ception of auca selves as constituted through different sets of relations that make
them more like the deep forest with which they are associated.
This analogy thus simultaneously indicates empathetic barriers, articulates
difference relationally, and explains the possibility of violence. But it also ar-
guably suggests the transferability of techniques and norms for relating maturely
to otherness across different forms, not their suspension. In general, such tech-
niques include protocols and practices for softening the situation, and develop-
ing empathic bonds (cf. Belaunde 2000, 209–211). Bettering relations though also
does not entail the same logics of assimilation or domestication of difference pre-
dominantly corresponding to inclusion into “humanity.” The pattern is of opening
windows for relating, in ways that are appropriate and true to the difference and po-
sitionalities of selves in a given meeting or space of inter-resonance (cf. Querejazu
this forum). While auca, like “inhuman,” is therefore a term that mediates rela-
tions of violence, one cannot simply assume the direct transferability of dynamics,
whether of logics of inclusion/exclusion, forms of violence, or the nature of bound-
aries as such, from one context to the other.
In Quichua thinking about relating maturely to otherness, an important axis con-
cerns a tension between growing the self in a way that remains rooted and responsi-
ble to one’s (self-constituting) relations, and the danger of being pulled altogether
into another way of being, or rootlessness. While Quichua selfhood is developed
through practices of becoming like others, this occurs through relationships that
entail forms of reciprocity and groundedness that enmesh (human and nonhuman)
selves with each other. This grounded normativity (Coulthard 2014, 13), bound
up with the relationality of notions like runa or ayllu, contrasts strikingly with the
normative uprootedness of the happy cosmopolitan subject of globalized capital-
ism, or with the nature/culture separation and anthropocentrism underlying statist
14 Differing about Difference

framings of political life. Descriptions of indigenous IR and diplomacy elsewhere

in the United States (King 2017; Corntassel and Woons 2017, 131, 133) have con-
sonantly emphasized that inter-national relations meaningfully occur across species
barriers, and that indigenous diplomacies with other human peoples simultane-

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

ously reflect such ties and consequent responsibilities to the land. Accordingly one
arrives at very different configurations of communities, actors, relations, and nor-
mative horizons pertinent to political life, which would constitute distinct forms of
“doing IR differently.” Following the immanent logic of runa beyond its mere use as
an ethnonym or an equivalent for “humans” allows a sense of the kind of relational
ontology and entailed ways of being that inform other but broadly comparable in-
digenous lines of thinking.
Lingering with the concept of runa illustrates the scope of differences often at
play in contemporary political moments—for example, in indigenous-state conflicts
over land use, and the continual supplanting of indigenous relationalities with set-
tler colonial existential configurations. However, it also provides a starting point for
alternate ways of thinking about and responding to those differences, and exploring
provocations opened by thinking across worlds. A certain kind of critical defamil-
iarization concerning dominant ontologies becomes possible. Experimental trajec-
tories open up for learning/rethinking how it is possible to otherwise conceptual-
ize/practice existence and negotiate questions central to political life. Kurki (2019,
65–68) has remarked that “relationality” can be interpreted in different ways, and
precisely how it is conceptualized matters for the kind of critical possibilities and
alternative viewpoints it can be expected to open up. To my mind, the relationality
expressed in Quichua thinking is distinct in the degree to which it shapes not only
the constituted-ness of entities, but the nature of those constituted entities and the
interactive horizons they negotiate. If much theoretical energy has been deployed
in recent years on how to move and think otherwise than through the figure of the
human and the anthropocentrism endemic to dominant modernity (Kaltofen 2018,
33), the notion of runa indicates some possibilities that provocatively cut across and
exceed that familiar terrain.

Why Sikhi?
G IORGIO S HANI
International Christian University, Japan

In this contribution a brief attempt is made to engage with a cosmological tradi-

tion, Sikhi, and to assess its implications for IR. Sikhi is a monotheistic (or, strictly
speaking, panentheistic) cosmological tradition that originated in the Punjab area
of North India, open to all those who are prepared to accept its doctrines and prac-
tices. Central to Sikhi is the concept of Vahiguru, the omnipotent and omnipresent
transcendent creator and sovereign of the universe who lies beyond human under-
standing, time, and space, and does not take human form. The Vahiguru’s intentions
were revealed to Guru Nanak (1469–1539), who saw the divine to reside in all. The
essence of Guru Nanak’s message is to be found in the opening hymn of the Guru
Granth Sahib:
There is one supreme eternal reality; the truth; immanent in all
things; creator of all things; immanent in creation. Without fear and
without hatred; not subject to time; beyond birth and death; self-
revealing.
Since we are all part of the One (Ik), Nanak believed that humanity cannot be
reduced to any name, history, or people. This is encapsulated in the symbol Ik
 TAMARA A. TROWNSELL ET AL. 15

Ōankār, which literally means “One, whose expression emerges as Word.” Conse-
quently, there could be no “no Muslim, no Hindu.” This is reflected in the Sikh
holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, which includes hymns from Hindu and Muslim
sacred texts and prophets. Indeed, Guru Nanak is sometimes described as a reli-

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

gious reformer within the Sant tradition familiar in north India at the time which
drew on both Hindu and Muslim traditions (McLeod 1969). Most Sikhs, followers
of the Guru and his ten successors, believe that Nanak transcended both traditions
to form a distinct “religious” tradition. However, boundaries between followers of
the Sikh tradition and Hinduism and Islam were often porous right up to the colo-
nial period (Oberoi 1994, 420). The colonial encounter, in an attempt to render
Sikhi intelligible to a Western social imaginary, transformed Sikhi into Sikhism and
erected religious boundaries between Sikhs and followers of other religions.
What changed in the colonial period is the way in which identity was conceived
(Mandair 2009, 236). The Sikh tradition, or more accurately, Sikh traditions, be-
fore the onset of colonial rule were characterized by a multiplicity of different sects
which were, in some cases, indistinguishable from Hinduism; the religious bound-
aries between Sikhs and Hindus were fuzzy and porous. Most Sikhs, Oberoi writes,
“moved in and out of multiple identities, defining themselves at one moment as
resident of this village, at another as part of that caste; and at yet another as belong-
ing to a sacred tradition” (Oberoi 1994, 17). In other words, many Sikhs were both
Sikh and Hindu. Since Sikhi is a dynamic relational concept it could not be con-
tained in the religious categories that British colonial administrators constructed in
the nineteenth century. The introduction of the decennial census in particular re-
placed previously “fuzzy” with “bounded” and enumerated communities competing
for political power (Kaviraj 2010, 26). Furthermore, the colonial state facilitated the
enumeration of these communities through the inauguration of a process of statis-
tical counting and spatial mapping. Enumeration facilitated the transformation of
local cosmological traditions into national “religious” communities. Consequently,
by the beginning of the twentieth century, there was “a growing sentiment among
sections of the Sikh community that they belonged to a community distinct from the
rest of the population” (Oberoi 1994, 365). In so doing, colonialism led to a “thin-
ning out” of the Sikh cosmological tradition and a separation of the spiritual and
temporal dimensions of the Sikh tradition. Sikhism became a religion (see Mandair
2009) and the Sikhs an ethno-religious community or putative nation (see Shani
2008a). Sikhism became the property of a specific people: the Sikhs. What was lost
was the message of Sikhi and its emphasis on a radical equality inclusive of caste,
creed, ethnicity, or gender.
It is argued here that an engagement with Sikhi, or the Sikh cosmological tradi-
tion, may help “provincialize” Western understandings of the relationship between
universality and particularity, the religious and political, and nation and state which
characterize conventional accounts of IR (Chakrabarty 2007). In so doing, Sikhi pro-
vides a pathway to “doing IR differently.” First, I will attempt to briefly define the
terms used. By cosmology, I understand a series of assumptions about the cosmos.
A cosmology seeks to explain the origins of the cosmos in which we find ourselves
and our place within it. As such, it shares many similarities with ontology and episte-
mology. However, a cosmology also has a sacred dimension that is usually translated
into the Abrahamic concept of “religion.” Second, I understand IR—in common
with many of the contributors to this forum (see Behera, Querejazu, Reddekop,
Shimizu, Trownsell)—to refer to relations between different political units that are
co-constituted through the process of interaction. Conventional understandings
of IR privilege relations between pre-existing, distinct, separate, and stable units:
territorialized, sovereign states. States are assumed to be either motivated by self-
interest and collectively constitute an anarchic system or society of states bound by
a set of common values or norms which regulate state interaction. Although criti-
cal, feminist, and postcolonial approaches to IR seek to account for the emergence
16 Differing about Difference

of these units by embedding them within structures such as capitalism, patriarchy,

and colonialism, they employ a secular lens that does not allow them to bring in
insights from cosmological traditions. Consequently, IR fails to speak to arguably
the majority of mankind who live their lives according to spiritual and relational

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

frameworks.
In India, the “root paradigm of all the major indigenous religious traditions”
is that of “the cosmic, moral social order,” of dharma (cf. Behera this forum).
The Sikhs are no exception. It is dharma—understood within the Sikh tradition
as dharam—which constitutes individuals and the world(s) they inhabit. Only recita-
tion of the name of the divine, satnam, can lead to liberation from the cycle of
birth and rebirth characterized by suffering. However, Sikhi also has a social dimen-
sion: an insistence on social equality, the rejection of all forms of caste distinction
and the centrality of the concept of community service (seva). The absence of firm
boundaries between Sikhs and other communities mean that, especially before the
colonial period, Sikhs could also be members of other cosmological communities.
Indeed, it was not uncommon for the eldest son of every Punjabi Hindu family
to become Sikh. Furthermore, the communal kitchen, the langar, in Sikh temples
(gurdwaras) caters not only to the congregation but to all, including members of
other faith traditions. This illustrates the “both-and” logic of Sikhi and other South
Asian cosmological traditions which can be contrasted with the “either-or” logic of
colonial modernity introduced by the British. Applied to IR, an engagement with
Sikhi would bring into question not only the “zero-sum” game upon which realist
theory is based on but also the distinction between universality and particularity
characteristic of much of Western epistemology. For Sikhs, as well as many other
South Asians, universality is inclusive of difference, which means that it can co-exist
alongside other, different universalities (see Querejazu and Reddekop this forum).
This has implications for “global IR.” Global IR acknowledges that “IR does not
reflect the voices, experiences, knowledge claims, and contributions of the vast ma-
jority of the societies and states in the world” and transcends “the divide between the
West and the Rest” (Acharya 2014, 647). It appears to embrace the “both-and” logic
of South Asian cosmological traditions. Sikhi, it would seem, can be easily accom-
modated into the “pluralistic universality” favored by “global IR” scholars. A plural-
istic universalism “allows us to view the world of IR as a large, overarching canopy
with multiple foundations” (Acharya 2014, 649–50). However, Sikhi moves us be-
yond this conceptualization by acknowledging the existence of plural universalities
within the cosmos. Since we inhabit different worlds, any attempt to integrate dif-
ferent cosmologies into a “Global IR” risks reifying a particular cosmological world
view as the universe. Instead, Sikhi could best be accommodated by a commitment
to pluriversality: that is, the existence of multiple universalisms which may intersect
and influence each other but cannot be encompassed within a “large, overarching
canopy with multiple foundations.”
As Quijano notes, “virtually in all known cultures, every cosmic vision, every im-
age, all systematic production of knowledge is associated with a perspective of total-
ity.” Therefore, attempts to equate a “specific cosmic vision of a particular ethnie”
as universality “impose a provincialism as universalism” (Quijano 2010, 31). This is
precisely what conventional IR has been so successful at doing: imposing its provin-
cial understanding of IR as universal. An example would be the basic unit of IR:
the nation state. A fusion of two interrelated but distinct concepts that emerged
with the transition to modernity in Europe, both concepts emerged from a specific
cosmology: the Judeo-Christian.
First, the concept of the nation as an ethnic community has its origins in the
Jewish idea of a “chosen people” transformed into a “community of blood” by Chris-
tianity through the act of transubstantiation. By partaking of Jesus’ flesh and blood
through the Eucharist, Christians formed a distinct “nation” or “race” which could
be differentiated from others (see Anidjar 2014). Second, as Schmitt has argued,
 TAMARA A. TROWNSELL ET AL. 17

