Summary

Based on the conviction that global life outlines a complex mesh of contingent interactions, the contributions to the relational turns in international relations (IR) draw attention to the ongoing interpenetration between agency, structure, and order among the diversity of agency, form, and matter implicated in, enacting, and enabling global life. Inhabiting a relational universe reveals the interdependence between international actors and also their mutual implication in each other’s interactions and roles, in addition to the overwhelming embeddedness of these relations in the world. The relational research agenda has sought simultaneously to unravel the atomistic individualism dominating the IR mainstream and reimagine the international as a dynamic space for dialogical learning, which promises a world that is less hegemonic, more democratic, and equitable. Two of the dominant trends that have come to define the “relational revolution” in IR are the simultaneous decentering of its Eurocentrism and its anthropocentrism. As such, the relational knowledge production underpinning the study of global life mandates tolerance of at least as much diversity and contradictions as evident in the social relations being narrated.