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This chapter develops the themes of the book along the lines discussed above: its goals, and the key concepts it advances to achieve them. It sets out the longstanding challenge of sustainable critique in light of the problem of reification. It also surveys the effects of reification across eight decades of IR scholarship, framing and summarizing the case studies undertaken in Chapters 3-5.

This chapter shows that current IR (International Relations) theorizing finds liberal order a difficult topic. It confirms the concern voiced at the beginning of the volume that the IR academy in its use of liberalism as a label for theorizing the international has at once endowed liberal internationalism with more idealism than it can rightfully claim whilst at the same time has shorn liberalism of its normative and value-based foundations. It suggests that, paradoxically, when going back to ‘liberal basics’, some versions of realism are in fact based upon a specific vision of politics, which gives rise to liberal order. Liberal orders are not, and cannot be based on an ahistorical ‘view from nowhere’, but have to face an ever-changing historical setting. As result the philosophy cannot provide a final foundation, but nor can liberals — or for that matter realists — do without it.

Why is reification so resilient, and critique so difficult to sustain? Developing a critique of knowledge with its roots in Theodor Adorno’s Negative Dialectics, this chapter shows the depth of the problem in conceptual-philosophical terms and sketches a conceptual path for meeting it.

This chapter returns to the concept of affordances introduced in chapter 1. It proceeds in the spirit of thinking through theoretical approaches’ affordances to ask how specific critical theories and constructivisms might inform each other in the absence of a broader constructivist–critical theory synthesis. It does so in two parts. The first looks at examples of specific overlaps in which the affordances of a particular constructivism serve the needs of a particular exercise in critical theory, or vice-versa. It demonstrates that, while there are approaches that do not afford overlap, there are also approaches that do afford overlap. The second part argues that a politics and an ontology are not strictly analogous; the scope for constructivist tools in critical research is in fact narrower than the scope for critical reading of constructivist research.

This chapter introduces the challenge of rethinking international relations and the field of International Relations as it embarks on its ‘second century’ of scholarship. It considers the varied criticisms of the field, in particular its inability to deal with questions of environmental degradation and planetary co-existence. In this context the chapter introduces why we should be interested in cosmology and relational cosmology in particular as we tackle these challenges. The chapter also introduces puzzles, and doubts, which may concern the reader as they start their engagement with cosmology as well as existing literatures tackling relevant puzzle-fields, such as literatures on new materialism, relationality, and new ways of thinking IR.

Chapter 2 reviews how International Relations (IR) scholarship has been treating individual agency, especially within the dominant theoretical frameworks, Realism, Liberalism, and Constructivism. Various analytical perspectives, such as the “levels-of-analysis,” foreign policy analysis, and the transnational relations approach, have reserved room for the analysis of individuals in world politics. But concerns about academic discipline formation and real-world relevance have led to a widespread neglect of individual actors. While James Rosenau’s research and the integration of social theory into IR offer fruitful ways of thinking about individual agency, they often overemphasize the structural situatedness of actors fulfilling social roles. Revisiting the structure–agency debate, the chapter takes inspiration from Margaret Archer’s sociological insights in order to propose that agency should be analyzed as a variable with an intrasubjective and an intersubjective dimension, which always requires contextual specification. Power, it is argued, should be seen as a disposition, and its exercise vis-à-vis other actors as an intentional project.

There is much more to Reinhold Niebuhr’s thought, and his impact on international relations ([IR] and IR theory) has been deeper and more profound than has been commonly acknowledged. Indeed, Niebuhr has been a seminal figure in the Realist movement, but his impact goes beyond Realism. This chapter documents his contributions in the context of the revival/recovery of classical Realism, along with a recognition of the importance of nonmaterial factors (with contemporary interpretivists and constructivists), regime type (as with neo-liberal institutionalists or democratic peace), and human nature (Rosen), among other things. There are deep strains of existentialism in Niebuhr’s work as well, which is usually associated with postmodernism/poststructuralism, as Niebuhr draws in important ways from Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche. This chapter reconsiders Niebuhr’s theoretical innovations and in the process more adequately and systematically locates his work in IR theory, considering both his influences and the influences he has had therein and thereupon.

This chapter argues for an extension of how we think relationally via relational cosmology. It places relational cosmology in a conversation with varied relational perspectives in critical social theory and argues that specific kinds of extensions and dialogues emerge from this perspective. In particular, a conversation on how to think relationality without fixing its meaning is advanced. This chapter also discusses in detail how to extend beyond discussion of ‘human’ relationalities towards comprehending the wider ‘mesh’ of relations that matter but are hard to capture for situated knowers in the social sciences and IR. This key chapter seeks to provide the basis for a translation between relational cosmology, critical social theory, critical humanism and International Relations theory.

This chapter outlines how the chapters explain the politics of regionalism in South Asia and trace the origins and evolution of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) from its inception to the present day.