“all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theolog-
ical concepts” (Schmitt 1985, 1). Indeed, the term “secularism” can only be under-
stood from within the Christian tradition, because the term “secular” was initially
used to describe lay monks who chose to leave monasteries and live as part of a

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

community. After the Reformation, it signified the “privatization” of Church prop-
erty, that is, its transfer to laypersons and entry into market circulation. Finally, in
the “discourse of modernity, the ‘secular’ presents itself as the ground from which
theological discourse was generated...and from which it gradually emancipated it-
self in the mark to freedom” (Asad 2003, 192). Schmitt based his understanding of
the “sovereign” on the founding father of the “realist tradition”: Thomas Hobbes.
Central to Hobbes’ thought is a view of the sovereign as a Leviathan, a secularized
“Mortal[l] God, to which we owe under the Immortal God, our peace and defense”
(Hobbes 1985, 227). This “Mortal[l] God” alone is capable of providing security in
return for liberty.
However, within the Sikh tradition, there developed a different relationship be-
tween the religious and political community and, therefore, a different conception
of sovereignty. A distinction was made between “spiritual” and “temporal” sovereign-
ties that were posited separately yet embodied in the personage of the Guru. The
dual authority of the warrior-Guru was symbolized by the two swords which were
first worn by the sixth Guru, Hargobind; piri, signifying spiritual authority and miri,
temporal authority. In Sikhism, the wearing of the two swords was the sole pre-
rogative of the Guru. Thus, the Guru monopolized both spiritual and temporal
authority within the community. However, the establishment of the Khalsa follow-
ing the death of the tenth and final Guru, Gobind Singh (1666–1708) transferred
sovereignty from the Guru to his followers. Through the doctrine of Guru Granth,
Guru Gobind Singh bestowed the spiritual dimensions (piri) of the Guru’s authority
on the holy book—compiled by the Gurus yet including hymns penned by Hindu
and Muslim religious figures—the Adi Granth (which was hitherto known as the
Guru Granth Sahib)—while conferring all temporal authority (miri) in the Khalsa.
Literally meaning “community of the pure,” the Khalsa came to represent the col-
lective religio-political body of Sikhs. It gave them a cohesive identity as embodied
in five external symbols, commonly known as the Five Ks: kes, unshorn hair usually
but not necessarily worn in a turban; kanga, a comb; Kach, knee-length breeches;
kara, a steel bangle worn over the wrist; and finally, a kirpan, a sword. The kirpan
in particular is significant since it contests the state’s monopoly of the use of force
which is central to the modern understanding of the state. Furthermore, the Khalsa
was envisaged as a sovereign community as encapsulated in the salutation “Raj Karega
Khalsa” (the Khalsa shall rule and be sovereign). After Guru Gobind, there would
be no further human Gurus with their spiritual authority (miri) invested in the holy
book, the Guru Granth Sahib, and their temporal authority invested in the Khalsa
(piri).
The implication for IR is that an engagement with the Sikh tradition provincial-
izes the nation-state as one type of political community among many. The Khalsa
was established as a sovereign religio-political community but may exist with other
identities and forms of political community unlike exclusivist understandings of the
nation-state. Although the majority of Sikhs are citizens of India, the sovereignty in-
vested upon them by Gobind Singh is embodied in the Five Ks and does not necessarily
clash with the claims of the nation-state (Shani 2008b, 730).5 In so doing, we can
talk of “multiple and overlapping sovereignties” (Inayatullah and Blaney 2004, 31).
Sovereignty may not be seen as an exclusive claim to a particular territory as in the
European model but multiple and embodied. It is multiple in that it can co-exist

5
When it has done so, it is because the state has refused to refused to accept the sovereignty of the Khalsa over
issues concerning the Sikh community, thus violating the “inner domain” (see Chatterjee 1994) or spiritual dimension
of sovereignty.
18 Differing about Difference

with other forms of political community and embodied in that it is invested in the
collective body of the Khalsa and not linked to territory.
In short, an engagement with Sikhi allows us not only to “provincialize” key con-
cepts such as universality, sovereignty, and secularism but also to reconceptualize

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

them in such a way as to expand the horizons of IR and make it a more inclusive
field of study for many in the Global South. We have seen how Sikhi is a universal
cosmological tradition that cannot be accommodated within the “pluralistic univer-
sality” favored by global IR scholars. It developed a political dimension that, although
distinct from the religious dimension, cannot be separated from it, thus problema-
tizing the dichotomy between the religious and the secular. Finally, it developed an
understanding of sovereignty which is both multiple and empodied. All political au-
thority is invested in the collective body of believers who constitute the Khalsa which
is understood as a sovereign community. The Khalsa, however, is not confined to a
particular territory and can co-exist with other “multiple and overlapping sovereign-
ties” in a pluriversal world order.

Why Kyoto School?

K OSUKE S HIMIZU
Ryukoku University, Japan

The Kyoto School has been one of the foci of contemporary IR particularly when
non-Western discourses started attracting attention. The School has two distinctive
but related dimensions. Each has its own way of contributing to IR in terms of how
we understand and engage with the study of world affairs. The first dimension is
their philosophical inquiry, ontology in particular. It is commonly said that their
philosophy was profoundly influenced by Buddhism, and it shows us an alterna-
tive way to perceive, understand, and investigate the world with Buddhist traditions.
The second, more practical dimension, involves the School’s incorporation into the
Japanese imperialist regime of the inter-war period, which propounds us a caution-
ary tale in engaging with non-Western discourses. The following is a brief sketch of
the School’s two dimensions and the way they contribute to IR.
Based at the Kyoto Imperial University during the inter-war period, the Kyoto
School was a philosophical school that consisted of several philosophers who devel-
oped original existentialist philosophy. The members of the School include Nishida
Kitaro, Tanabe Hajime, Nishitani Keiji, Kosaka Masaaki, Miki Kiyoshi, and Tosaka
Jun. Their philosophical inquiries were by no means unified, ranging from con-
servative to progressive, from purely philosophical to more political. Their com-
mon ground, however, was their exclusive focus on the concept of being and per-
sistent concern with relationality. In this sense, they were all existentialists. Their
philosophical inquiry is commonly understood as having a profound influence
from Mahāyāna Buddhism. Here Mahāyāna Buddhism refers to philosophy rather
than the religious dimension, if we presume the separation of these two to be
possible.
The Kyoto School’s philosophical engagement with ontology was developed with
the concept of relationality, engi in Buddhist language. The term relationality re-
quires further explanation here. It is not to focus on the relationship between two
separate beings as commonly understood in contemporary IR. Rather, the philoso-
phers insisted that the spontaneous relationship generates two separate beings, thus
subjectivities in the case of human relations. This spontaneous relationality as the
cause of subjectivity is what they called “pure experience.” It is assumed in con-
temporary Confucian relational theories of IR that the given relationship and pre-
existing roles in the hierarchy construct the subjects performatively (Qin 2018; Yan
2019; Zhao 2019). This is because, as Butler suggests, “regulatory practices” is the
 TAMARA A. TROWNSELL ET AL. 19

core of generating “coherent identities” (Butler 1990, 23). On the other hand, the
subjects or relationship according to this School’s philosophy do not exist before
the spontaneous relationship takes place (Nishida 1947, 4; Shimizu 2015). A con-
flict does not occur between agents in this sense. Rather the conflict generates agents.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

The conflict, therefore an action, takes place first, then the agents appear. In their
philosophy, there is no subject a priori.6 The agent as we know of in the discourse
of Western philosophy can be only referred to as “nothing” or “empty.”
The empty agent has a substantial significance for the contemporary IR literature.
How would we see the nation-state? Would it be possible to regard a nation-state as
empty too? Interestingly, the second generation of the Kyoto School philosophers
indeed regarded Japan as empty. This emptiness, however, had a positive connota-
tion to them. The emptiness of Japan made its unprecedented political and eco-
nomic development possible since the radical transformation from a feudal nation
to the civilized one marked by the Meiji Restoration. They enthusiastically argued
that this emptiness was the reason for the unprecedented absorption of Western sci-
ence, technology, and civilization. They maintained that the high status of Japan in
the contemporary international politics has never been possible without it (Kosaka,
Nishitani, Koyama & Suzuki 1943, 388; Sugawara 2018). Their stress on the empti-
ness of nation-state was not limited to the simple explanation of Japan’s rapid devel-
opment. It had wider and more profound implications for the world they perceived.
As the emptiness is supposed to be all-inclusive and destined to absorb everything, a
nation-state reifying and manifesting the “emptiness” must also be inclusive, at least
logically. They argued that this all-inclusive society, namely Japan, guarantees the
moral high ground and brings the harmony among its members.
Here, I should clarify the differences between the first generation and the second
by emphasizing their ontological foci. The first generation was more concerned
with the concrete context of being than with the entire world. The school’s aim
in the writings of the first generation was to understand the meanings of being in
a particular context. It was to liberate those suffering from tragic and disastrous
experiences by providing meaning to being. In this sense, the first generation’s phi-
losophy came very close to traditional Mahāyāna Buddhism. On the other hand, the
second generation was more eager to engage with world politics and provided an
authentic story of the “entire whole” and individuals. They developed the story of
the whole world by saying that individuals are “self-definition” of the “entire whole,”
by adopting the teachings of the kegon sect of Buddhism. They also adopted Confu-
cianism into their political engagement. They frequently referred to family as the
fundamental basis of social order, and as a result, the relationality they assumed in
their inquiry into the world order was supposedly fixed and installed in the given
hierarchy of the world. As I will argue later, the adaptation of kegon Buddhism and
Confucianism in their political writings had substantial meanings in terms of their
involvement with Japanese imperialism.
Although this philosophical inquiry provided a transformative moment to the
discourse of philosophy, the School has a dark side, that is, they were deeply in-
volved with the imperialism of Japan. Their involvement varied by degree, whereby
the first generation was more receptive and their disciples were more active and
enthusiastic. Yet the most prominent and highly admired philosophical school’s in-
corporation into the imperialist regime of Japan cast a prolonged shadow over the
post-war Japanese intellectuals. How did they end up justifying Japan’s aggression
towards other Asian nations? If “emptiness” or “nothingness” is the presupposition
of their philosophy, which presumably leads us to a more peaceful, harmonious,
and inclusive—in the sense of being receptive—order, in what way did such con-
cepts resonate with the justification of blunt imperialist aggression and violence?

6
This stands in contrast to the version of relationality and conflict delineated by Querejazu this forum.
20 Differing about Difference

The first is their insufficient attention to ethics. As they were exclusively con-
cerned with ontology and being, they were excessively focusing on defining truth.
For them, the good was only located in the context of the truth, or it only becomes
possible in the form of an extension of the existentialist truth. As the truth was

