Relationality as Method: Bridging the Self and Home with the World

Publication Date

9-1-2026

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

International Studies Review

Volume

28

Issue

3

DOI

10.1093/isr/viaf037

Abstract

How do scholars navigate the politics and poetics of relationality in their writing and research? Following a roundtable from the 2024 Annual ISA Convention, this forum explores what is at stake in raising such questions within intellectual work that dissects coloniality and articulates alternative expressions of sociality and connectivity. How do we translate modes of relating that already reflect creative ways of transcending a Manichaeism that can seep into how we talk about relations, coloniality, and politics? What kinds of internal struggles within the field of International Relations render some relational modes recognizable while leaving others absent or peripheral? This forum approaches relationality as both method and ethical orientation for navigating the entanglements of the nation, colonial rule, and imperialism that define the field and our own scholarly practices. Echoing Édouard Glissant, it stages a dialogue on how the powers of relationality play a role in our intellectual pursuits, where a relation is not an absolute to strive for but a totality and a force that is poetic, practical and unceasing—something that continually seeks to be spoken, perfected, and made whole.

Keywords

colonialism, imperialism, methodology

Department

Sociology and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

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