This chapter extends the arguments developed in the previous chapters into a conversation with recent International Relations scholarship. First, the chapter argues against the notions of the international and the global as key conceptual tropes in the field, suggesting that there are important reasons to develop the notion of planetarity for the field. Through it we perceive aspects of political life and negotiation with relationalities which we do not via classical IR notions. However, the chapter also critically interrogates existing attempts to develop planet politics and planetarity, suggesting some ways forward. The chapter then explores the meaning of democracy and politics in a planetary politics setting, exploring an example around fisheries.

This chapter begins by outlining the conceptions of rules, institutions, and social practices employed throughout the book. It demonstrates that attention to procedural rules for rule-making and interpretation, or secondary rules, sheds light on the puzzle of how actors know how and when to engage in particular forms of social construction and therefore on why we observe patterned practices of global rule-making. Secondary rules shape the way actors present and evaluate proposals for making, changing, and interpreting rules. As such, they are a key overlooked cause of the form, process, and timing of change in the rules and institutions of the international system. They also help explain the success or failure of particular attempts to create such change, since proposals presented according to relevant secondary rules are more likely to be accepted. Finally, the chapter outlines the book’s significance and contributions, and discusses issues of method and evidence.

This chapter summarises the arguments of the book and discusses their wider implications for, in particular, the historiography of International Relations (IR), contemporary liberal IR theory and British intellectual history of the period. Liberal internationalism enjoys a position in the current theoretical landscape of IR as opaque as that which it occupies in real-world political practice. The liberal internationalist vision is at once pervasive, ignored and exploited. Diversity in unity is a central characteristic of liberal internationalist ideology from the late nineteenth century through to the inter-war years. The history of internationalist ideas provides a marked contrast to the technical and bloodless versions of liberalism that are predominant in contemporary American IR. Liberal internationalism clearly had many drawbacks, including an unwarranted faith in gradual or manufactured progress and a complacent attitude towards the achievements of civilisation.

This chapter summarizes the aims and conclusions of the work. In addition, this concluding chapter sets out five ‘light’ challenges, and related propositions, for development of IR theory, propositions reflective of the sensibility relational cosmology, as translated here via critical humanism, might direct us to adopt. Many challenges remain, but we should not feel weighed down by them but explore new ways of thinking, being, and becoming as we ‘loosen’ ourselves into the ‘mesh’ and the complex negotiations of human and non-human relations residing there requires. IR of the future will likely be more open, more interdisciplinary, and hopefully more cosmologically aware, and it has the opportunity to develop new ways of thinking and doing co-existence and politics.

Is it possible to quantize social and International Relations (IR) theory to break the shackles of a classical worldview? This chapter argues that to answer this question, we must first examine what it means to quantize. This is a very complicated question that can only be addressed by taking a tour into the history and evolution of the problématique of quantization in theoretical physics. The chapter explicates this issue through a discussion of a number of quantization schemes to build momentum for three moves. In a first move, the chapter argues that social theory does not need to be quantized in order to go beyond the limitations and problems of a social theory anchored in a classical worldview. In a second move, the chapter argues that the problem is fundamentally anchored in the predominant set-theoretic thinking that undergirds social and IR theory. In a third move, and to go beyond mere critique, the chapter argues that a category-theoretic perspective needs to be adopted through which a relational social theory can be built that addresses major weaknesses of social theory anchored in a classical worldview.

Undertaking a collaborative inquiry into a convergence of quantum theory, science, and technology, the chapter makes the case for a new human science for International Relations (IR). As new scientific discoveries and technological applications suggest large-scale quantum phenomena, near-simultaneous interconnectivity creates global entanglements, and ubiquitous media produce profound observer effects of uncertainty, IR theory needs to “quantize” if it is to retain relevancy in the twenty-first century. The central concepts of quantum mechanics that inform a quantized IR are introduced, and the heuristic advantages of quantum over traditional approaches are presented.

Conclusion sums up the key points of this study and presents its major findings. It also seeks to illustrate the general implications of this work for regionalism studies. In a final sub- section, the conclusion illustrates the debate about the future of SAARC.

This chapter argues that constructivist identity theory has not been tested in large-n quantitative work, not because constructivism is incompatible with such tests, but because an intersubjective data set has never been created. Instead, the chapter shows that existing quantitative work reduces identity to single measures of language, religion, or ethnicity that do not capture the intersubjective content of national identities. The chapter reviews constructivist contributions to IR theory to make the case that testing constructivism with appropriate data is important because identity is an alternative explanation for war, peace, cooperation, and conflict. Finally, the chapter explores how national identity might contribute to a more comprehensive theory of international hegemony with relevance for international politics today.

This chapter connects the previous chapter’s theorization of collective trauma to an understanding of the international system framed around the concept of identity. Although the term “identity” is highly contested in international relations theory, this chapter argues it is vital to understanding the stabilization of the international system’s subjects, objects, and motivations. The chapter draws on the narrative identity approach to theorize identity as constituted by ontologically fluid narratives. By combining personal experiential memory with common, public knowledge, identity narratives bridge the divide between the individual and the social, constituting the collective actors of the international system and informing their relationships. Although collective trauma narratives must contend with various others in identity discourses, their deep emotional resonance and relevance to the mass violence that permeates macroscale politics make them particularly potent competitors, liable to exert outsize influence on international imaginaries.