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

always relational for them, the good only appears to be relational too, that is, as
a receptive form to the relationship. In general, this receptive understanding of
ethics inevitably leads us to virtue ethics, in which the good is singularly provided
by a virtuous figure, not by a moral standard remotely set from concrete contexts.
When the School insisted that Japan is the representation of “nothingness,” they
were implicitly presuming that Japan is a reification of virtue ethics. As a result, they
proudly declared that Japan is the only nation representing morality in a capital-
ist world characterized by the total lack of moral concerns. The question here, of
course, is whether a nation-state can be a bearer of virtue ethics. What does it mean
for Japan as a nation-state to be virtuous? Who is the virtuous sage in Japan? Is it the
Emperor, the Prime Minister, or the military general?
Second, the School’s lack of attention to language is also something to blame.
While they used the term “Japan” frequently in their political writings, they never
properly defined the term. As the term “Japan” and its imperial household had been
constantly in use throughout the long history of the nation, the School automati-
cally assumed that Japan and the Emperor system have been consistent. However,
history proves otherwise. There have been countless discontinuities in their pedi-
grees; even their origins were not indigenous. Moreover, Japan was not monolithic
or standardized like the Kyoto School philosophers presumed. Rather, their version
of “Japanese culture” was more of “Kyoto culture” (Sugawara 2018, 264). If a sub-
ject is generated by relationship, the discontinuities must be taken seriously, for in
any moment there lies the possibility that the unexpected would take place, and
thus the subject would be substantially changed. In the Buddhist theory of con-
sciousness or yuishikiron by which the School was profoundly influenced, memories
of the past or plans of the future are all illusions of present consciousness. Thus,
we do not have to get vexed by the issue of the continuity of subject as there is no
such thing (Minami 2018). In fact, nation-states have appeared and disappeared in
the world history, like East Timor and South Sudan for the former and the USSR
and Manchukuo for the latter. However, the second generation of the Kyoto School
philosophers interpreted this differently for the sake of subjectivity. In their political
writings, the subjectivity was set a priori in the form of Japan as a nation-state. The
philosophers privileged the language structure of the nation-state and mingled this
with the adopted Confucian idea of hierarchy and fixed relationality/roles, which
meant that they could not accept the Mahayana Buddhist conclusion of no con-
tinuous subjectivity. In other words, the whole magnificent story of the philosophy
of world history was from the beginning formulated and written to affirm and re-
affirm the subjectivity of Japanese. Perhaps it was their own fears and anxieties over
their own subjectivity that resulted in an unquestioned and careless use of Japan as
a given and established subjectivity.
Third, their assumption of temporality should be investigated in detail. By adopt-
ing the Buddhist teachings, their philosophy was largely based on non-linear tem-
porality. For them world affairs were the “self-definition” (jiko-gentei) of the his-
tory of the “entire whole,” and this history was by no means linear or progressive.
According to the philosophers, this point was imperative in distinguishing Western
modernity and Japanese traditional temporality. However, in their political argu-
ment, non-linearity was suddenly pushed to the backstage and Japan’s temporal
presumption became linear. They argued that Japan was the only nation which fully
understood how the world works on the basis of non-linear temporality, thus Japan
is a representation or a “self-definition” of the history of the “entire whole.” Conse-
quently, they shamelessly contended that Japan has a moral obligation to discipline
and train “other” Asian nations to become like Japanese. At this very moment the
 TAMARA A. TROWNSELL ET AL. 21

narrative of non-linear temporality turned into a progressive linear temporality, and

the beautiful story of morality of “inclusiveness” and “harmony” transformed into
blunt imperialism (Kosaka et al. 1943, 235).
What lessons can we draw from the Kyoto School’s involvement in the imperialist

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

regime? First, relational theories, which are now enjoying a prosperous moment in
IR, have substantial potential to provide another reading of the world, but simulta-
neously contain the danger or impossibility of defining what is the good. Unless we
find the way in which a nation-state can become virtuous, relational theories seem
incapable of properly addressing the question of ethics and morality. This is partic-
ularly so when we take nation-state to be the central actor like the Kyoto School’s
political writings.
Second, we need to focus more on the power of language. This is the case of
relational theories in particular. As a number of non-Western scholars are now tak-
ing relationality seriously which presumably promotes fluid and flexible nature of
subjectivity, the issue of language should be handled with care. This is because lan-
guage is directly related to the question of ontology, “what is the world?” Language
has the power to fix beings and engulf them by putting the reality into words as
containers. In this way, language appears to be deceptive.
Third, more detailed study of temporality is also indispensable. In this, we have
to be cautious of the possibility of the narrative of cyclicality, or non-linearity, easily
turning into the linear temporality as in the Kyoto School’s case. This transforma-
tion of temporality entwines linear temporality with idealistic discourses like “in-
clusiveness” and “harmony.” Thus, rather than accepting the easy dichotomies of
linearity/cyclicality and competition/harmony, we must first determine the mech-
anism of how the cyclical and linear temporality are transformed into one another
in academic discourses, and how temporality and power interact with each other.
To overcome these problems, we may need to take seriously the first generation’s
attempt to construct the world on the basis of empty subjectivity and ethics. If we
accept the teaching that all nations are empty and just temporary illusions, we may
need to revisit the fundamental questions, why IR, why the nation-state, and what is
the nation-state anyway?

An Ethics of Understanding
A NAHITA A RIAN
University of Erfurt, Germany
Bani Adam (The Children of Adam)
Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.
If you’ve no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain! Sa‘di (Trans. M. Aryanpoor)7

More than eight centuries ago, in 1258 AD, Abū-Muhammad Musliih al-Dı̄n bin
Abdallāh Shı̄rāzı̄, also known by his pseudonym Sa‘di, penned down these poetic
lines in the Gulistan (The Rose Garden), which was at the time—and to this day—an

7
While Aryanpoor’s translation of Sa‘di’s poem from Persian to English in Sa‘di of Shiraz 1880 [2000]. The Gulistan
(The Rose Garden) maintains the rhyme and rhythm, another translation that is closer to the literal meaning of the
poem is the following: Children of Adam belong to one another Who, in creation, are of the same basic matter When
one member is hurt by an act of fate Other members cannot remain free of hurt You who are mindless of others’
painDo not deserve to be called human (Translated by Kolliyat, quoted in Katouzian 2006, 31).
22 Differing about Difference

acclaimed book of Persian prose with stories, anecdotes, and poems about various
aspects of human life and humanity. Sa‘di (1208–1291) was a thirteenth-century Per-
sian poet, mystic, and traveler (Katouzian 2006, 11). Following the Mongol invasion
of Shiraz (present-day Iran), which was at the time part of the Khwarazm kingdom,

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

Sa‘di left his native town in the 1220s to study in Baghdad at the al-Nezamiyeh, a
well-known and reputed university in the Islamic world. After his studies, he traveled
extensively in the Levant, the Arabian Peninsula, and Egypt for a period of 30 years
during which he encountered different kinds of people from various walks of life
(Katouzian 2006, 13–17). The exchanges, events, and incidents that he experienced
throughout his wanderings, such as witnessing the Mongol invasion of Islamic lands
or being enslaved for 7 years by Crusaders in Syria (Losensky 2012), were formative
for his prose and poetry and the moral teachings, wisdom and humanism that are
contained in them. Sa‘di returned to Shiraz in the mid-1250s once the instability
that ensued following the Mongol invasion had withered (Katouzian 2006, 12). In
Shiraz, he first wrote his book of poetry known as the Bustan (the Orchard) in 1257
followed by the Gulistan in 1258.8
Sa‘di’s humanism is reflected in the poem Bani Adam (the Children of Adam).
While clearly situated in an Abrahamic, and more specifically Islamic, genealogy
of mankind, its moral teaching transcends the religious order in which it was em-
bedded. Through this poem Sa‘di expressed that, notwithstanding the differences
between humans, mankind is connected to one another since in the end, all hu-
mans consist of the same essence or materiality (flesh and blood). Instead of giving
priority to a particular (religious) identity and therefore accentuating difference,
Sa‘di emphasized above all else the similarity between humans. The morality that
the poem expresses is one of understanding and empathy among humankind, and
Sa‘di reasons that it is through the practice of both virtues that humans can be
considered humans. Accordingly, if a human(s) is (are) afflicted with pain, oth-
ers will be equally affected through their capacity to empathize and understand.
In contrast, for Sa‘di those incapable of empathy, who do not have the ability to
understand another’s pain, are not worthy to be called humans. In short, for this
medieval poet, mystic, and wanderer, humanity and being human were defined by
the concepts of empathy and understanding.
During his own lifetime and thereafter, Sa‘di’s poetry was well-received in and be-
yond Shiraz, as his fame and poetic ingenuity spread across the Persianate world—
stretching from India to Anatolia—influencing the work of many other Persian po-
ets and intellectuals (Losensky 2012). In the context of the onslaught and violence
of the Mongols and the Crusaders, Sa‘di’s humanism was fairly unique. However,
among his contemporaries and more specifically, Persian poets with mystical incli-
nations or Sufis, Sa‘di’s humanism was not unusual. Indeed, another well-known
Persian who was a contemporary of Sa‘di and who similarly fled his hometown of
Balkh following the Mongol invasion was the Sufi poet Jalāl al-Dı̄n Muhammad
Rūmı̄ (1207–1273). After many wanderings, Rumi settled in Anatolia where he
wrote his prolific poems, the Masnavi-i Ma’navi (The Spiritual Couplets). Although
different from the character and content of Sa‘di’s poetry, Rumi too espoused a
message of humanism and tolerance that could only be achieved through love, since
only love neutralizes all binaries as divisions are transcended and replaced by the
emergence and establishment of harmony (Chittick 2017).
In today’s world, Sa‘di’s words of compassion, empathy, and understanding con-
tinue to be relevant in various socio-political and cultural spheres, including the
realm of IR. For example, his poem adorns the entrance of the United Nations
building in New York, reminding state representatives of the significance of empa-
thy in interpersonal and/or intergroup relations. It constitutes us as social, ethical,
8
For a good, yet succinct introductory reading about the Bustan see Wickens (1990). For the Gulistan see Lewis
(2012). For the complete translation of the latter work, see Sa‘di of Shiraz (1880 [2000]).
 TAMARA A. TROWNSELL ET AL. 23

and moral actors, and it affects the nature and character of our interactions with
one another and with other beings. As one of the major human faculties, empathy
has been defined, conceptualized, and appraised in various ways in the fields of psy-
chology, neuroscience, anthropology, philosophy, ethics, and literature.9 What the

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

conceptualizations across all these fields have in common is that empathy is con-
ceived as an affective and cognitive ability by which an individual or group seeks to
understand another person’s or group’s different (cultural) perspectives, feelings,
or experiences.
Apart from analyzing the role that various emotions play in relations between
states and the decision-making processes of political actors (see, e.g., Steele 2008;
Sasley 2011; Hutchinson and Bleiker 2014; Mercer 2014), scholars in the field of IR
have also paid attention to the concept and practice of empathy. This scholarship
has focused on the theorization of empathy in the realm of local and global poli-
tics (see, e.g., Morrell 2010; Pedwell 2014; Head 2016), the institutionalization of
empathy within and between states (see, e.g., Crawford 2000; Marlier and Crawford
2013), its significance as a strategy for peace between (former) adversaries in (post-)
conflict situations (cf. Broom 2009; Head 2012; Picco and Rifkind 2014), and the
importance of practicing empathy in fieldwork so as to transcend the “arrogant”
Self in order to understand an Other (cf. Sylvester 1995).
However, what has been largely neglected in the field of IR is the significance of
empathy in a teaching or classroom setting. In terms of pedagogy, most curricula
underscore the development of cognitive capabilities, but what is often overlooked,
even in curricula that are not embedded in a positivist framework, are affective
competences and learning. Here the nurturing of empathy is of major importance
since it is a “faculty that enables us to feel with another human being, to cogni-
tively and effectively put ourselves into his or her place, and therefore to become
aware of the other’s feelings, needs, and wants” (Moses 1985, 135). It is thus an
ability that allows us to understand both on the cognitive and affective levels an-
other person’s or being’s perceptions and experiences of being in the world. Empa-
thy enables us to comprehend, negotiate and understand differences in a positive
way.10

9
See for literature in various fields on empathy the following (non-exhaustive) overview. In the field of psychology
and neuroscience, see for example Moses (1985), Eisenberg and Strayer (1987), Eisenberg and Fabes (1998), Decety
and Jackson (2004), Decety and Ickes (2009), Singer and Lamm (2009), Spinrad and Eisenberg (2014), and Persson
and Savulescu (2018). In the field of anthropology, see for example Geertz (1983), Hollan and Throop (2008), Throop
(2010), Hollan and Throop (2011), and Hollan (2012). In the field of philosophy and ethics, see for example Slote
(2007), Coplan and Goldie (2011), Maibom (2014, 2017), and Matravers and Waldow (2018). Finally, in the field of
literature, see for example Keen (2007), Harrison (2008), and Eileen (2017).
10
Neuropsychologists have also highlighted that empathy is not always and automatically positive since it can also in-
crease pro-social behavior within a group by which a sense of “we” vis-à-vis Others or an outgroup is reinforced (Mathur
et al. 2010). However, when empathy is encouraged and practiced towards “different Others”—instead of towards mem-
bers of one’s own community or group—it does yield positive results as it reduces anti-social behavior, prejudice, and
the propensity for conflict. Some scholars remain skeptical about the advantages of empathy. They argue that empathy
is always embedded in a particular temporal-spatial context in which power relations are not absent (see e.g., Sylvester
1995; Ahmed 2004; Berlant 2004; Pedwell, 2012, 2014; Head 2016). However, the contexts that these scholars discuss
with reference to empathy are of actual violent conflicts or involve major asymmetries of power between a privileged
and a nonprivileged group(s). Notwithstanding their critical acumen, I argue that different contexts produce differ-
ent results. Teaching a classroom of students to be empathetic and to practice empathy towards the “enemy” Other
in the midst of a (civil) war or post-(civil) war situation—for example teaching Palestinian and Israeli students in Is-
rael and occupied Palestine—might indeed not lead to positive results. One of the reasons why the achievement of
success in such a context is quite difficult, is related to the fact that students are still in the midst of processing their
respective individual, family, community, society, and/or country’s trauma(s) of war, violence, loss of life, and material,
psychological, and emotional deprivations. In such a context, time is key, since it may take generations before traumas
are processed. On the other hand, teaching empathy and encouraging its practice to a homogenous or heterogenous
group of students in a class that takes place in a country that is not embroiled in an intra- or inter-state physical war
facilitates the achievement of positive results because in such a context the exposure to the violence of Others is min-
imal and/or absent. Finally, while there are also asymmetries of power in the field of IR, an educator still has agency
and therefore the choice to actually expose students to difference through the teaching curricula. One can choose to
24 Differing about Difference

