Global IR Research Programme: The Futuristic Foundation of ‘One and Many’ (Palgrave Studies in International Relations) 3031391209, 9783031391200

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PSIR · PALGRAVE STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Global IR Research Programme The Futuristic Foundation of ‘One and Many’

Deepshikha Shahi

Palgrave Studies in International Relations

Series Editors Knud Erik Jørgensen, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark J. Marshall Beier, Political Science, McMaster University, Milton, ON, Canada

Palgrave Studies in International Relations provides scholars with the best theoretically-informed scholarship on the global issues of our time. The series includes cutting-edge monographs and edited collections which bridge schools of thought and cross the boundaries of conventional fields of study. Knud Erik Jørgensen is Professor of International Relations at Aarhus University, Denmark, and at Ya¸sar University, Izmir, Turkey.

Deepshikha Shahi

Global IR Research Programme The Futuristic Foundation of ‘One and Many’

Deepshikha Shahi O. P. Jindal Global University Sonipat, Haryana, India

Palgrave Studies in International Relations ISBN 978-3-031-39120-0 ISBN 978-3-031-39121-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39121-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Yuichiro Chino/GettyImages This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For K¯ alik¯ a

Acknowledgements

This book is beholden to the startling ‘forces of time’ (K¯alik¯a) for making its way through various stages of a rather erratic evolutionary journey. At different junctures, different events, peoples, and ideas came forward and supplied substantial stimulations. It all started with the ‘Global IR Dialogues’, an event organised by the School of International Service (SIS), American University, US, in May 2021. I am indebted to Amitav Acharya and Patrick Thaddeus Jackson for inviting me to contribute to this event. This event provided me a platform to respond to the cross-examinations of the research agenda of Global IR by a group of scholars (who also contributed to these dialogues), including Cynthia Enloe, Michael Barnett, Randolph Persaud, J. Ann Tickner, Cameron Thies, Nora Fisher Onar, and Jack Lewis Snyder. My understanding of Global IR was further polished after I contributed to a webinar on ‘Forgetting IR to Reimagine IR’ organised by the British International Studies Association (BISA) in June 2021. I am obliged to Helen L. Turton for inviting me to take part in this webinar. The critical comments voiced during a panel discussion on ‘How to Problematize the Global?’, a part of the LSE-sponsored Millennium conference held in October 2021, added extra layers to my analysis of Global IR. I am thankful to Felix Anderl and Antonia Witt for inviting me to participate in this discussion. Another opportunity to fine-tune my thoughts on Global IR cropped up when I participated in a roundtable discussion on ‘The Possibilities and Limits

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for a Non-Eurocentric Global IR’ organised by the European International Studies Association (EISA) at the Panteion University, Greece, in September 2022. I am grateful to Anahita Arian who facilitated my participation in this discussion. Last but not least, my earnest gratitude goes to Inanna Hamati-Ataya who extended an invite to me to speak in a symposium on ‘Globalising International Theory’, an extraordinary intellectual initiative made by the Centre for Global Knowledge Studies (gloknos), University of Cambridge, UK, in December 2022. The book could not be what it is without the insights gained from the intense engagements of the speakers of this symposium: especially, John M. Hobson, Gennaro Ascione, Arlene B. Tickner, David L. Blaney, Raewyn Connell, Martin Bayly, Zeynep Gül¸sah Çapan, Sheryl Lightfoot, and Allan Layug. Though the current form of the book seems to have found its completion, an unknown inkling inside me tells me that this completion is merely a checkpoint and the journey is yet not over.

Contents

Prologue: Half the World Away Mapping the World: A Manipulation of Mind? Living in a Mapped World: A Fall from Grace? The World Beyond Mind: A De-Kantian Realignment? References

1 3 7 11 19

Global IR: A Paradigm? No, a Research Programme Territorial Threshold of Global IR: Western or Non-Western? Intellectual Instigation of Global IR: Perspectival or Theoretical? Theoretical Thrust of Global IR: Paradigmatic or Programmatic? Concluding Remarks References

23 24 32 41 52 57

Global IR: A Glimpse of Somewhere? No, of Anywhere Global IR Research Programme: The Persisting Perplexities Global IR Research Programme: The Conceivable Comebacks Global IR Research Programme: The Prospective Progressions Concluding Remarks References Global IR: An Agenda of One or Many? No, of One and Many Global IR Research Programme: Reshuffling the Theory-Building Postures

69 71 80 88 99 106 117 119

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Global IR Research Programme: Reviewing the Policy-Making Procedures Global IR Research Programme: Revaluating the Theory-Praxis Interface Concluding Remarks References

132 140 152 158

Epilogue: A Passage Across the Three Worlds

167

Bibliography

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Index

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Prologue: Half the World Away

The idea that we live and die in the prison of our ‘conceptual framework’ was developed primarily by Kant: [for] Kantians, God created our conceptual framework to fit the world …[or] the real world is for ever unknowable because of this prison (Lakatos 1980, 20). The geo-history of world politics is the geo-history of devising mind-based cognitive prisons to naturalize an illusive reality of a temporally and spatially divided world. In this context, a central role was played by Kant who established the notions of time and space as not only compulsory perceptive-prisms but also constrictive conditioning-limits for scientific enquiry of the world. When humankind aroused Kantian perceptive-prisms and conditioninglimits to conduct scientific enquiry of the world, it reluctantly found itself trapped inside a gamut of time–space-bounded categories, e.g., cultures, civilizations, societies, regions, nation-states, including the two halves of the West and the non-West that remained isolated from each other. The humankind trapped inside these time–space-bounded categories could either optimistically hope that God (natural forces) would channelize it toward a single conceptual framework capable of capturing the complete universalist reality of the Global world (‘one world’), or pessimistically confess that the mind-based cognitive prisons prohibited the knowledge of the Global world as a whole; instead, they created many conceptual

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Shahi, Global IR Research Programme, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39121-7_1

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frameworks capable of conveying the limited particularist reality of the local worlds (‘many worlds’). In the discipline of IR, the positivist theories (realism, liberalism, and structural Marxism) evoked Kantian science to explain the universalist reality of the West-dominated ‘one world’. And the postpositivist theories (postmodernism, feminism, and critical international theory) pessimistically utilized neo-Kantian anti-science to counterexplain the particularist reality of the non-West-embodied ‘many worlds’. Though IR scholars began to assess the (de)merits of different (post-) positivist theories that had pushed a Kant-inspired ‘Western-centrism’ and sparked controversies around ‘one world versus many worlds’, the deKantian philosophies still remained supressed as denigrated non-Western knowledge-forms. Recently, some of the de-Kantian philosophies underpinning the non-Western knowledge-forms have congregated under the rubric of ‘Global IR’. These de-Kantian philosophies of Global IR have raised a few unanswered questions: Is humankind doomed to remain infinitely imprisoned inside the cognitive prisons of its own mind? Are these mind-based cognitive prisons effective enough to comprehend (let alone tame) the unpredictable natural forces that erratically flirt with the human condition? Can we go beyond mind to break free from these cognitive prisons so as to realign the human condition with the unpredictable natural forces? To answer these questions, this study performs ‘symptomatological readings’ of the Global IR texts springing from the Chinese, Indian, and Japanese philosophies.1 Based on these symptomatological readings, the study explores how these philosophies intersect to craft a Global IR research programme with the futuristic foundation of ‘one and many’: that is, the theoretical and praxeological foundation which upholds that the unity of one world lies underneath the diversity of many worlds! Methodologically, symptomatological readings aim to unearth the deep hidden meanings that the texts tend to camouflage on the surface. In this study, the surface elements present in various Chinese, Indian and Japanese philosophies are taken as ‘symbolic of some latent conjectures’ regarding alternative theoretical and praxeological approaches to world politics. (Best and Marcus 2009). The study shows how symptomatological readings surpass the limitations of differing literal forms, temporalspatial origins, and life-histories of these philosophies. Notably, symptomatological readings distinguish themselves from the broader traditions of philosophical critique and ideology critique through emphases on the

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‘productivity of reading’, the shifting problematics every reader confronts in literal forms of the texts as they are interpreted by other readers, and the final ‘surprise’ that emerges from the ability to rise above the limitations of outwardly literal forms (Rooney 2017). While this study sets out to rise above the limitations of outwardly literal forms of diverse Chinese, Indian and Japanese Global IR texts, it intends to showcase how the synergised theoretical and praxeological insinuations of these texts reconvene themselves as a potent ‘research programme’ in contemporary world politics. As different chapters of this study examine the theoretical and praxeological implications of the Global IR research programme in an effort to bring together the temporally-spatially divided world, the present prologue lays out a critical backdrop that serves as the launching pad for this entire course of study. This prologue is spread across three sections. The first section rethinks the geo-historical ambitions to map the world as a classic instance of ‘manipulation of mind’. The second section revaluates the sufferings of the human condition in a ‘geo-historically mapped’ or say, ‘temporally-spatially-trapped’ world. Finally, the third section reexamines the possibilities of a scientific-metaphysical reorientation of the human condition toward a ‘beyond-mind consciousness’, a consciousness that is not torn half the world away.

Mapping the World: A Manipulation of Mind? Conventionally speaking, the intellectual process of mapping the world has been an interplay of the following three Kantian philosophical presumptions: first, the identifications of space and time are necessary for perceiving the world; second, the identifications of space and time are essentially mind-dependent, never mind-independent; and third, the mind-dependent identifications of space and time create an outside for every inside. Clarifying how the limited experience of space and time in human life poses a problem in perceiving the world, Kant (1802, 159) writes: We probably ought to concern ourselves with our own experience, but this does not suffice to identify everything, in that man only lives through a short interval of time and therefore can experience little for himself. In relation to space, however, even if he travels, he is not in a position to observe and perceive much himself. We must necessarily, therefore, also make use of the experiences of others.

