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Both relationality and separateness are aspects of our everyday lives. How we engage these phenomena hinges on the particular existential assumptions that we take for granted. Within the discipline of International Relations (IR), both relationality and separateness have informed how global politics is studied and practiced. How states and their relations are conceived has, for instance, varied by the distinct degrees of privilege given to separation and interconnection: from notions of completely autonomous units like billiard balls to always emergent phenomena co-constituted through relations. The plurality of trajectories that inform this Special Issue illustrate how much broader the spectrum of relational engagement can be when we are cognisant of the impact of these existential assumptions on forms of life, knowing, and knowledge production in International Relations. By highlighting a spectrum of relational engagement, we raise important questions about the way the various knowledge frames in IR are acknowledged, legitimised, limited, and reproduced.

This article will attempt to ‘provincialise’ (Chakrabarty, 2000) the ‘secular cosmology’ of International Relations (IR) through an examination of the relational cosmology of dharma. We argue that IR is grounded in ‘secularised’ Judaeo-Christian assumptions concerning time, relations between self and other, order, and the sovereign state that set the epistemic limits of the discipline. These assumptions will be ‘provincialised’ through an engagement with dharma based on a reading of The Mahābharāta, one of the oldest recorded texts in the world. We argue that the concept of dharma offers a mode of understanding the multidimensionality of human existence without negating any of its varied, contradictory expressions. By deconstructing notions of self and other, dharma illustrates how all beings are related to one another in a moral, social, and cosmic order premised on human agency, which flows from ‘inside-out’ rather than ‘outside-in’ and that is governed by a heterogenous understanding of time. This order places limits on the state's exercise of power in a given territory by making the state responsible for creating social conditions that would enable all beings to realise their potential, thus qualifying the principle of state sovereignty that remains the foundation of the ‘secular cosmology of IR’.

Liberal democracies often include rights of participation, guarantees of protection, and policies that privilege model citizens within a bounded territory. Notwithstanding claims of universal equality for “humanity,” they achieve these goals by epistemically elevating certain traits of identity above “others,” sustaining colonial biases that continue to favor whoever is regarded more “human.” The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these fault lines, unveiling once more the often-hidden prevalence of inequalities that are based on race, gender, class, ethnicity, and other axes of power and their overlaps. Decolonial theories and practices analyze these othering tendencies and inequalities while also highlighting how sites of suffering sometimes become locations of solidarity and agency, which uncover often-erased alternatives and lessons.

This forum explores how societal contexts affect how instructors teach introductory undergraduate courses in international relations (IR), global politics, and international studies. Contributors teach at universities in China, Ecuador, India, Morocco, South Africa, the United Kingdom–Scotland, and the United States. Because instructors vary the structure, content, and pedagogical approaches in their courses (and perhaps most in their introductory courses) to account for their students’ backgrounds, conditions, and paradigms, the discipline can learn about contemporary global patterns by putting regionally diverse pedagogical approaches in conversation with each other. A concluding essay explores emergent patterns of a global IR and sets up points for further conversation. The authors hope sharing their pedagogical strategies will inspire instructors to devote the creativity necessary to improve how they teach introductory IR courses in their own societal contexts.

La diferencia, una preocupación central para el estudio de las relaciones internacionales (RI), no ha visto trastocados adecuadamente sus fundamentos ontológicos. Este foro explora cómo los supuestos existenciales arraigados en la lógica relacional proporcionan un conjunto de herramientas significativamente distinto que nos impulsa a reorientar la forma en que percibimos, interpretamos y abordamos tanto la similitud como la diferencia Partiendo de compromisos cosmológicos originados en los Andes, Asia Meridional, Asia Oriental y Oriente Medio, las seis contribuciones de los Andes, Asia Meridional, Asia Oriental y Oriente Medio, las seis contribuciones exploran cómo nuestros teóricos, investigadores y docentes. Esta conversación inicial señala el contenido clave y los focos del futuro trabajo relacional en las RRII. Difference, a central concern to the study of international relations (IR), has not had its ontological foundations adequately disrupted. This forum explores how existential assumptions rooted in relational logics 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 conversation pinpoints key content and foci of future relational work in IR.