Inspired by Sa‘di’s humanism and his emphasis on the practice of empathy and
understanding, I have come to encourage an ethics of understanding in teaching
IR to students as a way of approaching and learning about a world that is char-
acterized by differences between humans and social groups. Contra Hollis and

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

Smith”s (1991) conceptualization of “understanding,”11 my use of the term oper-
ates solely not on a cognitive level, but on an ethical, normative, and affective level
as it refers to a particular attitude, approach or way of being. Consequently, in order
to be able to understand an Other, one needs to be able to empathize. For without
the capacity to empathize, the understanding of an Other on a cognitive and affec-
tive level becomes impossible. An ethics of understanding requires therefore the
virtue of empathy. As a teaching philosophy, encouraging an ethics of understand-
ing has been particularly important in light of the fact that my classrooms are a
microcosm of various worlds as students with different national, religious, cultural,
and/or linguistic backgrounds participate in the courses that I—myself a hybrid
between the East and the West—teach.
Practicing an ethics of understanding begins with the premise that there are dif-
ferent ways of being and consequently a pluriversality of realities to which students
are subsequently exposed. Apart from the encounter with difference in the class-
room, students are also exposed to different worlds, thoughts, ideas, concepts, ex-
periences, cultures, histories, and realities through an engagement with various tex-
tual and visual sources from different parts of the world. The key to approaching
and understanding these differences is one of engagement that is not ego-based,
in the sense that one does not enter a debate or encounter with the attitude of
wanting to win an argument, to be proven right or better, or to convince others
that one’s own truths are the only legitimate, ultimate, and absolute ones. Instead,
within the framework of an ethics of understanding one is encouraged to first de-
center the self so that difference—through a debate, an (imagined) encounter, an
exchange—can be approached with an empathetic and open attitude, an attitude of
wanting to learn something new and different so as to understand. This may at times
be beyond one’s own mode of thinking, being, feeling and relating to reality. Yet,
despite the fact that one can be enveloped in one’s own world, the condition for
understanding an Other’s distinct metaphysical, ontological and epistemological
commitments is made possible by empathy. I encourage empathy during seminar
discussions—based on prior engagement with various textual and visual sources—
through dialogue, storytelling, and in-class assignments or group work, by which
students with different backgrounds are paired together to work together. They not
only learn to understand an Other on a cognitive and affective level, but they also
learn how to work together and appreciate difference.
Aside from encouraging students to understand difference through the practice
of empathy, an ethics of understanding further bolsters curiosity. The appreciation
of the experience of being exposed to difference and its subsequent understanding,
engenders the interest to explore and to learn about unknown Others. Indeed,
since the realization of empathy requires exposure to difference, the more it is
trained and attained, the more interest it generates to discover and understand new
Others. An ethics of understanding does not, however, turn a blind eye to human
pain and injustices in light of understanding practices of violence, discrimination,

stick to teaching and reproducing the conventional knowledge of the privileged majority—in the context of IR this is
for example secular Anglo-Saxon/European IR theories—and leave students clueless about other ways of thinking and
being. Alternatively, one can expose students to difference through the chosen topics a course covers and the teaching
materials that are used. In short, while there are always asymmetries of power, one also always has the choice to challenge
them instead of reproducing them.
11
In Explaining and Understanding International Relations (1991), Hollis and Smith differentiate “explaining” and “un-
derstanding” international relations from one another in the context of the debate between positivism and hermeneu-
tics in the philosophy of social science. Consequently, their conceptualization of “understanding,” in contrast to my
employment of the term, operates on a philosophy-of-social-science axis.
 TAMARA A. TROWNSELL ET AL. 25

and exploitation—of humans and non-humans alike—as legitimate because they

are justified in terms of a particular system of beliefs. Instead, it encourages a critical
attitude towards the admissibility and acceptability of human and non-human pain
committed in the name of a particular worldview or way of life through the practice

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

of empathy with those that suffer within and beyond it.
Overall, through an ethics of understanding students are encouraged to ap-
proach difference in an empathetic and reflexive way so as to acknowledge, un-
derstand and celebrate its existence instead of concealing, silencing or subjugating
it. Doing IR differently in a pedagogical context, therefore, involves the develop-
ment of affective capabilities in tandem with the development of cognitive capabili-
ties through an emphasis on and encouragement of practicing empathy by means
of an ethics of understanding. Due to the unabating internationalization of educa-
tion, the fight for equal rights and inclusion of marginalized groups in society that
were previously closeted and excluded—e.g., the LGTBQ-community—, and the
global movement of labor, difference is increasingly becoming more perceptible in
(homogenous) societies across the world and thus in our classrooms. In the con-
text of these developments, an ethics of understanding is and will continue to be
pedagogically relevant for it not only teaches students how to relate to difference,
but also reminds them that we are, in the words of Sa‘di, “members of a whole, in
creation of one essence and soul.”

Teaching a More “Rooted” IR!

N AVNITA C HADHA B EHERA
University of Delhi, India

“But” is a simple, three-lettered word that holds the power to trigger a vibrant chain
of contrarian thinking. I face it quite often during my IR classes, teaching poli-
tics of the South Asian region with students arguing, “but, that is not how it is,” in
my biradari (community), village, town, state, and so on. So, a characteristic chal-
lenge one faces in teaching IR lies in applying its theories and concepts in a man-
ner that suitably equips students to learn, negotiate, and critically interrogate the
world around them especially from a position located in the global south. A fun-
damental problem arises from the disconnect between the singular epistemic frames
and homogenizing character of many core concepts of IR and their diverse, if not
divergent, ground realities. Such problems are faced in teaching not only for the
realist theories with their state-centric narratives driven by an unceasing pursuit
of material power but also for the constructivist and critical theories that have in-
troduced a much-needed corrective in focusing on the discursive power of ideas
and norms and on the social identities of various social and political communities
alongside the states. This is partly because both positivist and post-positivist theo-
ries remain grounded in the European and/or Anglo-American histories without a
candid debate on how it shapes and circumscribes their conceptual frames. More
importantly, they share the same existential assumptions privileging the principle
of “separation” over “relationality” for understanding the social world. While the re-
alists’ core proposition revolves around each state’s security dilemma in the face of
perpetual threats from “others” beyond its borders, the basic building block of the
constructivist notion of identity is grounded in differentiating the “self” from the
“other,” thus, rendering difference per se as a potential source of friction, threat,
or conflict. The world may appear or be experienced very differently if discerned
from the vantage point of a different set of civilizational values, as I will explain with
reference to India.
I have been experimenting with a pedagogic technique of making students “travel
back in time” in the history (read the European history that forms the bedrock of
26 Differing about Difference

the meta narratives and theories of IR) and theirs (read local histories). A juxta-
position of the textbook formulations against our collectively shared “pasts” and
“present lived experiences,” I find, creates an intellectual space for students to
gain a basic understanding of how some of these knowledge categories, which the

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

disciplinary practices of IR take for granted, came to be constituted in the first
place—historically, socially, and politically. The purpose of this exercise is not to
fathom their histories as such but to try and understand how our “ways of knowing,”
creating knowledge and theorizing have evolved. Let me explain this briefly with
regard to the question of identity in the Indian context.
An individual and collective group identity in the pre-colonial India was a re-
lational, contextual, and social phenomenon. People living in communities fol-
lowed elaborately codified rules of social differentiation although their sense of
belonging, and solidarity was not based on political considerations (Kaviraj 1995,
116). Identity had different meanings in different situations and acquired a dis-
tinct social character shaped as it was by its local socio-cultural milieu. So a Bud-
dhist in Kashmir Valley, for instance, was influenced by the older Shaivite tradi-
tions, while in Ladakh s/he was prone to traditional Bonpa influences and later
dominated by Tibetan Lamaism (Hewitt 1995, 31). Similarly, Kashmiri Hinduism
and Islam had distinct local characters, markedly different from Hindu practices
and Sharia Islam elsewhere in India. Elsewhere, the promise of syncretism was re-
alized through the bhakti tradition, which became the pervasive form of religious
expression in most of the great cultural regions of India in the medieval period
and also “represented a fusion of Dravidian elements with the Vedic, or Aryan,
religion that had penetrated the South centuries before (Embree and Hay 1988,
207–208).
Contrary to the Western model of universality, which is premised upon a self-
other binary in which the other’s agency and identity must necessarily be negated,
Hindu culture’s universality does not require the suppression of difference, given
that each of the particularistic identities that comprise it are viewed as legitimate
and equal parts of a unified whole (Tickner 2003, 304). All the major indigenous
religious traditions in India can trace their roots in the cosmic, moral social order
of dharma (in a conversation with Ashis Nandy). According to Hinduism, Jainism,
Buddhism, and Sikhism, the universe is sustained by dharma. The basic meaning
of dharma, a word derived from the root dhr, “to sustain,” is the moral law, which
sustains the world, human society, and the individual. This is the moral realm par
excellence, which is constituted by the notion of “debt” or “the owing of an obliga-
tion to others.” According to Krishna (2012, 17–8):

The “others,” in the Hindu tradition, include not only persons, but
also ancestors, gods, plants, animals, earth, sky, and so on. The con-
cept is wide enough to include all realms where the “other” happens
to be an empirical “other” with whom one can enter into a relation-
ship.

This drastically contrasts with European history that is replete with stories of
systemic religious persecution including that of Christians, Pagans, Jews and later
Muslims ending in decades-long crusades, which eventually led to enshrining the
principle of “cuius regio, eius religio,” meaning that the religion of the ruler was to
dictate the religion of those ruled at the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, later confirmed
in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The Indian civilization had trodden a very differ-
ent path wherein a new religion was rarely imposed by a ruler on its subjects. People
would gradually accept it because its egalitarian principles or absence of rituals ap-
pealed to them. So, a Muslim king could celebrate Hindu festivals and visit Hindu
shrines and a Brahmin could compose hymns and prayers for Hindu deities in the
Persian language. Since the reconciliation between much older practices and newer
 TAMARA A. TROWNSELL ET AL. 27

beliefs evolved in the social domain over a long period of time, a collective identity
was not immutable since conversion to another faith did not result in obliterating
old beliefs and traditions. The Kashmiri Brahmin (priest) for instance would drink
water given by a Muslim, eat the food cooked in a Muslim’s boat, and even justified