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Kant’s geography—as a storehouse of spatial–temporal experiences of the self and the others—is principally a feasible way of ‘broadening the mind’. Paul Richards (1973, 3–4) elaborates: In Kant’s time there were…two opposed conceptions of the nature of space. There was the viewpoint of the Newtonians in which space was treated as a real entity, with an existence independent of both mind and matter. Space was a huge container in which atoms and planets swam like fish in a tank. The view of Leibniz, however, was that Newtonian space was logically paradoxical. Empty space, clearly a nothingness, was, by the container conception, also a somethingness. This contradiction led Leibniz to believe that space was an idea rather than a thing: that ‘space’ sprang from the mind when thought conceived a relationship between perceived objects…In this case, space was entirely relative: and if the objects were removed, space disappeared… Kant…sought for a third way. He agreed with Leibniz that the notion of space stems from the mind. He was not, however, such a thorough-going relativist as Leibniz. His own view, as stated in the Critique of Pure Reason and several other works, …seems to have been that the human mind has built into it a spatial schema which serves a purpose analogous to that of the graticule of a map projection. This schema, in Kant’s opinion, lies at the root of all thinking about, and knowledge of, the world; because it is only when the chaotic signals transmitted by the world to our senses are ‘mapped’ into it that any recognition of meaningful patterns can take place.

For Kant, the space and time were located only in the mind, not in the mind-independent world (Brook and Wuerth 2023). So, the objects were not mind-independent things but appearances that owed their spatiotemporal form and categorial structure to the nature of the human mind. Markedly, the human mind could not have any cognition of things as they were in themselves; it could only have their cognition in appearances (Williams 2022). For sure, these Kant-inspired mind-based cognitions formed a wall of separation at two levels: (i) between the world-initself (‘noumenal world’) and world-in-appearance (‘phenomenal world’); and (ii) between the ‘distant regions’ of world-in-appearance (phenomenal world) located inside and outside the boundaries of ‘immediate perception’. Alfred Irving Hallowell (1955, 186–187) clarifies: In order to be spatially oriented in the widest sense, that is, beyond the field of immediate perception, the individual must not only be aware of himself but of his own position in some spatial schema…When integrated

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with individual knowledge and experience of the terrain, the practice of naming places and topographical features affords a schema of reference points for topographical orientation. Such points are not only a guide to action but, once known, can be mentally manipulated and organized in the form of ‘mental maps’, and the spatial schema in them communicated…The most striking feature of the man’s spatialization of his world is the fact that it never appears to be exclusively limited to the [immediate] perceptual experience. Places and objects of various classes are conceptualized as having a real existence in distant regions [located outside the immediate perceptual experience] …such regions are, nevertheless, an integral part of the total spatial world to which he is oriented by his culture.

It is this Kantian spatial schema along with its culturally-oriented ‘insideoutside differences’2 that has operated as a realistic ‘guide to action’ in political life over the millennia. Additionally, this guide to action has been manipulated and organized in the form of ‘mental maps’: according to these mental maps, the noumenal world (containing the imageries of Gods/spirits located outside the immediate perceptual experience) has to be logically disconnected from the phenomenal world3 ; in addition, the variety of cultures in the phenomenal world (comprising distinct immediate perceptual experience and distinct orientation toward the noumenal world) have to be treated as ‘distant regions’. Explaining how these mental maps were fabricated by combining Kant’s geography with Kant’s anthropology, Stuart Elden (2011, 6–7) remarks: Kant…believed that physical geography and pragmatic anthropology together provided Weltkenntnis, knowledge of the world, an empirical grounding for his thought …Knowledge of the world is thus of both the ‘human being and nature’, and anthropology and geography are thus ‘intersecting halves of the larger whole’…In 1765–66, Kant offered a detailed discussion: ‘…from the point of view of the variety of their natural properties and the [cultural] differences in that feature of the human which is moral in character, the consideration of these things is very important…The comparison of human beings with each other…furnishes us with a comprehensive map of human species…the condition of states and nations throughout the world [is] a product of…the reciprocal interaction of [geography and anthropology] …the condition of states [must] rather be considered in relation to…the situation of their countries, the nature of their products, customs, industry, trade and population.

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In effect, Kant’s explanation of ‘national character’ reads almost like a ‘travel guide’: just as a travel guide describes differences between behaviours and expectations of different peoples, Kant’s lectures intend to ‘make good the lack of experience’ of his young students through characterizing different peoples with whom they may interact. Patrick Frierson and Paul Guyer (2011, xxvii–xxviii), the editors of Kant’s Observations (1764), explicate: Kant’s reflections…focus on different European nations: ‘the Italians and French… most distinguish themselves in the feeling of the beautiful, but the Germans, the English, and the Spaniards… are most distinguished… in the feeling of the sublime’ (2: 243; see too 27: 41). Kant does not limit his observations to differences between European nations, however, and his discussion of non-European peoples contains some truly horrific mischaracterizations. Regarding Asians, Kant seems to have a level of respect, comparing different Asian peoples with European ones, such that ‘Arabs are as it were the Spaniards of the Orient…Persians are the Frenchmen of Asia…the Japanese can be regarded as it were as the Englishmen of this part of the world’ (2: 252) … ‘Negroes have by nature no feeling that rises above the ridiculous’ and ‘not a single one has ever been found who has accomplished something great’ (2: 253). [Even though] Kant explains, ‘no nation is lacking in casts of mind which unite the foremost predominant qualities of this kind’…unfortunately, Kant’s negative characterizations of non-European races in Observations presage the more essentialist racial theory that he develops…later in ‘Of the Different Human Races’ (1775) …Seeds of Kant’s later theory of race, within which racial characteristics are heritable and relatively fixed, are regrettably already found in Observations.

Evidently, Kant’s mental maps began with applying mind-dependent spatio-temporal frames for perceiving the world, and ended up imposing a dividing line between varied nation-states (with varied products, customs, industries, trades, populations, behaviours and expectations). Robert B. Louden (2011, 155) concludes: ‘Kant’s approach to national character marks an important transition. He attempts to survey all peoples and nationalities in the lectures on geography, but beginning with the Observations in 1764, he focuses primarily on ‘the peoples of our part of the world’ (2: 243)—i.e., Western Europeans—a shift of perspective that he continues in the various anthropology lectures beginning in 1772’. Naturally, when different Western and non-Western nation-states interact as distinct geographical-anthropological units (or culturally distant regions)

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in world politics, they perceive an essential ‘psychic distance’ among human beings living in different corners of a mapped world (Mittelman and Dow 2018). For developing a deeper understanding of the West– non-West interactions in world politics, it is crucial to evaluate the status of human beings living in a mapped world.

Living in a Mapped World: A Fall from Grace? Noticeably, the Kantian enterprise of generating mental maps was not limited to the taxonomic intention of ‘bringing creatures under headings’; it also extended to the governmental ambition of ‘bringing them under laws’. Referring to Kant’s work Of the Different Human Races (1775), Ashley Montagu (1905–1999, 8) narrates: In the animal kingdom, the natural division into genera and species is based on the law of common propagation and the unity of the genera is nothing other than the unity of the reproductive power that is consistently operative within a specific collection of animals. For this reason, Buffon’s rule, that animals that produce fertile young with one another belong to one and the same physical genus (no matter how dissimilar in form they may be), must properly be regarded only as a definition of a natural genus of animals in general. A natural genus may, however, be distinguished from every artificial division. An artificial division is based upon classes and divides things up according to similarities, but a natural division is based upon identifying distinct lines of descent that divide according to reproductive relations. The first of these creates an artificial system for – memorization, the second a natural system for the understanding. The first has only the intent of bringing creatures under headings; the second has the intent of bringing them under laws. According to this second way of thinking, all human beings anywhere on earth belong to the same natural genus, because they always produce fertile children with one another even if we find great dissimilarities in their form…We must, to account for the unity of the natural genus, assume that all human beings belong to the one line of descent from which regardless of their dissimilarities – they emerged, or from which they might at least possibly have emerged…Alternatively, differing human beings might be viewed as similar to one another, but not related, and we would have to assume that there were many different local creations. This alternative is, however, a view that needlessly multiplies the number of causes.4

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A careful reading of these statements makes it clear that Kant’s efforts to bring human beings under laws kept both the options open: (i) ‘homogenizing option’ whereby all human beings belonged to the same natural genus and lived in ‘one world’; and (ii) ‘heterogenizing option’ whereby different human beings, similar but not related to one another, were products of different local creations and lived in ‘many worlds’. Nevertheless, both these Kantian options—as they attempted to generate mental maps by diving into human mind-based rationalities—resulted in enforcing dividing lines between ‘mature and immature humans’ on the one hand and ‘humans and non-humans (or animals)’ on the other. Kant’s depiction of human beings as animal rationabile irrefutably believed that the ‘reason’ as an essential faculty of human mind was conscious of its separation from nature through its direct apprehension of its own freedom. The hypothesis of autonomous human freedom implied that the study of human beings had to use guidelines other than the study of nature that merely obeyed the law of necessity: ‘to a great extent this view has—until recently—established the ideological framework of humanities [and social sciences]…It has been so pervasive that even later German thinkers have found it difficult to escape the idealist vision of humanities [and social sciences] in order to see things differently’ (Faye 2012, 13). As per Kant (1959), the project of Enlightenment meant humankind’s release from its ‘self-incurred immaturity’: here, immaturity was an ‘inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another’. Reasonably, Kant manufactured an existential hierarchy by making immature human beings (living in one world/many worlds) reliant on mature human beings for gaining enlightenment. Kant (1963) further maintained that human beings, despite their self-incurred immaturity, were rational agents. But the non-humans (e.g., animals) were not rational agents, and therefore, they merely possessed an instrumental value. Even post-Enlightenment socio-political struggles that seek to attain equality or recognition for marginalized and oppressed human groups are often self-consciously grounded in these Enlightenment’s presuppositions (Bristow 2017). In the discipline of IR, the positivist theories (realism, liberalism, and structural Marxism) borrow from the Kantian project of Enlightenment to explain the West-dominated ‘one world’ with homogenizing propensities. And the post-positivist theories (postmodernism, feminism, and critical international theory) derive from the neo-Kantian spirit of postEnlightenment to counter-explain the non-West-embodied ‘many worlds’

