Traversing webs: Reflections on relational theory and international relations

Abstract

Relational theories challenge, in a multitude of ways, how we understand and work with relations in International Relations (IR) scholarship. It invites engagement with thought and practice of relationality from different parts of the world and invites a rethinking of the boundaries between states and individuals but also between humans and non-humans. This essay considers the role of relational theory in and around IR by way of a series of short inter-related reflections, drawing on ‘IR’ but also author’s experiences of relational shifts in everyday life. The experiences of ‘traversing the webs’ of relationality at home and at work, with humans and non-humans, in IR scholarship and beyond it, demonstrate the ways in which relational thought and practice is much more than ‘theory’, travels well beyond ‘IR’, and yet also poses important questions to how we think and do IR.