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

mutton-eating introduced by the pre-Aryan tribes, namely Pisacas. Furthermore,
Kashmiri Muslims modified the rules of Islamic jurisprudence to suit their needs
(Punjabi 1990, 103, 111).
The colonial power, the British, introduced an entirely new cognitive apparatus
of figures, maps, and numbers—the census—that imparted a sense of territoriality
to identities by imposing “dualistic either-or oppositions as natural, normative order
of thought” and taught people in the subcontinent that “one is either this or that;
that one cannot be both or neither or indifferent. ... Orthodoxy of being was gradu-
ally replacing heterodoxy of beings” (Miller cited in Kakar 1995, 196). This materi-
ally changed the self-perception of communities. For example, people were indeed
Hindus or Muslims before, but under the conditions of modernity, their percep-
tions of the collective self as the majority and minority community changed fun-
damentally, which then became the dominant norm in the political sphere, most
starkly resulting in the partition of India in 1947. Though this continued shaping
the politics of post-colonial India, it has not completely altered the social fabric
of the Indian society. Nandy explains that this is because accommodation of other
faiths and cultures in the Indian context is of qualitatively different nature par-
tially because these are not imposed from above; they constitute a form of lived
experience, and, they actually lack an element of self-consciousness in the sense
that it has evolved organically over a longer durée (Ashis Nandy in Lal 2000, 58).
So, notwithstanding the modernist trends of exclusionary ideologies and harden-
ing group boundaries, several communities still retain their plural identities. For
instance, castes such as Jats and Rajputs come in three varieties—Hindus, Muslims,
and Sikhs. They do not intermarry and inter-dining is limited, but they do retain
highly nuanced, complex relationships amongst themselves, preserving their sep-
arate religious identities and a common Jat identity. Such communities are not
exceptions. In fact, nearly 600 communities or roughly 15 percent of all Indian
communities, documented by K. Suresh Singh’s mammoth survey of communities
of India, see themselves as having more than one religious identity—of simulta-
neously being Hindu and Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim, or Hindu and Christian
(Singh 1994).
It is important to reiterate that the rationale behind “traveling back in time” and
juxtaposing the European history with local histories is not to read or posit them in
a binary mode or present it as a parallel universe nor to glorify the latter. As much
as students must learn to “provincialize Europe,” it is equally important to learn to
problematize their own “pasts” because all inherited value systems, for instance the
caste-based practices of discrimination that still persist, are not good (Chakrabarty
2007). The idea is to make students aware that the universe for thinking through
the knowledge categories is not singular but plural, which is why they must first
understand how such knowledge categories are generated before imparting them
knowledge about particular concepts of IR to help them better understand the
“disconnect” between the textbook formulations and their lived realities. Not only
does this make the discipline less alienating but also opens up their minds to more
fundamental questions such as what counts as legitimate knowledge? Who creates
it? What role do the scholars and students play in re-producing it?
They also learn that if they choose to include a “non-dualistic mode of think-
ing,” as suggested by the Indian traditions, for understanding the world cast in a
“dualistic, “either-or,” oppositional mode of thinking,” difference may no longer or
necessarily be an a priori source of friction and threat. Through the class discus-
sions, for instance, they seek to understand how the plural societies of South Asian
states, as indeed in many other parts of the world, are torn by conflicts because
28 Differing about Difference

their socio-cultural diversities are viewed as a political threat by the homogenizing

impulses of the modern states. What lies at the root of most such conflicts—between
various ethnic, linguistic, or religious communities and/or between such communi-
ties vis-à-vis the state—is a fundamental inability on part of their political leadership

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

to view differences and diversity as a source of strength rather than fear and dan-
ger (Behera 2007, 362). Bearing in mind the divisive nature of such thinking and
politics, recovering and exploring the dynamics of a non-dualistic mode of think-
ing that does not generate a “fear of the other” may well provide more effective
ways of engaging with differences in both personal and political realms of our lives.
At a deeper, more fundamental level, students begin to understand that choosing
a mode of thinking is ultimately a matter of choice, which has deep social and po-
litical consequences. Those students who are inclined to pursue research learn an
important lesson in not trying to find a “fit” between the given theoretical frames
and their own lived realities and field experiences and instead attempt the reverse,
that is, let the field speak in order to bring about innovations in IR theories and
concepts. Doing so also inspires me to treat my classroom debates not simply as a
site of knowledge dissemination but as a part of our shared endeavors in knowledge
creation.

Doing Difference and Similarity Relationally:

An Analysis
T AMARA A. T ROWNSELL
Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador
A NAHITA A RIAN
University of Erfurt, Germany

Current theorizations about world politics rest on a basic existential assumption of

separation that converts difference into otherness that is at worst, threatening and
at best, inferior. This forum has sought to move beyond thinking about interactions
as occurring between atomistic units present within a singular, universal field of
knowability toward more constructive approaches rooted in a relational lens.
In conclusion, we review how logics stemming from distinct existential assump-
tions allow us to think through difference and similarity differently. The implica-
tions of interacting across worlds constituted through distinct assumptions are then
examined before closing with a list of next steps for a relational agenda in IR.

Differing Logics about Difference and Similarity

When we change fundamental existential assumptions, we can see how they are in
themselves generative of distinct logics that make for dissonant takes on what seems
to be, in appearance only, the same phenomenon (Blaser 2018, 48–49). Central to
understanding difference and similarity are both the either-or logic that arises from
assuming separation to be the primordial condition of existence and the both-and
logic stemming from the embrace of interconnection. To draw out the lessons from
the essays more clearly, this section first introduces the critical differences between
the complementary-opposite existential assumptions of separation and intercon-
nection to address subsequently how they lead to very distinct logics of engaging
difference and sameness. We then illustrate the dynamics of these logics across the
essays as a way to identify some important questions for IR.
Embracing separation as existential presupposition results in perceiving objects,
things, or units as existentially autonomous. This ontological independence trans-
lates into a categorical or substantialist approach to reality that in turn reinforces
 TAMARA A. TROWNSELL ET AL. 29

an exclusive either-or logic. Moreover, the resulting binary thinking (Querejazu this
forum) or teleological measuring sticks (Trownsell 2013, 290–295) are employed to
gauge what is to be excluded and included. So even though two options exist in a
set of complementary opposites, like difference and similarity, the drive here is to

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

identify and aspire towards the superior one while at the same time excluding at
minimum or eradicating at maximum the inferior one (Lajo 2003, 146–147).
Ontologically privileging interconnection translates into a very different concep-
tual world. Instead of attributing existential autonomy to the parts, the assump-
tion that all is interconnected drives perceiving relations first and ontologically in-
terdependent components second. Moreover, those supposedly clear defining lines
between categories in a separation-based lens here are emergent, momentary, and
fleeting. This places attention on the specificity of the here-now time-place and
generates a panorama of components that are not so “in-corporated” or “corpo-
real.” Boundaries are porous and interpenetrable, allowing us to imagine multiply
inhabitable beings. Finally, the both-and logic corresponding to the primordial pre-
supposition of interconnection allows us to embrace multiplicity, because it does
not demand the use of a teleological logic for understanding the world.
With regards to difference and sameness, a separation-based lens, due to its teleo-
logical outlook, most often celebrates sameness and perceives difference as a threat
because it disturbs the naturalized expectation of sameness.12 In contrast, differ-
ence and sameness are not embodied when assuming interconnection; they consti-
tute dynamic, complementary-opposite tendencies. As tendencies, every being has a
particular, always changing “proportion” in the pair. For this reason, relationalists
argue that we have to pay attention to both when examining interactions. At the
most basic level, difference through a both-and logic of opposites is considered a
source of richness. Arian’s discussion about empathy attests to this appreciation.
Other relational traditions see diversity as being integral to and even constitutive of
life itself. This is why Querejazu talks about how complementary opposites are con-
scientiously “encountered” in productive tension in the Andes for the purpose of
“proportionalizing” what are normally considered to be mutually exclusive elements
through a separation-based lens (Lajo 2003, 168). This transformative encounter is
only possible through the different other.
The essays by Querejazu, Behera, Reddekop, and Shani proffer specific lessons
about how distinct relational traditions have been capable of co-existing in diver-
sity. In contrast to seeing interlocutors as either the winners or losers of an inter-
action through the afforded logic of separation, Querejazu shows how a both-and
approach allows each component to be transformed through the encounter with
difference, tinku. Once we are sensitized to the possibility of this transformative
process that takes place in the taypi, or in-between “space of mediation and connec-
tion,” we can engage encounters of difference in a potentially more constructive
fashion due to the recognition of the need of the different Other for this process
to occur. This discussion complements Behera’s point about how dharma disrupts
the easy binary of self-other through the interpenetrability that becomes possible
through the porous, contingent boundaries of components of relation. Reddekop
then echoes this point when talking about the Amazonian Quichua: “Selves are
at once localized and limited in their experience but also continually composed,
grown, and mutually differentiated through relationships” (this forum). This par-
ticular dimension of the both-and logic allows us to imagine the simultaneous ex-
pression of multiply held identifications.
This forum makes a significant contribution by exemplifying the existence
and embeddedness of the both-and logic in vastly different cultures across the
world, from South America to East Asia and from South Asia to the Middle East.
12
Arian (this forum) forewarns against doing empathy work in perceived-to-be-homogeneous contexts, because it
does not foment the appreciation of difference for this reason.
30 Differing about Difference

A relational Andean perspective, for example, affords the “and/or” as a logical pos-
sibility. While “identities can be defined in terms of both western/nonwestern de-
pending on context, time, space, and relation,” Querejazu shows how one can also
be one thing at one time (an urban “Westernized” person) and an other at another

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

(indigenous person) (this forum).13 Shani’s non-dualist examples of Sikhi also il-
lustrate the fluidity and multiplicity of identifications available through the specific
here-now point:
The absence of firm boundaries between Sikhs and other communi-
ties mean that, especially before the colonial period, Sikhs could also
be members of other cosmological communities…Furthermore, the
communal kitchen, the langar, in Sikh temples (gurdwaras) caters
not only to the congregation but to all, including members of other
faith traditions (this forum).
While in the West this may seem contradictory, it is possible to imagine a world
where people can simultaneously express multiple (cosmological) identifications.
Behera enhances this discussion by taking into account the multiply overlapping
historical cosmological influences whereby “a Buddhist in Kashmir Valley...was in-
fluenced by the older Shaivite traditions, while in Ladakh s/he was prone to tradi-
tional Bonpa influences and later dominated by Tibetan Lamaism” (Hewitt 1995,
31 cited in Behera, this forum). All cases demonstrate how the both-and logic shares
a capacity for multiplicity.
Moreover, these distinct longstanding geocultural references can clearly illustrate
how the globalizing drive to homogenize existential assumptions to a separation-
based model have severely reduced the diversity of ways of being (cf. Shani, Behera,
Reddekop this forum). Behera highlights how the exclusive either-or logic of colo-
nial modernity introduced by the British through the Census in India constituted an
“[o]rthodoxy of being [that] was gradually replacing heterodoxy of beings” (Kakar
1995, 196 cited in Behera this forum). Sikhi underwent similar ontological capture:
“The colonial encounter, in an attempt to render Sikhi intelligible to a Western
social imaginary, transformed Sikhi into Sikhism and erected religious boundaries
between Sikhs and followers of other religions” (Mandair 2009 cited in Shani this
forum). Not only did the limiting nature of this categorical thinking “materially
[change] the self-perception of communities” (Behera this forum), it generated
epistemic and political violence, which is then palpated in Behera’s need to create
an IR classroom context that relies on local histories to help students first literally
re-member and then re-validate the kinds of knowing to which they have access.
Another important form of multiplicity, non-anthropocentrism, becomes avail-
able in this collection as a political possibility when the form of relationality is not
based on human language, meaning that these multiple worlds are not just consti-
tuted by and through humans alone. In Behera’s discussion of dharma, for instance,
Krishna (2012, 17–18) clearly includes beings of all sorts in his definition of possi-
ble “others” who are then capable of participating in the melting of the self-other
dichotomy about which Behera later speaks. Reddekop illustrates how this works
in the Amazonian Quichua community. Through this non-anthropocentric under-
standing of the human, a person can both transform and be transformed through
her relations to land and to other species.
Together these essays clarify how the both-and logic, derivative of embrac-
ing interconnection as the foundational existential assumption, works when un-
derstanding the different-same other-self. While this section shows the mutual
13
Here we witness the “sometimes contradictory” nature of identifications discussed by Wilcox (2014, 613) in con-
trast to identity. The performance of an identification, in keeping with Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, does
“not reflect an underlying reality, but materialize[s] reality in ways always unstable and subject to multiple interpreta-
tions” (Butler 1990 cited in Wilcox 2014, 613).
 TAMARA A. TROWNSELL ET AL. 31

intelligibility extant across distinct cosmological expressions of relational thinking,

the variations too are quite remarkable. One distinction centers around the ethical
implications of each stance. For instance, both dharma and its conceptual compan-
ion karma and the Andean cosmological drive to constant proportionalization of

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

the complementary-opposite elements place strong emphasis on the ethical dimen-
sion of being intertwined with all that is through one’s thoughts, feelings, and acts.
In contrast, Shimizu’s biggest concern with the Kyoto School version of relationality
is its apparent lack of ethics that seems to stem from the focus on nothingness as
the generator of the eternal present. Here the ethical impulse stays at zero, since
“the subjects or relationship ... do not exist before the spontaneous relationship
takes place” (Nishida 1947 cited in Shimizu this forum). Another theoretical vari-
ation over time also becomes evident through the clear differences in relational
theorizing between the first and second generations of the Kyoto School. Thematic
variation is also pronounced. For example, only two directly contemplate difference
beyond the anthropocentric realm (Reddekop and Behera, this forum) while the
others focus more on the human element in their writings.
These divergences can be explained in two ways. First, these renditions of rela-
tionality come from distinct trajectories, geocultural experiences, and specific ac-
cumulations of interactions, and therefore show variation in foci and emphases.14
Second, we may also be witnessing the impact of embracing interconnection to dif-
fering degrees (or in different moments), which necessarily bears distinct fruits with
their own ramifications.
This area of study is so young in the discipline of IR that any of these cases would
merit further research, particularly in light of the important questions they pose
for IR. As Behera suggests, how might these relationally based examples “show us
a way out of the atomistic conceptualizations that found the modern democratic
political system and towards other imaginable alternative political systems”? How
do these more static and exclusive logics continue to inform theorizing in IR, even
in those traditions that boast a particular focus on identity? How could we recover a
conscientious awareness of these multiplicities in political life? How could we hone
the ontological flexibility that would permit more profound theorizing about the
multiple sovereignties that Shani addresses (cf. Picq 2018)? Finally, how would non-
anthropocentric approaches revamp how we conceptualize and strategize about the
Anthropocene in IR (cf. Chandler 2018; Malette and Stoett 2018)?