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with heterogenizing predispositions.5 Despite the known limits of this Kantian (post-)Enlightenment rationality which, in its bid to separate ‘immature and mature humans’ and ‘humans and non-humans’, almost unavoidably establishes a sort of hierarchy of human beings living in one world/many worlds (Rogers 2016), the Western style of political decision-making continues to involve a verdict on who are to be treated as proper (peaceful) human beings and who are to be rendered unfit (aggressive) participants of the international (dis)order (Walker 2006). As IR routinely professes the ‘perceptive differences’ among human beings living in different corners of the mapped world, it presupposes a necessary polarity between the identities of ‘self’ (own state) and ‘other/s’ (other state/s). Indeed, it is this necessary polarity between the identities of self and other/s that offers theoretical-praxeological support to differential sets of rules/norms/governance for ‘major and minor powers’, ‘decent and indecent cultures’, ‘civilized and uncivilized societies’, and so on. Often, IR becomes nothing more than the self’s attempts to tame the other/s (e.g., other rogue or rival nation-states) through numerous (non-)military strategies, such as just war, trade war, cyber war, and the like. Disturbingly, this Western style of political decision-making— supposing an existential hierarchy between the peaceful and aggressive human beings living in one world/many worlds—instigates a sense of anxiety in the West–non-West interactions. Explaining how the classification of human nature as peaceful or aggressive instigates a sense of anxiety in the West–non-West interactions, John H. Herz (1951, 3) states: Whether man is ‘by nature’ peaceful and cooperative, or aggressive or domineering, is not the question. The condition that concerns us here is not an anthropological or biological, but a social one. It is his uncertainty and anxiety as to his neighbors’ intentions that places man in this basic dilemma, and makes the ‘homo homini lupus’ a primary fact of the social life of [the hu]man.

At the same time as the liberal, realist and constructivist offshoots of Western IR keep busy classifying different human groups as somewhat peaceful or aggressive at a given juncture, the social (not anthropological) anxiety among the non-Western scholars manifests in two ways. First, even if non-Western scholars apply the non-Western worldviews to see human nature differently, they more often than not squeeze their readings into

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a Kantian framework; the anxiety to compete spurs a tendency of imitation in non-Western scholarship (Pieczara 2010). Second, although some non-Western post-colonial/de-colonial scholars strive to deliver a holistic representation of IR by means of adding the ‘narratives of/from the nonWest’ to the ‘narratives of/from the West’, they fall into the trap of the same Kantian framework: while Western Kantian dualism separates the West (as self) and the non-West (as other/s), the anxious non-Western post-colonial/de-colonial Kantian dualism reverses this knowledgesituation and separates the non-West (as self) and the West (as other/s). The net result is that both these intellectual pathways eventually solidify an already temporally-spatially divided world: theoretically speaking, the non-Western scholarly schemes of ‘imitation’ and ‘holistic representation’ squarely succumb to the analogous Kantian (post-)Enlightenment mindbased rationalities that tend to broaden the psychic distance between human beings living in different corners of the mapped world. In this mapped world, Kant assigns all human beings a ‘right to be somewhere’: here, ‘a right to be wherever nature or chance (apart from their will) has placed them…[shows] Kant’s concern with the concurrent existence of a plurality of corporeal agents on the spherical surface of the earth… [But] it grounds a particular kind of moral relation [between corporeal agents] that is ‘external’ (as located in time and space)…A systematic reflection on the right to be somewhere offers a vital insight into the structural significance of embodied agency under conditions of spatial constraint…[From the standpoint of embodied agency under conditions of spatial constraint, Kant’s] cosmopolitanism is neither one of noumenal beings united in their shared humanity, nor of legal-institutional membership in a shared polity, but one of physical [phenomenal] beings that act and affect one another in virtue of inhabiting one (limited) space (Huber 2017, 1–2). While staying within the confines of this limited space, the human beings—as physical phenomenal beings—are destined to navigate their ‘moral world/s’ through their mind-based ‘reason’: Kant says that ‘reason does not feel…it has insights into its lack and through the drive for cognition it affects the feeling of a need’6 (González 2021a, b, 25). One such ‘feeling of a need’ is the need for ‘happiness/joy’.7 But Kant measured happiness/joy as one of the indeterminate goals for the pursuits of humanity. Jonny Thomson (2021) comments:

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Kant [argued that] happiness is such an indeterminate concept that although every human being wishes to attain it, [s/]he can never say…what [s/]he really wishes and wills…[Kant] believed worldly happiness, based upon transient material items, was impossible to attain. He did think there could be some metaphysical – or divine – happiness after death. In fact, he argued that this belief was a prerequisite to being moral at all. His moral argument for God maintains that if there was not some future hope for happiness, in due proportion, to our good actions, then there’s no rational answer to the question, why bother being moral?...Instead of making ‘be happy’ a necessary imperative (i.e., something we have to do in life), Kant believed we would be better to pursue a life of good action and morality instead…For Kant, right and wrong have definite answers, and it is easy to know when you have completed a moral action.8

It is not just happiness/joy but also many more infinite emotional pursuits of humanity that become improbable for mind-based ‘reason’,9 and, therefore, rendered impossible when one sticks to a Kantian framework whereby human beings are made to perceive the self and other/s as narrow phenomenal beings devoid of shared humanity and endowed with embodied agency that remains blocked by mind-based cognitive prisons of a temporally-spatially divided world. It is important to investigate if we can bring in the hitherto untapped de-Kantian philosophies which open up the possibilities to go beyond the reasonings of mind-based cognitive prisons so as to imagine an alternative understanding of the nature of human beings as well as their probable scientific-metaphysical pursuits in this phenomenal world, a phenomenal world that is not logically disconnected from the noumenal world.10

The World Beyond Mind: A De-Kantian Realignment? With the passage of time, it is becoming clearer that the Kantian project of Enlightenment is not capable of securing humankind’s release from its self-incurred immaturity despite the attempts to use one’s own understanding with the guidance of another. It is difficult to fathom (let alone tackle) some of the challenging circumstances of world politics, especially the ones unleashed by the unpredictable global crisis-situations, such as the spectres of world war, financial crisis, climate change, pandemic, and the like. These global crisis-situations have exposed how the world politics unfolds itself in an ‘extra-temporal-spatial arena’ encompassing

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global entanglements over centuries: indeed, these global entanglements publicize that the ‘essential I-ness of nation-states [or, for that matter, cultures, civilizations, societies, or regions] is an illusion; national-interest is a poison of greed…that turns away from vulnerability, [thereby camouflaging] the law of non-contradiction/complementarity between [a range of seemingly oppositional binaries, e.g.,] presence and non-presence, action and actionlessness, and mind and no-mind’ (Fierke 2023). Most certainly, the Global IR research programme, as it emanates from the Chinese, Indian and Japanese philosophies incorporated in this study, is a theoretical and praxeological move away from the Kantian project of [post-]Enlightenment. Instead, the purpose of this study is to bring in the hitherto untapped de-Kantian philosophies that traverse the multi-layered human consciousness to facilitate back-and-forth movement between the West-dominated ‘one world’ and the non-West-embodied ‘many worlds’. This study aims to evaluate if this back-and-forth movement can offer openings for a realignment of world order so as to restore the temporally-spatially indivisible human condition on earth. The Global IR texts that undergo symptomatological readings in this study remain stimulated by a selection of Chinese, Indian and Japanese philosophies: namely, Tianxia, Advaita and Nishida Kitaro’s Buddhism. Curiously, all of these de-Kantian philosophies varyingly indicate an extra-temporal-spatial arena thriving on the law of non-contradiction/ complementarity between presence and non-presence, action and actionlessness, and mind and no-mind, which, in turn, destabilizes an array of additional taken-for-granted binaries in orthodox IR study – e.g., subject and object, phenomena and noumena, science and metaphysics, self and other/s, West and non-West, somewhere and anywhere, one world and many worlds, and so on. Definitely, the ‘one-many problematic’ is a core Western philosophical concern; it is, however, not important in determining the Chinese philosophical tradition. Rather than debating the ‘one-many problematic’ or ‘whole-part relationships’, the Chinese philosophical traditions, including the Tianxia worldview, focus on the ‘part-part relationships’, an approach wherein the societal, political, and cosmic orders are immanental, coterminous, and mutually entailing (Ames and Dissanayake 1996). Also, the Indian philosophy of Advaita is a ‘leap-philosophy’ which propositions that the world as a multiplicity of appearance is ‘neither real nor non-real’: that is to say, after sensing the veiled oneness of noumenal world, the multiplicity of appearance that engulfs the phenomenal world does not disappear,

