Foregrounding the Complexities of a Dialogic Approach to Global International Relations

Year 2020, Volume: 9 Issue: 2, 163 - 176, 30.06.2020

Deepshikha Shahi

https://doi.org/10.20991/allazimuth.725230

Cited By: 2

Abstract

The ever more global character of today’s International Relations (IR) is no longer satisfied with one-sided stories about how things have gone with either the West or the non-West. Rather, the ongoing discussions on Global IR persuade both the West and the non-West to squarely unfold their own narratives. As the theories and practices of contemporary international relations have remarkably acquired a ‘Global’ impetus, a lot of premium is being put on a ‘dialogic approach’ – that is, an approach to Global IR that insists upon a deeper two-way communicative-action between the West and the non-West. Although the dialogic approach to Global IR seeks to resolve a wide range of cognitive differences between the West and the non-West, it more often than not remains thwarted by a few unsettled contestations: (i) History vs. Philosophy, (ii) Chronology vs. Covariance, (iii) Language vs. Concept, (iv) Culture vs. Economy, and (v) Single vs. Plural. This paper sets out to shed light on these unsettled contestations in an endeavour to intellectually improve the prospects of a dialogic approach to Global IR.

Keywords

Global IR, Eurocentrism, Dialogue, Western IR, non-Western IR

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