Across Ontological Terrains: Interacting across Worlds

Several lessons also arise through the essays about what happens when interactions
take place across worlds founded on distinct existential suppositions, of which onto-
logical translatability and ontological reductionism are primary concerns. The on-
tological status of a given concept or phenomenon changes when one moves from
a separation-based lens and its concomitant either-or logic to a relational lens and
its constitutive both-and logic. Thus, even though we think we are talking about
the same cup on the table, the ramifications in terms of how we see, interpret,
and strategize about it are going to be very disparate due to the lens we employ.
Those whose perception of phenomena is founded upon a separation-based lens
do not have to consider concomitantly the phenomenon in question as a component
of relation that is attached to other components. This contemplation is optional.
When other components simultaneously appear on the ontological register, the
relation is still assumed to be uncertain and secondary due to the prior assumption
of separation, making their conceptualization still prone to ontological reduction-
ism. When people who embrace the condition of separation engage fruits borne
through robust relationality, they simply cannot grasp the whole relational picture
14
This allows for the emergence of relational concepts that are what Bilgin (2012) has called “differently different.”
32 Differing about Difference

as one would through a relational lens. As this does not disrupt their field of view
in any way, it does not compel them to question their own existential suppositions,
and this further reinforces epistemic violence, which can quickly transmute into
political violence.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

In his essay, Shani clearly laments the loss of the message of Sikhi after undergoing
a process of ontological capture through a reductionist lens: by turning Sikhi into
the religion Sikhism and Sikhs into “an ethno-religious community,” Sikhi’s “empha-
sis on a radical equality inclusive of caste, creed, ethnicity, or gender” was erased.
In another example, the separation-based nature of the English language obliges
Reddekop to expand our understanding of “human” in an effort to recuperate the
missing dimensions of a non-anthropocentric runa. Through this more robust pic-
ture of runa, he demonstrates how the ontologically reduced notion of “human”
does not really constitute an equivalent. He also shows how translation across onto-
logical terrains is risky business due to all of the subtle complex notions that go into
a concept like runa. The problem though is that since human and runa seem to be
pointing to the same thing through a separation-based lens, which cannot visualize
or grasp what is missing, it is subsequently also impossible to fathom from the perspec-
tive of a separation-based lens how these concepts are ontologically untranslatable.
This leads us to ask what else we might be missing in our understanding of the
existential expressions of the Amazonian Quichua. In one case how might our un-
derstanding of the relationship between human runas, other species runas and aucas
be truncated due to the predominant naturalization of assuming separation as the
primordial condition of existence? What is getting lost in translation? In another in-
stance, once the land and other species are ontologically understood as live beings
with their own forms of agency, what else do we need to understand to radically re-
configure how we understand political community, nation, territory, social contract,
and treaties?15 In what ways are we limited by using an anthropocentric lens to con-
ceptualize these common IR concepts? Shani helps to map some of that “unimag-
inable terrain” from the perspective of a separation-based lens when he discusses
the possibility of simultaneously expressing multiple sovereignties. While through
a reductionist lens the Sikhi principle of sovereignty would be seen as a competing
contender against the national version, he asserts that these forms of sovereignty do
not have to be mutually exclusive through a both-and logic.
Another expression of ontological reductionism can be found in the binary think-
ing that accompanies more Western understandings of universals and particulars.
Shani and Behera both lead us to contemplate how we might understand this set of
complementary opposites through a more robustly relational lens. Behera outlines
the difference:
Contrary to the Western model of universality, which is premised
upon a self-other binary in which the other’s agency and identity
must necessarily be negated, Hindu culture’s universality does not
require the suppression of difference, given that each of the par-
ticularistic identities that comprise it are viewed as legitimate and
equal parts of a unified whole (Tickner 2003, 304 cited in Behera
this forum).
This description leads us to the question of whether Acharya’s
proposed “pluralistic universalism” could qualify as a non-binary strategy. Shani
contends that it cannot, because it still seeks to fit all voices under a singular,
“large, overarching canopy with multiple foundations” (Acharya 2014, 649–50
cited in Shani, this forum). Shani instead suggests that “Sikhi moves us beyond this
15
It is important to contemplate too how these forms of agency are not necessarily commensurate with the agency
endowed to stones or hyperobjects through the object-oriented ontologies characteristic of the new materialisms
(Morton 2013; Cohen 2015).
 TAMARA A. TROWNSELL ET AL. 33

conceptualization by acknowledging the existence of plural universalities within the

cosmos” and proposes that we explore pluriversality, or “the existence of multiple
universalisms which may intersect and influence each other” but are not subsumed
to a singular Global IR (this forum).

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

All of these cases exemplify how a relational lens generates a completely different
panorama, and as such point to the potential of intentionally switching existen-
tial suppositions for doing IR differently. This endeavor though is not without its
challenges. It takes much effort to make visible that which is invisible through a
separation-based lens when translating across ontological terrains. Moreover, these
efforts often face active resistance and delegitimation. Additionally Shimizu warns
of the perils of using relationality in a world where most people continue to in-
sist on separation by calling our attention to a historical case in which a relational
approach was used to justify imperialism. We can draw several lessons from his con-
tribution about the theoretical and political risks of relational logics in light of the
disastrous effects of the Kyoto School’s collusion with Japanese imperialism. While
one possible conclusion could be that relational thinking and power relations sim-
ply do not mix, it is also possible to tease out how these unexpected results emerged
through interaction across ontological worlds.
Three possible, not necessarily exclusive, explanations become available. First,
this situation may have arisen due to the type of relationality espoused within the
Kyoto School given that distinct geo-cultural trajectories foment distinct versions of
relationality. Since this particular version does not have an explicit ethical dimen-
sion, supporting the political elites was not necessarily articulated in terms of its
ethical consequences. Second, while the philosophers may have been speaking the
“beautiful language” of relationality (especially in the first generation), they were
engaging with authorities of the political realm, who grasped their ideas through
separation-based lenses. The resulting interpretations were prone to the effects of
ontological reductionism and to the application of a teleological measuring stick,
which then made it possible to use relationality (harmony, balance, etc.) as a way
to reaffirm the superior lifestyle of the Japanese and rhetorically justify dominating
Others due to their difference from this position. Third, perhaps the reduction-
ism did not take place during the politicians’ filtering of the philosophical con-
cepts. Maybe the Kyoto School philosophers themselves were already providing on-
tologically reduced conceptualizations by not employing a robustly relational lens.
Shimizu’s acknowledgment in the change in philosophical style between the first
and second generations of the Kyoto School may attest to this.
This case allows us to contemplate the impact of embracing differing degrees of
relational commitments, generated by embracing interconnection at some point
posterior to a prior commitment to separation. When the relation is embraced af-
ter having presupposed separation as the basic existential condition, the logic that
corresponds to deep relationality unravels, which means that we begin to lose the
most important lessons of robustly relational understandings of the world. The de-
gree of unraveling depends on the relative proportion between, and the particular
“timings” of, the two assumptions in relation to one another. Because relational
thinking succumbs more easily to separation-based approaches and not the other
way around—a very important point to keep in mind when interacting across on-
tological terrains—this movement can be considered the “slippery slope” between
robust relationality and separation.
Those embracing a robustly relational ontology can enter this slippery slope in a
variety of ways. First, the sheer weight of interacting with those who use reduction-
ist lenses eventually leads to a feedback loop whereby relational fruits start to be
understood in the ontologically reduced sense even by those who introduced the
more relational concept. Second, when others use hierarchical binary constructions
to judge the fruits of interconnection through the incommensurate lens of separa-
tion, it is very easy to get drawn into reacting to this thinking with the same logic,
34 Differing about Difference

thereby commencing the slide. This slippery slope makes it possible for relationality
itself to move from a focus on the both-and proportionalization of the elements to
a hierarchical scheme, where one approach is deemed better or higher even if it is
being called a relational philosophy. Shimizu’s essay importantly cautions that the

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

relational turn in IR itself needs to ensure that it does not slip ontologically and
turn teleological, because that is the point at which the different Other is no longer
appreciated. To avoid this situation, the next section reviews the kinds of knowledge
and skills that we would need to foster.

Further Exploring Relationality

This forum has introduced on three planes, a conceptual (Querejazu and Red-
dekop), an empirical-historical (Shani and Shimizu) and pedagogical (Arian and
Behera), a toolbox for relational thinking, research and teaching in the field of IR.
At the same time, it has provided a glimpse into the presence and embeddedness of
the both-and logic across vastly different lived histories of societies across the world.
Our explorations and reconceptualizations of difference and similarity through a
relational lens also resulted in the identification of many, much broader impli-
cations and some serious risks that require further examination while building a
relational theory agenda within IR. To use relationality as an alternative ontological
commitment and therefore distinct tool for conceiving, perceiving, and engaging
with difference, similarity and existence, various areas of future work present them-
selves. First and foremost, to become clearer about how existential suppositions im-
pact understanding, we must begin to recognize more generally in IR that ontology
does not just start by identifying and disputing over what units or categories exist.
This is preceded by prior assumptions about existence (Jackson 2011, 28).
Next, we need to become more aware of how each ontological commitment af-
fords distinct and often incommensurate fruits by identifying and building theo-
retical constructs and models. Toward this end, focusing on more robust versions
of relationality is recommended for they provide the starkest contrasts to concep-
tualizations and understandings that are the outcomes of a separation-based lens.
This exercise of contrast highlights how not everyone subscribes to the same prior
assumptions and as such draws our attention to how they world distinctly. By be-
coming aware of these various forms of worlding and by understanding better what
happens logistically in interactions across these worlds, we can develop tools for
ontological translation with which we may engage Others more effectively.
Achieving greater clarity on the subtle differences among relational traditions
is also central to this project. Through the juxtaposition of distinct relational ap-
proaches from around the world, we can better appreciate overlaps, parallels and
disjunctures, much like Ling’s (2014) effort and that of Nordin et al. (2019). These
exercises could give insight into how variation in the degree of relational commit-
ment affects what is conceptually and theoretically afforded. As we see through
Shimizu’s sensitivity, these research endeavors should also keep a focus on who
might or already is being marginalized from that particular relational perspective.
Finally, once we become aware of how we co-create through the existential sup-
positions that we embrace, we will understand the importance of our job as “cul-
tivators,” not just producers of knowledge, as Shilliam (2015) suggests. While this
certainly applies to how and what we research, it also importantly relates to our po-
sition as teachers. Having more tips for implementing the “ethics of understanding”
introduced by Arian would be important for encountering one another in all of our
differences in a productive sense of learning to be in/among people with differ-
ent standpoints. We can also learn to use the classroom, as Behera suggests, as an
active space to re-member and legitimize that which has been unraveled through
the (colonial) encounter with separation. Both authors exhort us to think about
how we might use relationality to foment alternative capacities among students for
 TAMARA A. TROWNSELL ET AL. 35

engaging multiple standpoints and underline the importance of nurturing more

relational pedagogical strategies.
In a world where the differences among people continue to fuel civil strife, war,
racism, xenophobia, inequality, and other forms of violence and marginalization,

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

developing subtler tools capable of engaging greater complexity and fomenting on-
tological flexibility is absolutely critical. Becoming more flexible means adding to
our “methodological” toolbox for understanding and engaging the “Other,” not di-
minishing it. Besides improving our perceptive capacity of other forms of worlding,
honed ontological translation skills can also reconfigure how we conceive of what
diversity means and what may be at stake in these different conceptualizations.