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but one has a flash of its understanding ‘beyond the one-many distinctions’ (Potter 1981). In the same way, the Buddhism-inspired Japanese philosophies prescribe the doctrine of ‘interpenetration between one and many’: plainly, this doctrine maintains that the structure of the ‘aesthetic continuum of nature is a web of relationships’ where all things are inter-reliant (Callicott and McRae 2017). In IR study, these de-Kantian philosophies disentangle the deadlock of ‘one world versus many worlds’ by signifying a contemporaneous co-existence of ‘one world and many worlds’. In so doing, these de-Kantian philosophies set out to explore the realm of consciousness that goes ‘beyond mind’: to be sure, the realm of conscious that goes beyond mind (without cancelling mind) allows an awareness of a continual temporal-spatial thread that reunites not only the phenomenal-noumenal worlds but also the distant regions of the phenomenal world; furthermore, all non(-human) entities presumably exist inside (not outside) this realm of human consciousness. Articulating the Tianxia cosmology, Zhao Tingyang (2018) explains: The concept of tianxia defines an all-inclusive world with harmony for all. It…is essentially a political concept consisting of a trinity of realms. First, tianxia means the Earth under the sky, ‘all under heaven’. Second, it refers to the general will of all peoples in the world, entailing a universal agreement. It involves the heart more than the mind, because the heart has feelings. And third, tianxia is a universal system that is responsible for world order… Today’s world is full of conflict, hostility and continuing clashes among civilizations. All indications suggest we are headed beyond failed states to a failed world order…The world cannot achieve tianxia unless the physical, psychological and political realms all coincide.

Streamlining the Advaita visualization, Deepshikha Shahi (2018, 127 and 134) expresses: Advaita asserts that the overall consciousness goes beyond the realm of mind. The mind comprehends the world-in-appearance (phenomena) through dualist consciousness, thereby producing multiplicity of distinctions/divisions: noticeably, the mind is bound to know ‘what is’ (ontologically) only in terms of ‘what is not’ (epistemologically)… This principle of knowing the world-in-appearance (phenomena) as dualist distinctions between ‘what is’ and ‘what is not’ is called neti-neti…[But] the dualist consciousness is potentially transient...The Advaita Global IR theory…thinks through both the sides of the phenomenal dualities as mutually

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inclusive of each other to ‘varying degrees’… in this sense, god is inclusive of man, moral is inclusive of immoral, good is inclusive of bad, ethical is inclusive of non-ethical, and decent is inclusive of rogue.

Communicating Nishida Kitaro’s Buddhist standpoint, Kosuke Shimizu (2022, 44–45) records: Nishida published numerous articles and books; the most well-known among them is Zen no Kenkyu (An Inquiry into the Good). Throughout his years of contemplation…he was always searching for something deep in the human mind, something fundamental and universal to our existence, regardless of cultural or traditional differences. What he saw as the key concept in this context was ‘pure experience’…He believed that the world could be understood by getting rid of all the words and intellectual concepts that envelop, and sometimes disturb, the process of comprehension…When we dig into the mind of the subject to the extent that subjectivity itself dissolves into nothing, we encounter something universal in the form of pure experience.

Intriguingly, the de-Kantian philosophies of Tianxia, Advaita and Nishida Kitaro’s Buddhism—regardless of deviations in their geo-historical source and form—serve as breeding grounds for some auxiliary theories that restructure Global IR as a ‘Lakatosian research programme’: unlike the Kuhnian paradigm where a single theory claims superiority over the truth released by rival theories, the Lakatosian research programme builds a test bed where in multiple theories with shared hard-core assumptions accumulate their findings of truth and regularly revaluate their increasing or decreasing truth-content. Different chapters of this study scrutinize the theoretical and praxeological scopes of Global IR as a Lakatosian research programme. Chapter 1 examines how multiple auxiliary theories of the Global IR research programme – with ‘shared hard-core assumptions’ about the need to reconcile the West–non-West binaries and foreground the West–non-West complementarities – empower IR scholars and strategists to envision a possible merger of the many separated worlds with the one connected world. Chapter 2 substantiates how the Global IR research programme—driven by a cluster of Chinese, Indian, and Japanese auxiliary theories—can activate a ‘set of heuristic techniques’ to relink the seemingly oppositional binaries of phenomena-noumena, science-metaphysics, subject-object, self-other, West–non-West etc., thereby protecting the hard-core assumptions of

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this research programme, especially in those unpredicted global crisissituations that enforce estrangements between the one and many worlds, or say, somewhere/s and anywhere/s. Chapter 3 recommends an innovative model of theory-building as well as policy-making under the ambit of the Global IR research programme; it also shows how this research programme can awaken its ‘objective criteria of appraisal’ for the purpose of revaluating the truth-content of its ‘theory-praxis-interface’ and accordingly reconstructing its road ahead. In endeavouring to boost the theory-praxis-interface of this research programme, the study disrupts the exclusive monopoly of positivism over policy-relevance, specifically Western-centric realism. Rather, the study puts forward the claim that Western-centric realism is not the only way to be realistic; of late, this Western-centric realism has not been reasonably realistic in reading or resolving global crisis-situations. The final chapter, Epilogue, recapitulates the findings of this study by delineating a set of interrelated guiding principles. As these guiding principles establish the futuristic foundation of the Global IR research programme and endorse several schemas for further research, their reformed approach to the predicaments of geo-history is conceivably best captured in the words of Roger T. Ames (2023, 68–69): Both historians and philosophers have come to recognize significant distortions that attend any unreflective tendencies to compartmentalize the ancient and premodern worlds according to currently prevailing spatial and conceptual divisions and their underlying (often highly political) rationales. In particular, critical assessment is now well underway regarding the degree to which persistent prejudices about metageography – especially the ‘myth of continents’ – have shaped and continue to shape representations of history and cultural origins. The classic assertion of ‘independently originating’ European and Asian cultures on either side of the Ural mountains, for example, is being abandoned in favour of highlighting ‘Eurasian’ characteristics in the complex cultural genealogies of both ‘West’ and ‘East’. Indeed, since cultures arise interculturally, or better yet, intra-culturally, in wide-ranging, intimate commerce with one another over time, it would seem that no culture can be fully understood in isolation from others. There is a borderless ecology of cultures that has only an inside without an outside [emphasis added].

While the Global IR research programme remains committed to this ‘borderless ecology of cultures that has only an inside without an outside’, it seeks to reconfigure the human condition (including the condition of

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‘the international’) as perpetually interconnected at the level of consciousness. Even though human identity seems trapped in time–space bound categories of the phenomenal world, human consciousness is capable of making its way through not just the phenomenal world but also the noumenal world. Clearly, the phenomenal world is not the limit of human consciousness. And if the phenomenal world is not the limit of human consciousness, then why should it be the limit of IR? After all, the discipline of IR cannot make itself neglectful of human consciousness. Since IR cannot make itself neglectful of human consciousness, it must engage with those aspects of human consciousness that remain underexplored due to the predominance of the (neo-)Kantian conceptual frameworks. It is the appeal to go beyond the predominance of the (neo-)Kantian conceptual frameworks with an objective to create ample scope for the ‘freeplay’ of human consciousness that hopes to bring to the forefront a genuine ‘Global’ spirit, a spirit which calls human beings back into themselves where they once more encounter guilt about the past and anxiousness about the future; no Global IR theory or praxis which is not braced by these attributes of the human condition can be considered sufficient.

Notes 1. This study revolves around a few Chinese, Indian, and Japanese philosophies that intermingle to determine the theoretical and praxeological contours of the Global IR research programme. A selective focus on these philosophies has been maintained for brevity and clarity purposes: that is to say, the theoretical and praxeological scope of the Global IR research programme is in no way restricted to these philosophies. The study admits that many more hitherto underexplored (non-)Western knowledge-forms have and can come forward to emphasize the West–non-West complementarities and readjust the West–non-West theory–practice interface, thereby contributing to the ever-evolving Global IR research programme. 2. According to Ana Marta González (2021a, b, 3), ‘Kant’s concept of culture would be related to society. Yet this connection, despite its relevance, is somewhat external to the very definition of culture since the duty of culture remains a duty that man has to himself…However, if we read what Kant has to say about culture more carefully, we realize that he did not restrict this concept to the individual human being; thus, in some contexts, he speaks of being civilized and being cultivated interchangeably, a usage that clearly involves a reference to society. It is in this sense that he speaks of ‘civil society’ or of ‘civilization’, in which he sees the

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4.

5.

6.