This chapter argues that the sovereign state needs to be viewed as a historically evolving and living entity that is constantly-in-making, whose internal and external structures, constituent social forces, political choices and cultural renderings continually shape its political character. It discusses the key components of the existing literature, especially from a theoretical and methodological standpoint. The chapter examines the meaning and import of the concepts of state and sovereignty from three vantage points: their theoretical notions; the underlying methodological assumptions; and the empirical realities. Shifting the gaze to another part of the world throws up a deeply cultural premise of sovereignty by the indigenous peoples of North America, Canada and Australia. Robert Jackson explains African sovereignty as part of a framework that juxtaposes “real states and positive sovereignty” in the global North with “quasi-state and negative sovereignty” in the global South.

The Kashmir conflict has acquired a multifaceted character. On the one hand, it involves national and territorial contestations between India and Pakistan and on the other, various political demands by religious, linguistic, regional and ethnic groups in both parts of the divided Kashmir that range from seeking affirmative discrimination, a separate political status within the state, to outright secession. Peace has eluded Kashmir so far because a state-centric peace process is at odds with its plural social realities and multiple fault lines. The article identifies the key challenges for the peace process that includes extending its outreach to all the local stakeholders in a multi-layered dialogue with a mandate to evolve political and institutional processes and mechanisms for addressing different—if not divergent—aspirations of its diverse communities, without undermining the plural character of its society. The prognosis in the foreseeable future entails a roller-coaster ride with no clear endgame in sight.

Chapter 4 looks into ways in which agency is exercised within civil society with particular focus on manifestations of compliance and resistance. The authors claim that despite the power imbalances, the agency still manages to find its way in both active and post-conflict zones. They identify different ways in which this agency is manifested in the three settings that they discuss: Jammu and Kashmir, Cyprus and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In Jammu and Kashmir they give examples of youth protesting against the police, and parents’ associations which use constitutional rights to introduce the change. In Cyprus, they discuss non-compliance to the EU trade regulations which were meant to foster interdependence on a divided island. In case of Bosnia, they examine acts of everyday resistance to ethnic segregation which was imposed by the peace accord. The authors stress the important role that power politics play in such settings and conclude that it is necessary to analyze how power is shaped and perceived through interactions of various actors in the setting.

The Beijing Plus Five forum as well as the Women Building Peace campaign spear- headed by International Alert have brought the issue of women in armed conflict to the centre stage. This discussion addresses the changing character of conflict and the nature of conflict studies in international relations and the question of gender therein. It outlines some broad conceptual milestones or recognisable and shared processes of engendering research in the area of conflict analysis and seeks to under stand and analyse the key characteristics of gender-aware analyses in the context of the South Asian region.

(2002). Kashmir: A testing ground. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies: Vol. 25, The BJP and Governance in India, pp. 343-364.

(1996). Perpetuating the divide: Political abuse of history in South Asia. Contemporary South Asia: Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 191-205.

This book considers the leadership of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and the interaction with civil society in the process of South Asian regional cooperation and integration, and discusses how the emerging urgency in the provision of regional public goods provides an excellent opportunity to add to the successes in South Asian regional integration.

The security problematique in South Asia is undergoing a metamorphosis. Old paradigms are yielding way to new conceptualizations. The fundamental questions of who is being secured? — state or people — from what threats? — external powers, forces of globalization, sub-national actors or the oppressive authority of the state itself — and, through what means? yield radically different answers.

This book considers the leadership of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and the interaction with civil society in the process of South Asian regional cooperation and integration, and discusses how the emerging urgency in the provision of regional public goods provides an excellent opportunity to add to the successes in South Asian regional integration.