Acknowledgments
We are extremely grateful to Laura Neack, Karen Mingst, and Eric Selbin for en-
couraging us to put together a forum such as this one and for their openness to its
non-conventional style. To our steadfast peer reviewers, thank you for your generos-
ity and support in seeing this to fruition through several rounds of revisions. Tamara
Trownsell’s assistant, María Fe Vallejo, has been an invaluable source of support in
revising and standardizing the References section. Finally, we are deeply apprecia-
tive of the opportunity afforded to us by the Universidad San Francisco de Quito
(USFQ) to convene on its magical campus in Galapagos, Ecuador, where this forum
was originally conceived.

References
ACHARYA, AMITAV. 2011. “Dialogue and Discovery: In Search of International Relations Theories Beyond
the West.” Millennium 39: 619–37.
———. 2014. “Global International Relations (IR) and Regional Worlds: A New Agenda for International
Studies.” International Studies Quarterly 58: 647–59.
ACHARYA, AMITAV, AND BARRY BUZAN, eds. 2007. “Why Is There No Non-Western International Relations
Theory? Reflections on and from Asia.” International Relations of Asia-Pacific 7: 287–312.
———, eds. 2010. Non-Western International Relations Theory: Perspectives on and beyond Asia. New York:
Routledge.
AGATHANGELOU, ANNA M., AND L.H.M. LING. 2004. “The House of IR: From Family Power Politics to the
Poisies of Worldism.” International Studies Review 6: 21–49.
AHMED, SARAH. 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
ANIDJAR, GIL. 2014. Blood: A Critique of Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press.
ARNOLD, DENISE Y. 2018. Los eventos del crepúsculo. Relatos históricos y hagopgráficos de un ayllu andino en el
tiempo de los españoles. La Paz: Plural Editores.
ASAD, TALAL. 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University
Press.
BARAD, KAREN. 2014. “Diffracting Diffraction: Cutting Together-Apart.” Parallax 28: 168–87.
BEHERA, NAVNITA C. 2007. “Re-Imagining IR in India.” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 7: 341–68.
BEHR, HARTMUT. 2014. Politics of Difference: Epistemologies of Peace. New York: Routledge.
BELAUNDE, LUISA ELIVRA. 2000. “The Convivial Self and the Fear of Anger Amongst the Airo-Pai of Amazo-
nian Peru.” In The Anthropology of Love and Anger: The Aesthetics of Conviviality in Native Amazonia, edited
by Joanne Overing and Alan Passes, 209–20. New York: Routledge.
BENNETT, JANE. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press.
BERLANT, LAUREN, ed. 2004. Compassion: The Culture and Politics of an Emotion. London: Routledge.
BILGIN, PINAR. 2008. “Thinking Past “Western” IR?” Third World Quarterly 29: 5–23.
———. 2012. “Security in the Arab World and Turkey: Differently Different.’” In Thinking International
Relations Differently, edited by Arlene B. Tickner and David L. Blaney, 27–47. London: Routledge.
BLASER, MARIO. 2010. Storytelling Globalization from the Chaco and Beyond. Durham: Duke University Press.
———. 2013. “Notes towards a Political Ontology of ‘Environmental’ Conflicts.” In Contested Ecologies:
Dialogues in the South on Nature and Knowledge, edited by Lesley Green, 13–27. Cape Town: Human
Sciences Research Council Press.
———. 2018. “Doing and Undoing Caribou/Atiku: Diffractive and Divergent Multiplicities and Their
Cosmopolitical Orientations.” Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society 1: 47–64.
36 Differing about Difference

BOUYSSE-CASSAGNE, THÉRÈSE. 2004. “El Sol De Adentro: Wakas y Santos En Las Minas De Charcas y En El
Lago Titicaca (Siglos XV a XVII).” Boletín de Arqueología PUCP 8: 59–97.
BROOM, BENJAMIN J. 2009. “Building Relational Empathy through an Interactive Design Process.” In Com-
munication and Conflict Transformation through Local, Regional and Global Engagement, edited by Peter M.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

Kellet and Thomas G. Matyok, 184–200. New York: Lexington Books.
BUTLER, JUDITH. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
CHAKRABARTY, DIPESH. 2007. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
CHAN, STEPHEN. 1994. “Beyond the North-West: Africa and the East.” In Contemporary International Relations:
A Guide to Theory, edited by A.J.R. Groom and Margot Light, 257–4. New York: Pinter Publishers.
CHANDLER, DAVID. 2018. Ontopolitics in the Anthropocene. London: Routledge.
CHATTERJEE, PARTHA. 1994. The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. New Delhi: Ox-
ford University Press.
CHITTICK, WILLIAM C. 2017. “Rumi, Jalāl al-Dı̄n Vii. Philosophy.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica (online edition).
Accessed January 9, 2019. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/rumi-philosophy.
COHEN, JEFFREY. 2015. Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.
COOLE, DIANA, AND SAMANTHA FROST, eds. 2010. New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency and Politics. Durham:
Duke University Press.
COPLAN, AMY, AND PETER GOLDIE, eds. 2011. Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
CORNTASSEL, JEFF, AND MARC WOONS. 2017. “Indigenous Perspectives.” In International Relations The-
ory, edited by Stephen McGlinchey, Rosie Walters and Christian Scheinpflug, 131–7. Bristol:
E-International Relations.
COULTHARD, GLEN. 2014. Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
CRAWFORD, NETA C. 2000. “The Passion of World Politics: Propositions on Emotions and Emotional Rela-
tionships.” International Security 24: 116–56.
DE LA CADENA, MARISOL. 2015. Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds. Durham: Duke
University Press.
DECETY, JEAN, AND WILLIAM ICKES, eds. 2009. Social Neuroscience of Empathy. Cambridge: MIT Press.
DECETY, JEAN, AND PHILIP A. JACKSON. 2004. “The Functional Architecture of Human Empathy.” Behavioral
and Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews 3: 71–100.
DESCOLA, PHILIPPE. 1996. In the Society of Nature: A Native Ecology in Amazonia. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
———. 2011. “Más Allá De La Naturaleza y Cultura.” In Cultura y naturaleza. Aproximaciones a propósito
del bicentenario de la Independencia de Colombia, edited by Leonardo Montenegro, 75–98. Bogotá: Jardín
Botánico de Bogotá José Celestino Mutis.
DOUZINAS, COSTAS. 2000. The End of Human Rights. Oxford: Hart Publishing.
EILEEN, JOHN. 2017. “Empathy in Literature.” In The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Empathy, edited
by Heidi L. Maibom, 306–16. New York: Routledge.
EISENBERG, NANCY, AND RICHARD A. FABES. 1998. “Prosocial Development.” In Handbook of Child Psychology,
(Vol. 3: Social, Emotional and Personality Development), edited by William Damon and Nancy Eisen-
berg, 701–78. New York: Wiley.
EISENBERG, NANCY, AND JANET STRAYER, eds. 1987. Empathy and its Development. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
EMBREE, AINSLIE, AND STEPHEN HAY, eds. 1988. Sources of Indian Tradition, Vol.1 (From the Beginning to 1800).
New York: Columbia University Press.
GEERTZ, CLIFFORD. 1983. ““From the Native’s Point of View”: On the Nature of Anthropological Under-
standing.” In Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology, 56–57. New York: Basic Books.
GILSON, ETIENNE. 1991 [1936]. The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy. Translated by A.H.C. Downes. Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press.
GREY, SAM, AND RAUNA KUOKKANEN. 2019. “Indigenous Governance of Cultural Heritage: Search-
ing for Alternatives to Co-management.” International Journal of Heritage Studies. DOI: 10.1080/
13527258.2019.1703202.
HARAWAY, DONNA. 2016. Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University
Press.
HARRISON, MARY-CATHERINE. 2008. “The Paradox of Fiction and the Ethics of Empathy: Reconceiving
Dicken’s Realism.” Narrative 16: 256–78.
HEAD, NAOMI. 2012. “Transforming Conflict: Trust, Empathy and Dialogue.” International Journal of Peace
Studies 17: 33–55.
 TAMARA A. TROWNSELL ET AL. 37

———. 2016. “A Politics of Empathy: Encounters with Empathy in Israel and Palestine.” Review of Inter-
national Studies 42: 95–113.
HEWITT, VERNON. 1995. Reclaiming the Past? London: Portland Books.
HOBBES, THOMAS. 1985 [1651]. Leviathan. Edited with an introduction by C.B. Macpherson. London:

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

Penguin.
HODDER, IAN. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Malden: Wiley-
Blackwell.
HOLLAN, DOUGLAS W. 2012. “Emerging Issues in the Cross-Cultural Study of Empathy.” Emotion Review 4:
70–78.
HOLLAN, DOUGLAS W., AND JASON C. THROOP. 2008. “Whatever Happened to Empathy? Introduction.” Ethos
36: 385–401.
———. 2011. The Anthropology of Empathy: Experiencing the Lives of Others in Pacific Societies. New York:
Berghahn Books.
HOLLIS, MARTIN, AND STEVE SMITH. 1991. Explaining and Understanding International Relations. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
HUTCHINGS, KIMBERLY. 2011. “Dialogue between Whom? The Role of the West/Non-West Distinction in
Promoting Global Dialogue in IR.” Millennium 39: 639–47.
HUTCHINSON, EMMA, AND ROLAND BLEIKER. 2014. “Theorizing Emotions in World Politics.” International The-
ory 6: 491–514.
INAYATULLAH, NAEEM, AND DAVID L. BLANEY. 2004. International Relations and the Problem of Difference. New
York: Routledge.
INGOLD, TIM. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling, and Skill. New York:
Routledge.
JACKSON, PATRICK T. 2011. The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations: Philosophy of Science and its Impli-
cations for the Study of World Politics. New York: Routledge.
KAKAR, SUDHIR. 1995. The Colours of Violence. New Delhi: Viking.
KALTOFEN, CAROLIN. 2018. “With a Posthuman Touch: International Relations in Dialogue with the
Posthuman—A Human Account.” In Posthuman Dialogues in International Relations, edited by Erika
Cudworth, Stephen Hobden and Emilian Kavalski, 32–51. New York: Routledge.
KANJI, AZEEZAH. 2017. “Colonial Animality: Constituting Canadian Settler Colonialism through the
Human–Animal Relationship.” In Critical Epistemologies of Global Politics, edited by Marc Woons and
Sebastian Weier, 63–78. Bristol: E-International Relations.
KATOUZIAN, HOMA. 2006. The Poet of Love, Life and Compassion. Oxford: Oneworld Publications.
KAVIRAJ, SUDIPTA. 1995. Crisis of the Nation-State in India. Oxford: Blackwell.
———. 2010. The Imaginary Institution of India: Politics and Ideas. New York: Columbia University Press.
KEEN, SUZANNE. 2007. Empathy and the Novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
KING, HAYDEN. 2017. “The Erasure of Indigenous Thought in Foreign Policy.” Opencanada.org, July 31.
https://www.opencanada.org/features/erasure-indigenous-thought-foreign-policy/.
KOSAKA, MASAAKI, KEIJI NISHITANI, IWAO KOYAMA, AND SHIGENTAKA SUZUKI. 1943. Sekaishiteki Tachiba to Nihon
[Japan and the World Historical Standpoint]. Tokyo: Chuo Koron.
KRISHNA, DAYA. 2012. Civilizations: Nostalgia and Utopia. New Delhi: Sage.
KUOKKANEN, RAUNA. 2019. “At the Intersection of Arctic Indigenous Governance and Extractive Industries:
Survey of Three Case Studies.” The Extractive Industries and Society 6: 15–21.
KURKI, MILJA. 2019. “Relating to Relational Worlds: Critical Theory, Relational Thought and Relational
Cosmology.” In Routledge Handbook of Critical International Relations, edited by Jenny Edkins, 65–76.
London: Routledge.
LADUKE, WINONA. 1999. All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life. Cambridge: South End Press.
LAJO, JAVIER. 2003. Qhapaq Ñan: La ruta Inca de la sabiduría. Quito: Abya-Yala.
LAL, VINAY. 2000. Dissenting Knowledges, Open Futures: The Multiple Selves and Strange Destinations of Ashis
Nandy. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
LATOUR, BRUNO. 2002. War of the Worlds: What about Peace? Translated by Charlotte Bigg. Chicago: Prickly
Paradigm Press.
———. 2007. Nunca fuimos modernos. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI Editores.
LEWIS, FRANKLIN. 2012. “Golestān-e Sa‘di.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica (online edition). Accessed December
3, 2018. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/golestan–sadi.
LING, L. H. M. 2014. The Dao of World Politics. New York: Routledge.
LOSENSKY, PAUL. 2012. “Sa‘di.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica (online edition). Accessed December 3, 2018.
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/sadi-sirazi.
MAIBOM, HEIDI L., ed. 2014. Morality and Empathy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———, ed. 2017. The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Empathy. New York: Routledge.
38 Differing about Difference