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perfection of the human species. This way of speaking indicates that the term ‘civilization’ has, for Kant, a ‘normative’ dimension, which becomes manifest whenever Kant distinguishes between ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized peoples’—a language that reminds us of theories developed by nineteenth century anthropologists [and twentieth century social scientists] under the influence of the evolutionist paradigm’. In this Kantian spatial schema, the ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized’ peoples remain scattered across cultural regions marked with ‘inside-outside differences’. In this context, Ralph S. C. Walker (2010, 821) argues that ‘on moral grounds Kant identifies each human person with a particular thing in itself, but the relationship here cannot be strict identity; instead, its closeness may warrant regarding the two distinct entities as part of a composite whole. Perhaps up to the first edition of the Critique [of Pure Reason (1781)], Kant thought that empirical knowledge required a particular kind of close correspondence between appearances and things in themselves, one that would make it appropriate to speak of composite wholes here also. By the time of the second edition, he saw that there could be no good grounds for thinking that. [As a result], it has long been disputed whether Kant’s transcendental idealism requires two worlds—one of appearances and one of things in themselves—or only one’. Learning from experimental genetics, Ashley Montagu (1905–1999) argued that Kant’s anthropological conception of race relied on grouping together various perceptible physical characteristics, whereas the real building blocks of evolution were genes, which dictated biological changes among populations at a much finer level. Montagu’s efforts eventually resulted in the publication of an official statement rejecting the biological foundations of race by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1950. Although it took until 1996 for the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA) to publish a similar statement (Brace 2005, 239). Despite such official statements, the lingering divisive impacts of Kantian mental maps remain still alive in world politics. For understanding the influences of Kantian (post-)Enlightenment thinking on different theoretical traditions of realism, critical idealism, and constructivism, see Heidemann (2021), Jauernig (2021), and Pereira (2022) respectively. Julian Wuerth (2014) analyses Kant’s views on the following three fundamental faculties of the mind: the faculty of cognition, the faculty of feeling, and the faculty of desire. Among these faculties of mind, the faculty of feeling is placed outside (exterior to) the faculty of cognition. And it is the faculty of cognition (or ‘mind-based cognitive prisons’), not the faculty of feeling (or emotion) that has predominantly shaped the study of social sciences in general and IR in particular.

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7. Elina Penttinen (2013) argues that the modern Western view of human beings (or societies) as ‘independent fragments’ that remain ‘isolated and separated from the world as a whole’ prevents IR from finding new solutions to the questions of war and conflict. In her book, Joy and International Relations: A New Methodology, she brings together the current thinking about posthumanism, feminist theory and positive psychology to develop a new methodology for IR study based on ‘joy’. 8. Allison Hills (2006, 243) elaborates: ‘According to Kant, prudential reasons are reasons to take the means to your own happiness…[But then, Kant] seems to classify prudential reasons as hypothetical imperatives [that] take the means to ends that you have set for yourself…You have reason to take the means to your happiness only because you have set happiness as your end; if you had not set it as your end, you would have no reason to do so…A conflict between a [prudential] hypothetical imperative and a [moral] categorical imperative can be resolved by your dropping the end specified in the hypothetical imperative [e.g., happiness] and doing what is required by the categorical imperative…the pursuit of happiness will never change the authority of morality: morality will always win’. Still, Inder S. Marwah (2012, 385) informs that the ‘recent focus on the impure, particularly human side of our nature has challenged the view of Kant’s ethics as overly rationalistic, formal, and—in a word—unfeeling, [thereby] initiating an important examination of an often-neglected side of his corpus’. For a commentary on Kant’s distinction between categorical and hypothetical imperatives, see Jackson (1942). 9. Customarily, Western-centric IR prohibited emotions as a legitimate ground for studying worldly reality: emotions were seen as a form of ‘passion’, ‘unruly force’, ‘misperception’, and even ‘accident’ that interfered with effective political reasoning (Jervis 1976, Dixon 2003). However, it eventually became clear that an emotion-free rationality is nothing but a ‘chimera’ (Elster 1999 and Nussbaum 2001): not only sociopolitical realities constitute emotions (Lutz 1988), but also emotions constitute socio-political realities (Scheff 1990 and Barbalet 2001). Thus, Western-centric IR began to realize that better information about citizens’ emotions and emotional literacy could improve policymaking in world politics (Raykovska et al. 2019). Nevertheless, despite the newfound ‘emotional turn’ in IR study (Clément and Sangar 2018), a few puzzles persist. For instance, the exact difference between the roles played by reason and emotion in knowing the reality of world politics remains unstated: while some scholars notice that moral-ethical judgement in world politics demands reason and emotion, not reason or emotion (Saunders 2016), other scholars observe that emotion is an inescapable component of rationality itself (McDermott 2014), and that

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reason and emotion are not nearly as mutually exclusive as assumed by prevailing approaches to world politics (Lebow 2005). Although research has been done on how particular emotions are declared (il)legitimate or (un)desirable in world politics (Beattie et al., 2019), there is an absence of a clear-cut theory of emotions: what we have is a more open-ended sensibility that aims to trace the impact of emotions on world politics even where and when it is not instantly apparent (Bleiker and Hutchison 2018). As such, the emotional turn conveys a discontent over lack of focus on embodied experience; but what this ‘turn’ entails is far from clear (Rythoven and Sucharov 2020). 10. According to Samantha Matherne (2015, 738–739), ‘in contemporary philosophy of mind, there is a tendency to distinguish between imaginative and perceptual activities: whereas the former…involves imagining something that is not and perhaps has never been present to us, e.g., in visualization or make-believe, [the activity of] perceiving appears to be quite different, depending on our interaction with what is present here and now…[Though] Kant [shows] commitment to the central role that the imagination and its activity of image formation play in perception… in recent discussions of his philosophy of perception, this line of thought has not yet received due attention’.

References Ames, Roger T., and Wimal Dissanayake. 1996. Self and Deception: A CrossCultural Philosophical Enquiry. Albany: State University of New York Press. Ames, Roger T. 2023. Some Methodological Reflections: In Defense of Philosophy of Culture and Thick Generalizations.” In Bridging Two Worlds: Comparing Classical Political Thought and Statecraft in India and China, edited by Daniel Bell, Amitav Acharya, Rajeev Bhargava, and Yan Xuetong, 59–73. Oakland: University of California Press. Barbalet, J.M. 2001. Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beattie, A.R., C. Eroukhmanoff, and N. Head. 2019. Introduction: Interrogating the ‘Everyday’ Politics of Emotions in International Relations. Journal of International Political Theory 15 (2): 136–147. Best, Stephen, and Sharon Marcus. 2009. Surface Reading: An Introduction. Representations 108 (1): 1–21. Bleiker, Roland, and Emma Hutchison. 2018. Methods and Methodologies for the Study of Emotions in World Politics. In Researching Emotions in International Relations: Methodological Perspectives on the Emotional Turn, ed. Maéva. Clément and Eric Sangar, 324–342. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Brace, C. Loring. 2005. Race is a Four-Letter Word. New York: Oxford University Press. Bristow, William. 2017. “Enlightenment.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/enlightenment/. Brook, Andrew and Julian Wuerth. 2023. “Kant’s View of the Mind and Consciousness of Self.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ spr2023/entries/kant-mind/. Callicott, J. Baird., and James McRae. 2017. Japanese Environmental Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press. Clément, Maéva., and Eric Sangar. 2018. Researching Emotions in International Relations: Methodological Perspectives on the Emotional Turn. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Dixon, Thomas. 2003. From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Elden, Stuart. 2011. Reintroducing Kant’s Philosophy. In Reading Kant’s Geography, ed. Stuart Elden and Eduardo Mendieta, 1–18. Albany: State University of New York Press. Elster, Jon. 1999. Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Faye, Jan. 2012. After Postmodernism: A Naturalistic Reconstruction of the Humanities. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Fierke, Karin M. 2023. A lecture on “Revisiting IR through Asian Philosophy” organised by the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. https://youtu.be/ TwHHJef083M González, Ana Marta. 2021a. “Unpacking Moral Feeling: Kantian Clues to a Map of the Moral World.” Kant on Emotions: Critical Essays in the Contemporary Context, edited by Mariannina Failla and Nuria Sánchez Madrid, 25–44. Boston: De Gruyter. González, Ana Marta. 2021b. Kant on Culture, Happiness and Civilization. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Hallowell, Alfred Irving. 1955. Culture and Experience. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Heidemann, D. 2021. Kant and the Forms of Realism. Synthese 198 (13): 3231– 3252. Herz, John H. 1951. Political Realism and Political Idealism: A Study in Theories and Realities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hills, Alison. 2006. Kant on Happiness and Reason. History of Philosophy Quarterly 23 (3): 243–261. Huber, Jakob. 2017. Cosmopolitanism for Earth Dwellers: Kant on the Right to Be Somewhere. Kantian Review 22 (1): 1–25.

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Jackson, Reginald. 1942. Kant’s Distinction between Categorical and Hypothetical Imperatives. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 43: 131–166. Jauernig, Anja. 2021. The World According to Kant: Appearances and Things in Themselves in Critical Idealism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jervis, Robert. 1976. Perception and Misperception in International Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kant, Immanuel. 1802. Physische Geographie [Physical Geography] Konigsberg: Goebbels und Unzer. Kant, Immanuel. 1959. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and What is Enlightenment. Translated by L.W. Beck. New York: Liberal Arts Press. Kant, Immanuel. 1963. “Duties to Animals and Spirits.” In Lectures on Ethics. Translated by L. Infeld. New York: Harper and Row. Kant, Immanuel. 2011. Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime and Other Writings, edited by Patrick Frierson and Paul Guyer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lakatos, Imre. 1980. The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Volume 1: Philosophical Papers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lebow, Richard N. 2005. Reason, Emotion and Cooperation. International Politics 42 (3): 283–313. Louden, Robert B. 2011. Kant’s Human Being: Essays on His Theory of Human Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marwah, Inder S. 2012. Bridging Nature and Freedom? Kant, Culture, and Cultivation. Social Theory and Practice 38 (3): 385–406. Matherne, Samantha. 2015. Images and Kant’s Theory of Perception. Ergo 2 (29): 737–777. McDermott, Rose. 2014. The Body Doesn’t Lie: A Somatic Approach to the Study of Emotions in World Politics. International Theory 6 (3): 557–562. Mittelman, Robert, and Douglas Dow. 2018. Biases in Charitable Giving to International Humanitarian Aid: The Role of Psychic Distance. Journal of Macromarketing 38 (4): 383–399. Montagu, Ashley. 1905–1999. “Immanuel Kant: Of the Different Human Races.” The Idea of Race, 8–22. Nussbaum, Martha C. 2001. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Penttinen, Elina. 2013. Joy and International Relations: A New Methodology. New York: Routledge. Pereira, Roberto Horácio, and de Sá. 2022. Constructivism in Kant’s Theoretical Philosophy. Humanities & Social Sciences Communications 9 (264): 1–8. Pieczara, Kamila. 2010. “Two Modes of Dialogue in IR: Testing on Western versus Non-Western Engagement with IR Theory.” Millennium Annual Conference, LSE: 1–17.

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Potter, Karl H. 1981. Advaita Vedanta up to Shankara and his Pupils. Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, Vol. III . New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. Raykovska, Milena, Giovanni La Placa, Florian Schwendinger, Zsuzsanna Pasztor, David Mair, Laura Smillie, and René van Bavel. 2019. “Understanding Our Political Nature: How to Put Knowledge and Reason at the Heart of Political Decision-Making.” EU Publications. https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2760/ 374191 Richards, Paul. 1974. Kant’s Geography and Mental Maps. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 61: 1–16. Rogers, Chrissie. 2016. Intellectual Disability and Being Human: A Care Ethics Model. London and New York: Routledge. Rooney. Ellen. 2017. Symptomatic Reading is a Problem of Form. In Critique and Postcritique, ed. Elizabeth S. Anker and Rita Felski, 127–152. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Van Rythoven, Eric, and Mira Sucharov. 2020. Methodology and Emotion in International Relations: Parsing the Passions. New York: Routledge. Saunders, Leland F. 2016. Reason and Emotion, Not Reason or Emotion in Moral Judgment. Philosophical Explorations 19 (3): 252–267. Scheff, Thomas J. 1990. Microsociology: Discourse, Emotion and Social Structure. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Shahi, Deepshikha. 2018. Advaita as a Global International Relations Theory. London: Routledge. Shimizu, Kosuke. 2022. The Kyoto School and International Relations: NonWestern Attempts for a New World Order. New York: Routledge. Thomson, Jonny. 2021. “The Happiness Problem: Why Kant thought You’d Never be Happy.” Big Think. https://bigthink.com/thinking/kant-happin ess-problem/ Walker, Ralph C. S. 2010. Kant on the Number of Worlds. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 18 (5): 821–843. Walker, R.B.J. 2006. Lines of Insecurity: International, Imperial, Exceptional. Security Dialogue 37 (1): 65–82. Williams, Jessica. 2022. Kant’s Two Worlds. Metascience 1 (1): 33–36. Wuerth, Julian. 2014. Kant on Mind, Action, and Ethics. Oxford Academic. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199587629.003.0007. Zhao, Tingyang. 2018. “Can this Ancient Chinese Philosophy Save Us from Global Chaos?” The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ news/theworldpost/wp/2018/02/07/tianxia/

Global IR: A Paradigm? No, a Research Programme

One cannot learn about the world even from one’s mistakes, one cannot detect genuine epistemological error unless one has a theory of truth, and a theory of how one may recognize increasing or decreasing truth-content (Lakatos 1980, 156). Global IR is rapidly emerging as a valid truthseeking research agenda. Nevertheless, its obscure theoretical grounding generates some puzzles. Is Global IR situated upon a specialized monotheoretical base? Or is it a poly-theoretical device to diversify the existing theories of Western IR and non-Western IR? Is Global IR theoretically devoted to depict the particularist local-pictures of ‘somewhere/s’ or universalist global-pictures of ‘anywhere/s’? If Global IR seeks to theorise both local- and global-pictures, then how does it rationally reconcile the particularity of local-pictures (many separated worlds) with the universality of global-pictures (one connected world)? Even the post-pandemic world tends to recast the same question on different terms: do we live in closely connected one world, or do we live in mutually separated many worlds? The mainstream IR theories answer the query related to the one-and-many-ness of the world in an ‘either-or’ fashion: either we live in one world of globalizing capitalism centered on a single hegemonic power (US or China?), or we live in many worlds containing many voices, including the anti-hegemonic voices of indigenous people often relegated to the sphere of myths, legends or beliefs. Contrary to this either-or © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Shahi, Global IR Research Programme, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39121-7_2

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answer, the recent Global IR texts (inspired by several Chinese, Indian, and Japanese worldviews) envisage a world which is concurrently ‘one and many’: that is to say, the unity of a single world lies underneath the diversity of plural worlds. This chapter aims to clarify how these texts—which rationalize an epistemology of monism (one world) without diluting the ontology of pluralism (many worlds)—resolve the puzzles of Global IR, thereby establishing it as a futuristic research programme. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first section sheds light on the intellectual origins of the idea of Global IR: it illustrates how the idea of Global IR eventually came to disapprove the compartmentalized knowledge-forms of both Western IR and non-Western IR (including post- and de-colonial IR) so as to emphasize the need to reconcile the West–non-West binaries. The second section recounts the challenges faced by the idea of Global IR: it explicates how the need to reconcile the West–non-West binaries compelled Global IR to go beyond its perspectival predisposition and acquire a theoretical thrust. Finally, the third section lays out the theoretical trajectory of Global IR: it argues that this trajectory obeys the principles of a Lakatosian research programme (where multiple theories with shared hard-core assumptions cooperatively corroborate their findings of truth and regularly revaluate their increasing or decreasing truth-content), not a Kuhnian paradigm (where one theory claims superiority over or incommensurability with the truth released by rival theories). This chapter demonstrates how multiple theories of the Global IR research programme—with shared hard-core assumptions about the need to reconcile the West–non-West binaries and foreground the West–non-West complementarities—empower IR scholars and strategists to envision a possible merger of the particularity of many separated worlds with the universality of one connected world.

Territorial Threshold of Global IR: Western or Non-Western? Ever since its inception, the research agenda of Global IR has been continually concerned with the issues involving the ‘globality’ of IR (Acharya 2014). But the perception of a Global world—as the territorial container of globality—was not new. The perception of a Global world was largely an upshot of the process of mapping that projected the world as a cohesive social totality through cartographical means prior to, and concurrent with, the Western imperial projects: mapping was prioritized

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as it allowed the Western imperial projects to control social practices on a global scale, as if the world was a single unified space (Strandsbjerg 2010). Subsequently, the academic approach to this ‘single unified space’—widely taken for granted as the ‘Global’ time–space-matrix within which Western and non-Western worlds interrelate (Massey 2012)— became fraught with Western-centrism (Hoffmann 1977, Wæver 1998, Grovogui 2006, Kayaoglu 2010, Acharya 2011, Schmidt 2014, Capan 2017). In line with Western-centrism, the events that occurred in the West were championed as the ‘big bangs of IR’. It was held that the idea of modern anarchic-sovereign-states-system burst into being in the Westphalian towns of Münster and Osnabrück where the Peace of Westphalia was signed in 1648. With a view to consolidate this modern anarchicsovereign-states-system—which was invented in Europe and exported to non-Western parts of the globe via imperialism—a distinct department for IR study was established at the University of Aberystwyth in the UK after the first world war in 1919. In addition, several improvements in IR study were achieved with the scientific progresses that took place in the US after the end of the second world war in 1945. By and large, IR study remained ‘simply an abstraction of Western history’ (Buzan 2016, 156). The major incidents of Western history—e.g., Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta, thirty years’ war, industrial revolution, the rise of capitalism and its imperialist transfer to colonies, first world war, second world war, cold war, post-cold war world order, and so on—determined the dominating meanings of IR theory and practice. No meanings of IR theory and practice were derived from the non-Western pre-colonial, colonial, or post-colonial history of war and peace.1 In IR theory, the centrality of Western history informed the axiom presented by E. H. Carr’s classic The Twenty Years’ Crisis (1946) that IR was born in 1919, that ‘[IR] child was conceived on the blood-stained battlefields of Europe…whose mother had gone through an extremely traumatic 48-month gestation period’ (Hobson 2012, 133), so that IR could grow up, evolve through a series of ‘great debates’,2 and fulfill its noble mission, namely, the abolition of war and poverty, thereby securing peace and growth for all peoples populating the globe. In IR practice, before 1945, Europe tried to fulfill IR’s noble mission by ‘balance-ofpower’—i.e., the belief that the stability of an international system is fortified through an estimated parity between its major powers. After 1945, the US sought to manage IR through ‘multilateralism’—i.e., the thought that the legitimacy of an international system is guaranteed