MALETTE, SEBASTIEN, AND PETER STOETT. 2018. “Posthumanist International Relations and Ecopolitics.” In
Posthuman Dialogues in International Relations, edited by Erika Cudworth, Stephen Hobden and Emilian
Kavalski, 109–27. New York: Routledge.
MANDAIR, ARVIND-PAL S. 2009. Religion and the Specter of the West: Sikhism, India, Postcoloniality, and the Politics

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

of Translation. New York: Columbia University Press.
MARLIER, GRANT, AND NETA C. CRAWFORD. 2013. “Incomplete and Imperfect Institutionalisation of Empathy
and Altruism in the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ Doctrine.” Global Responsibility to Protect 5: 397–422.
MATHUR, VANI A., TOKIKO HARADA, TRIXIE LIPKE, AND JOAN Y. CHIA. 2010. “Neural Basis of Extraordinary
Empathy and Altruistic Motivation. Neuroimage 51: 1468–75.
MATRAVERS, DEREK, AND ANIK WALDOW, eds. 2018. Philosophical Perspectives on Empathy: Theoretical Approaches
and Empirical Challenges. New York: Routledge.
MCLEOD, WILLIAM H. 1969. Guru Nanak and the Sikh Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
MERCER, JONATHAN. 2014. “Feeling Like a State: Social Emotion and Identity.” International Theory 6:
515–35.
MGONJA, BONIFACE, AND IDDI MAKOMBE. 2009. “Debating International Relations and Its Relevance to the
Third World.” African Journal of Political Science and International Relations 3: 27–37.
MINAMI, NAOKI. 2018. Choetsu to Jitsuzon: ‘Mujo’ wo meguru Bukkyoshi [Transcendence and Existence: Buddhist
History of Muko]. Tokyo: Shinchosha.
MORRELL, MICHAEL. 2010. Empathy and Democracy: Feeling, Thinking and Deliberation. Pennsylvania: Pennsyl-
vania University Press.
MORTON, TIMOTHY. 2013. Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. Minneapolis: Univer-
sity of Minnesota Press.
MOSES, RAFAEL. 1985. “Empathy and Dis-empathy in Political Conflict.” Political Psychology 6: 135–9.
NAYAK, MEGHANA, AND ERIC SELBIN. 2010. Decentering International Relations. London: Zed Press.
NCGOYA, MVUSULELO. 2015. “Ubuntu: Toward Emancipatory Cosmopolitanism?” International Political Soci-
ology 9: 248–62.
NISHIDA, KITARO. 1947. “Zen No Kenkyu [An Inquiry Into the Good].” In Nishida Kitaro Zenshu, 1 [Collected
Works of Nishida Kitaro, 1], 1–200. Tokyo: Iwanamishoten.
NORDIN, ASTRID, GRAHAM SMITH, RAOUL BUNSKOEK, CHIUNG-CHIU HUANG, YIH-JYE HWANG, PATRICK THADDEUS
JACKSON, AND EMILIAN KAVALSKI et al. 2019. “Towards Global Relational Theorizing.” Cambridge Review of
International Affairs 32 (5): 570–81.
OBEROI, HARJOT S. 1994. The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity and Diversity in the Sikh
Tradition. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
PEDWELL, CAROLYN. 2012. “Affective (self) Transformations: Empathy, Neoliberalism and International
Development.” Feminist Theory 12: 163–79.
———. 2014. Affective Relations: The Transnational Politics of Empathy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
PERSSON, INGMAR, AND JULIAN SAVULESCU. 2018. “The Moral Importance of Reflective Empathy.” Neuroethics
11: 183–93.
PICCO, GIANDOMENICO, AND GABRIELLE RIFKIND. 2014. The Fog of Peace: The Human Face of Conflict Resolution.
London: I.B. Tauris.
PICQ, MANUELA L. 2018. Vernacular Sovereignties: Indigenous Women Challenging World Politics. Tucson: The
University of Arizona Press.
PUNJABI, RIYAZ. 1990. “Kashmiriyat: The Mystique of an Ethnicity.” India International Centre Quarterly 17:
100–16.
QIN, YAQING. 2007. “Why Is There No Chinese International Theory.” International Relations of the Asia-
Pacific 7(3): 313–40.
———. 2018. A Relational Theory of World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
QUIJANO, ANÍBAL. 2010. “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality.” In Globalization and the Decolonial Option,
edited by Walter Mignolo and Arturo Escobar, 22–33. London: Routledge.
RUTAZIBWA, OLIVIA U., AND ROBBIE SHILLIAM, eds. 2018. Routledge Handbook of Postcolonial Politics. London:
Routledge.
SA‘DI OF SHIRAZ. 1880 [2000]. The Gulistan (The Rose Garden). Translated by Edward B. Eastwick. London:
Routledge.
SASLEY, BRENT E. 2011. “Theorizing States’ Emotions.” International Studies Review 13: 452–76.
SCHMITT, CARL. 1985. Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Translated by George
Schwab. Massachusetts: MIT Press.
SHAHI, DEEPSHIKHA. 2018. Advaita as Global International Relations Theory. London: Routledge.
SHANI, GIORGIO. 2008a. Sikh Nationalism and Identity in a Global Age. London: Routledge.
———. 2008b. “Toward a Post Western IR: The Umma, Khalsa Panth, and Critical International Rela-
tions Theory.” International Studies Review 10:722–34.
 TAMARA A. TROWNSELL ET AL. 39

SHIH, CHIH-YU, AND CHIUNG-CHIU HUANG. 2018. “Balance of Relationship as Chinese School of IR: Be-
ing Simultaneously Confucian, Post-Western, and Post-Hegemonic.” In Constructing a Chinese School of
International Relations: Ongoing Debates and Sociological Realities, edited by Yongjin Zhang and Teng-Chi
Chang, 177–91. London: Routledge.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

SHILLIAM, ROBBIE, ed. 2012. International Relations and Non-Western Thought: Imperialism, Colonialism and
Investigations of Global Modernity. London: Routledge.
———. 2015. The Black Pacific: Anti-colonial Struggles and Oceanic Connections. London: Bloomsbury.
SHIMIZU, KOSUKE. 2015. “Materialising the ‘Non-Western’: Two Stories of Japanese Philosophers on Cul-
ture and Politics in the Inter-War Period.” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 28: 3–20.
SHIMIZU, KOSUKE, MASAKO OTAKI, TAKUMI HONDA, AND TOMOMI IZAWA, eds. 2013. In Search of Non-Western Inter-
national Relations Theory: The Kyoto School Revisited. Kyoto: Ryukoku University.
SIMPSON, LEANNE. 2012. Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence, and a New
Emergence. Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing.
SINGER, TANIA, AND CLAUS LAMM. 2009. “The Social Neuroscience of Empathy.” The Year in Cognitive Neuro-
science: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1156: 81–96.
SINGH, K. SURESH. 1994. People of India. Calcutta: Anthropological Survey of India.
SLOTE, MICHAEL. 2007. The Ethics of Care and Empathy. London: Routledge.
SPINRAD, TRACY L., AND NANCY EISENBERG. 2014. “Empathy and Morality: A Developmental Psychology
Perspective.” In Empathy and Morality, edited by Heidi L. Maibom, 59–70. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
STEELE, BRENT J. 2008. Ontological Security in International Relations: Self-Identity and the IR State. London:
Routledge.
STRATHERN, MARILYN. 2004. Partial Connections. New York: Altamira Press.
SUGAWARA, JUN. 2018. Kyoto Gakuha [The Kyoto School]. Tokyo: Kodansha.
SWANSON, TOD. 2009. “Singing to Estranged Lovers: Runa Relations to Plants in the Ecuadorian Amazon.”
Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture 3: 36–65.
SWANSON, TOD, AND JARRAD REDDEKOP. 2017. “Looking Like the Land: Beauty and Aesthetics in Ama-
zonian Quichua Philosophy and Practice.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 85: 682–
708.
SYLVESTER, CHRISTINE. 1995. “African and Western Feminisms: World-Traveling the Tendencies and Possi-
bilities.” Signs 20: 941–69.
TAUSSIG, MICHAEL. 1987. Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
THROOP, JASON C. 2010. “Latitudes of Loss: On the Vicissitudes of Empathy.” American Ethnologist 37: 771–
82.
TICKNER, ARLENE. 2003. “Seeing IR Differently: Notes from the Third World.” Millennium: Journal of Inter-
national Studies 32: 295–324.
———. 2013. “By Way of Conclusion: Forget IR.” In Claiming the International, edited by Arlene B. Tickner
and David Blaney, 214–32. London: Routledge.
TICKNER, ARLENE B., AND DAVID L. BLANEY. 2012. “Introduction: Thinking Difference.’” In Thinking Interna-
tional Relations Differently, edited by Arlene B. Tickner and David L. Blaney, 1–24. London: Routledge.
TICKNER, ARLENE B., AND DAVID L. BLANEY, eds. 2013. Claiming the International. London: Routledge.
TICKNER, ARLENE B., AND OLE WÆVER, eds. 2009. International Relations Scholarship around the World. London:
Routledge.
TROWNSELL, TAMARA. 2013. “Robust Relationality: Lessons from the Ontology of Complete Interconnect-
edness for the Field of International Relations.” Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Washington D.C,
American University.
VERRAN, HELEN. 2002. “A Postcolonial Moment in Science Studies: Alternative Firing Regimes of Environ-
mental Scientists and Aboriginal Landowners.” Social Studies of Science 32: 729–62.
VIVEIROS DE CASTRO, EDUARDO. 1998. “Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism.” Journal of the
Royal Anthropological Institute 4: 469–88.
———. 2004. “Exchanging Perspectives: The Transformation of Objects into Subjects in Amerindian
Ontologies.” Common Knowledge 10: 463–84.
WALKER, ROB. 2006. “The Double Outside of the Modern International.” Ephemera. Global Conflicts 6: 56–
69.
WEBER, CYNTHIA. 1999. Faking It: U.S. Hegemony in a “Post-Phallic” Era. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press.
———. 2014. “From Queer to Queer IR.” International Studies Review 16: 596–601.
WICKENS, MICHAEL G. 1990. “Bustān.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica (online edition). Accessed December 3,
2018. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/bustan-sadi.
 40 Differing about Difference

WILCOX, LAUREN. 2014. “Queer Theory and the “Proper Objects” of International Relations.” International
Studies Review 16: 612–5.
YAMPARA HUARACHI, SIMÓN. 2001. “El Viaje Del Jaqi a La Qamaña: El Hombre En El Vivir Bien.” In Suma
Qamaña: la comprensión indígena de la vida buena, 1st ed. edited by Javier Medina, 73–82. La Paz: GTZ.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isp/ekaa008/5897224 by ISA Member Access user on 26 August 2020

YAN, XUETONG. 2019. Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
ZHAO, TINGYANG. 2019. Redefining a Philosophy for World Governance. Translated by Liqing Tao. Singapore:
Springer.

View publication stats