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through the participation of all states in international institutions, e.g., the UN. Though this US-sponsored multilateralism proposed an openness to all states, it was influenced by the preferences of the US and its European allies (Acharya 2017a). In sum, the orthodox reading of a Global world relied on the misconceptions of Western history as world history (Acharya and Buzan 2019). What is more, the misconceptions of Western history as world history—which were reiterated through IR’s great debates and catalysed into normalised theoretical-practical strategies to govern globality—sidelined not just non-Western history but also non-Western knowledge-forms. Throughout the first great debate (idealist-realist debate), when IR theory was seen as a codification of political practice (Carr 1946), the discipline’s hub stayed confined to the West. Indisputably, the idealistrealist discussions were inherent in non-Western textual traditions. The Chinese pre-Qin classic showed how ‘the idealist philosophy of Confucius and Mencius [disproved the realist philosophy of] Xunxi [who advocated] …the evil nature of human beings and thus emphasized not only the role of morals but also the effects of forces in both governance and diplomacy’ (Xuetong 2020a, 213). The Indian classic, Kautilya’s Artha´s¯astra, displayed how Kautilya integrated ‘the idealistic (moralpolitik) and realistic (realpolitik) views on human life, thereby seeking a sort of sustainable development in international society wherein ‘each self makes every effort to live for the other/s, and all collectively for the welfare of the mankind’ (Shahi 2019a, 69–70). Besides, the Japanese Shint¯oist orientation contended that human beings (and, by extension, the world) were inherently good: ‘there was no Manichean conflict of substantive forces of good and evil, for moral evil was a temporary affliction that was to be overcome, like a shadow that is dissipated by the sunlight…since there was no absolute good or evil…any attempt to spell out the distinctions in a tightly reasoned system would fail’ (Wargo 1990, 504–505).3 Discarding these non-Western sensitivities, it was Carr’s admiration for German national-socialism and his scorn for British liberal tradition that primarily pushed the IR theory of political realism. For Carr, ‘the irresistible strength of existing forces’ did not imply the unchangeable human nature that Hobbesian political realism accepted as a given fact, but the scientific laws of evolution to be realized by Kant’s pure reason (Navon 2001). But then again, interwar progressives like Carr and his liberal critics, ‘were like shop owners cognisant of the fact that an overhaul of the [IR] business…was long overdue but at no time willing to contemplate a

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change in ownership…few of them questioned…the continued hegemony of the West and more narrowly the Anglosphere’ (Wilson 2012, 27). During the second great debate (history-science debate), when IR theory was reframed as a scientific method with high precision (Kaplan 1966), many strands of Continental European IR followed Hedley Bull’s historical-philosophical-legal line with varied versions of Marxism playing some role (Jørgensen 2000). Notwithstanding the Anglosaxon leaning of this debate, the US-based Rockefeller Foundation took keen interest in it, mainly because the classical demeanour of European-taught-emigres clashed with the US-type empiricist social science (Guilhot 2011). It was only in the course of the third great debate (inter-paradigmatic debate), when IR theory began to become a meta-theory or theorisation about theory (Hamilton 2016), that the US grabbed the discipline’s spotlight for the first time (Hellmann 2003). This debate supported seemingly incommensurable rival paradigms of realism, pluralism, and structuralism (Banks 1985). Later, it was criticized for tempering the dispositions of a ‘real theory’: even if Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics (1979) tried to outdo Hans J. Morgenthau’s ‘unscientific’ classical realism and paint a more ‘scientific’, and, thus, more parsimonious neorealist systemic picture, it neglected the principles of speculation and ethical-philosophical posturing; in time, Waltz’s legacy was reinterpreted as ‘Waltz without Waltzianism’ (Wæver 2009) or ‘Waltz without neorealism’ (LaRoche and Pratt 2018). Furthermore, the rival paradigms of the third debate espoused a common positivist gesture; for that reason, this debate came to be ‘seen as a debate not to be won, but a pluralism to live with’ (Wæver 1996, 162). Definitely, the rudiments of pluralism were traceable in non-Western intellectual backgrounds. Pluralism varyingly motivated IR scholars and policymakers in India (Beitelmair-Berini 2021) as well as China (Kristensen and Nielsen 2013). In fact, Japanese social sciences (since 1868) and IR theory (since 1945) accepted pluralism by including four distinct paradigms that coexisted ‘fairly amicably without many efforts made towards integration’, i.e., staatslehre (detailed description of complex phenomena); oppositionswissenschaft (science of opposition); historicism (standard principle of ‘let the facts speak for themselves’); and empiricism (behavioural social science) (Inoguchi 2002, 114). Nevertheless, the tug-of-war to establish the dominant method of science was played out between the British and American IR circles. As time went by, the positivist/rationalist scientific pluralism came to be confronted with the post-positivist/reflectivist anti-scientific pluralism,

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thereby provoking the fourth great debate. Refuting the positivist presumption that the perceiver’s ‘subjective values’ remained neutral to the perceived ‘objective facts’, the post-positivist influx in IR theory— involving different offshoots of constructivism, critical international theory, post-modernism, and feminism—admitted that the perceiver’s subjective values (socio-cultural setting, ideological position etc.) affected the factual credentials of a theory as a meta-narrative (Sørensen 1998). Because the same social facts could be altered by plural subjective values (Wendt 1992), it was not possible to have a single winning science (Jackson 2010) or a single winning IR theory (Guzzini 2013). These remarkable realizations set the stage for greater inclusion of nonWestern theorisations. For instance, Alexander Wendt’s constructivism, which crafted the ‘constitutive-theory’ as a middle ground between positivist-explanatory-theory and post-positivist-normative-theory, stimulated divergent shades of non-Western theorisations, e.g., ‘relational theory’ in China (Yaqing 2018), ‘eclectic theory’ in India (Shahi 2019a), and ‘Japanese constructivist theory’ in Japan (Ong 2004). However, it was lamented that though constructivism, with its focus on culture and identity, surpassed ‘its initial privileging of Western norm and norm protagonists, it continued to ignore issues of race and pre-Westphalian civilizations in Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere that might bring new insights in IR study’ (Acharya and Buzan 2017a, 345). Gradually, the increased incorporation of the hitherto denigrated non-Western insights began to interrupt several engrained myths of conventional IR study. A critical commentary on the Aberystwyth Papers contradicted the conjectures that the Peace of Westphalia gave birth to political units of sovereign-states, and that IR was born out of the ruins of the first world war (Carvalho et al. 2011). The historiographical account of the linkage between Europe, the Middle East and Asia, the imperialist conquest of the Americas prior to 1648, and the interstices of race, empire and science in South Africa clarified the impact these relations had on the advancement of sovereign-states in Europe (Hobson 2009; Thakur and Vale 2020). The contextual description of Carr’s classic disclosed how the post-1919 mission of averting war was chiefly about averting war in Europe so as to preserve the Western civilization (Kristensen 2021). And an overall rereading of IR’s canonical texts exposed the ‘myths’ of Carr-inspired first great debate (Wilson 1998) and other great debates: while these debates defined IR study as a chain of theories that followed dissimilar ontologies and epistemologies to tackle dissimilar

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problems, they turned out to be myths as they omitted similar problems and mutual motivations, and overstated differences over commonalities (Behr and Williams 2017). In general, it was recognized that IR myths could be historically true or false (Weber 2001). But IR myths functioned as narratives that told us who we were and what we were supposed to be concerned with, thereby providing blueprints for policy-choices. Since IR myths bended our imaginings and lived-realities (Leira and de Carvalho 2018), it was considered crucial to critically engage with such myths so as to destabilize what was taken for granted, and to permit the previously excluded non-Western imaginings, perhaps some ‘more desirable myths’ to facilitate an all-encompassing development of the discipline (Mathieu 2020). Progressively, IR study did not always remain utterly devoid of nonWestern imaginings. While Western-centrism—in its historical, ideological, and residual forms (Kuru 2016)—dominated the cold war and postcold war phases of world politics (Hobson 2012), the decline in the US hegemony after the 2007 financial crisis created a vacuum that called for an enhanced non-Western intervention. Florent Frasson-Quenoz (2016, 53–54) narrated: The last economic crisis [2007 financial crisis] strengthened those who defend the idea that the international system has drifted from unipolarity to “apolarity”; that is to say, that the current state system is under no leadership. Exhausted and discredited, the American superpower is presented as a wanderer without the capacity nor the will to impose its rule…In the midst of uncertainty – generated by the narratives of the decline of the United States – academics are looking for answers and cerebral stimulus in the heart of the academic Terra Incognita that is the “Global South”…[these] narratives allow for a contextualization of a much more interesting phenomenon: the increasing attention “non-Western” thinking receives in our discipline.

While the 2007 financial crisis heralded the ‘death of the old UK growth model’ (Reid 2022), the amplified attention given to non-Western thinking shaped two varieties of IR discourses: (i) derivative; and (ii) exceptionalist. A few non-Western IR scholars tried to differently decode their local political realities but squeezed their readings into the positivist or post-positivist modes of Western IR. In these cases, the West–non-West scholarly competition resulted in ‘imitation’ (Pieczara 2010), thereby

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causing intellectual reproduction in the discipline. Such intellectual reproduction succeeded in launching some national IR schools in the non-West (e.g., Korean and East Asian IR schools), but ended up disseminating a ‘derivative discourse’ of Western IR (Chen 2011). And when other nonWestern IR scholars—e.g., different groups of post- and de-colonial IR scholars—stressed the limits of Western analytical categories in the conditions of post-colonial life-worlds, or identified the coloniality of IR as a problem with a view to insert de-colonial thinking, they ended up engineering an ‘exceptionalist discourse’ that aroused a temperament of ‘cultural essentialism’ (Mena 2020) or ‘regional inwardness’ (Eun 2020), thereby reproducing the very parochialism one intended to overcome.4 In IR theory, both the derivative and exceptionalist discourses of non-Western IR approved the same Kantian dualism that underpropped Western-centrism. Kantian dualism prioritized the scientific study of world-in-appearance (phenomena) over and above the metaphysical enquiry of world-in-itself (noumena). It also established the time and space as the conditioning-limits that expressed human intuitions of the phenomenal world in terms of subject-object separation: as a subject’s encounter with the objects of the phenomenal world was filtered through the conditioning-limits or perceptive-prisms of time and space, the subject-object/subject-subject separation always moulded a Kantian knowledge-situation. Logically, the visible many-ness of phenomenal world (as it remained divorced from invisible oneness of noumenal world) solidified all kinds of subject-object, self-other, local–global, and West–non-West separation.5 The West (as subject/self) claimed theoretical universality and constrained the non-West to local domains, and the non-West (as temporally-spatially separated object/other) reacted to the West’s arrogant claims and appropriated for itself the privilege to theorise local domains. To counter the West’s claims to theoretical universality, the non-Western post- and de-colonial discourses made an appeal to portray a holist reality of IR: a holist reality that must combine the ‘missing local narratives of/from the non-West’ with the ‘provincialized global narratives of/from the West’ so as to excavate the complete truths of IR (Duvall and Varadarajan 2007). Edward Said’s notion of ‘contrapuntal reading’ tried to mix ‘global moment of humanism’ with the ‘postcolonial moment of listening-to-and-hearing the voices of/from alternative loci of enunciation’ (Chowdhry 2007); in effect, it attempted to achieve an ‘anti-universalizing’ fusion between Western exceptionalism and nonWestern exceptionalism (Cocks 2000). Also, Walter D. Mignolo’s concept

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of ‘delinking’ expected the non-Western knowledge-forms to dissociate from two foremost Western-centric macro-narratives—capitalism and communism; as this scheme of de-linking strived to sponsor ‘diversality/ pluriversality’ (not universality) (Taylor 2012), it propagated ‘plural local exceptionalisms’ (not plural global universalisms). For sure, the exceptionalisms guiding the post- and de-colonial discourses of non-Western IR replicated the Kantian dualism of Western IR: just like Western IR preserved the separation between the West (as subject/self) and the non-West (as object/other), the post- and de-colonial discourses of nonWestern IR inverted this Kantian knowledge-situation and maintained the separation between the non-West (as subject/self) and the West (as object/other) (Shahi 2018). In IR practice, this Kantian dualism produced divisive self-other interactions between varied temporally-spatially separated binary groupings: e.g., West/non-West, colonial/post-colonial, oriental/occidental, core/ periphery, Global North/Global South, developed/underdeveloped, elites/masses, haves/have-nots, hyper-masculine-self/hyper-feminineother etc. Alarmingly, this Kantian dualism, which manifested as the ‘post-/de-colonial Euro-fetishism’ by way of inverting the binaries of ‘non-West versus West’, unleashed some potential political dangers. John M. Hobson (2020, 26–27) elaborated: [There are] potential political dangers…of Eurofetishism, the first of which is that this approach…can reinforce the old imperial trope that ‘the sun never sets on the Western empire’ and ‘all non-western resistance is futile’. By fetishising the West and denying [a de-Kantian theoretical-practical] agency to non-Western peoples…Eurofetishism ends up by eternalising and naturalising Western imperial domination…and painting the nonWest as imprisoned permanently within a Western iron cage while global liberal-capitalism marks, in effect, ‘the end of history’…But Western imperial hierarchy came late to Afro-Asia, emerging globally after the midnineteenth century and even then non-Western agency continued both inside and outside the shadow of empire…Second, Eurofetishism’s insistence on awarding the West a monopoly of evil/brutality and power/ agency means that those instances in which Afro-Asian forms of power and oppressions have played out within the non-Western world are silenced…Eurofetishism can be appealed to and used by those non-Western states that oppress their own populations but cynically blame the imperial West for all human wrongs…Thus, the antidote to Eurofetishism

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is to factor in the co-constitutive relations between Western and nonWestern actors that move and ricochet backwards and forwards across the ‘Western-centric frontier’.

The resolve to assess the ‘co-constitutive relations’ between Western and non-Western actors (that move and ricochet backwards and forwards across the Western-centric frontier) required a censuring of the compartmentalized knowledge-forms of the territorial West and non-West. A growing number of IR scholars felt the need for a cautious crafting of innovative pathways to territorially de-center IR knowledge and rationally reconcile the West–non-West binaries. These objectives began to drive the research agenda of Global IR.6 Categorically, Global IR acknowledged that the search for complementarities between the wide-ranging Western and non-Western actors/worldviews/philosophies/narratives/discourses was compulsory not only for theoretical comprehension of global multipolarity (or many worlds that constitute the globe that we willingly or unwillingly share with each other) but also for practical reconstitution of empirically effective Western agency in non-Western worlds and non-Western agency in Western worlds (Onar and Nicolaïdis 2013). In the existing Global IR literature, the efforts to territorially de-center IR knowledge and rationally reconcile the West–non-West binaries are pronounced under the labels of ‘synthesis’ (Acharya 2014), ‘hybridity’ (Phillips 2016), ‘connectedness’ (Shahi 2018), ‘conversation’ (Fierke and Jabri 2019), ‘dialogue’ (Kuru 2020), ‘relationality’ (Kurki 2021), ‘eclecticism’ (Paul 2022) etc. Some of these labels have sketched radical roadmaps to escape the closed compartments of both Western IR and non-Western IR with an intent to arrive at the open horizons of Global IR. And the open horizons of Global IR have exceeded their preliminary perspectival predisposition to acquire a theoretical thrust.

Intellectual Instigation of Global IR: Perspectival or Theoretical? It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that the theoretical journey of Global IR has been somewhat jerky: it started with the interrogation of ‘why there is no non-Western IR theory’, landed in the dilemma of ‘non-Western versus post-Western search of IR theory’, and then jumped across a series of shifting statements about how and why ‘Global IR cannot resolve inter-paradigmatic debates of IR theory’, or ‘Global IR

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is not a theory, but a perspective’, or ‘Global IR is not a single theory’, before arriving at the position of enduringly procuring a specialized theoretical foundation. In what follows, an effort has been made to critically analyse the aforementioned stages in the theoretical journey of Global IR so as to accomplish two goals: (i) eliminate the continuing confusions regarding the theoretical credentials of Global IR; and (ii) indicate the practical policy-relevance of the theoretical insinuations of Global IR. The genetics of the research agenda of Global IR can be found in a forum published in 2007 in the International Relations of the Asia– Pacific, where a group of IR scholars addressed the question: ‘Why is there no Non-Western International Relations theory?’ This forum pursued a three-fold programme: first, it reminded that the mainstream IR theories were rooted in, and beholden to, the history, intellectual tradition and agency claims of the West to accord little more than a marginal place to those of the non-Western world; second, it examined various political and institutional reasons for the underdevelopment of IR theory outside of the West; and third, it identified some of the possible sources of non-Western IR theorisations, including indigenous history and culture, the thoughts of local nationalist leaders, distinctive regional interaction patterns, and the writings of the scholars working in or about nonWestern regions (Acharya and Buzan 2007). Though the term ‘Global IR’ was absent from these deliberations, the forum vociferously underlined that IR theorisation—in its miscellaneous semblances of ‘hard/ soft theory’, ‘systemic/sub-systemic theory’, or ‘pre-/post-theory’—had converted into a ‘global activity’ involving ‘global distribution of subjects’ (though quite unevenly distributed, even within the West), and therefore, there was an urgency to initiate a ‘global debate’ (addressing both the Western and non-Western audiences) about the use of local knowledge to develop definitive frameworks for analysing ‘global processes’ of world politics. In due course, this forum’s legacy inspired the annual convention of International Studies Association (ISA) on the theme of ‘Global IR and Regional Worlds: A New Agenda for International Studies’, an event that formally launched the research agenda of Global IR in 2014. Remarkably, this forum’s ambition to bridge the ‘West–non-West gap’ and ‘local–global gap’ succeeded in cultivating the seeds of what slowly stemmed out as ‘middle-range theories’ that remained empirically grounded in the non-West. Appraising the decade-long impact of this forum, Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan (2017, 344) commented:

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The rise of middle-range theories has mixed implications for those seeking to open IRT [or IR theory] up to the non-Western world. On the one hand, they have…stoked the curiosity of Western scholars in the wider world of regions and helped to engage the interest of non-Western scholars in IRT. On the other hand, this type of work is also primarily, if not always, deductive. It is more concerned with testing the empirical validity of existing concepts than developing entirely new concepts and theories on the basis of new or previously neglected empirical data. The concepts and causal mechanisms it employs for its deductive reasoning are derived mainly from the Western history and experience. This entrenches the tradition of Western dominance in IRT.

While the non-Western middle-range theories reinforced the Western dominance in IR theory, an emergent body of IR scholars made a call to inaugurate substitute research projects that aimed to accentuate the importance of building ‘post-Western’, not ‘non-Western’, theories. Giorgio Shani (2008, 722) advised that the post-Western IR must deploy non-Western ideas to create ‘a critique that goes beyond the mimicry of the derivative discourses of the modern West’. Even though Pinar Bilgin (2008, 5) alerted that the non-Western ‘mimicry may emerge as a way of doing world politics in a seemingly similar yet unexpectedly different way’,7 Navnita Chadha Behera (2010, 92) suspected that this mimicry ‘would at best, earn a small, compartmentalized space within the master narrative of…Western IR’; therefore, the challenge was ‘not to discover or produce non-Western IR theory…but for the…IR community to work towards fashioning a post-Western IR’. To put a rest to the question of labels, Amitav Acharya (2011, 621) warned that ‘the alternative categories of Third World, Global South, subaltern, post-colonial, post-Western, will each prove to be equally unsatisfactory’; thus, one must simply focus on avoiding the ‘West versus the Rest dichotomy’ while formulating Global IR. With the passage of time, Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan (2017, 354) did recognize that ‘labels matter’ but urged to ‘regard non-Western or post-Western as part of a broader challenge of reimagining IR as a global discipline’ and prescribed several pathways for doing Global IR: (i) commitment to pluralistic universalism; (ii) grounding in world history; (iii) redefining existing IR theories and methods by incorporating novel perspectives from hitherto overlooked non-Western societies; (iv) integrating the study of regions and regionalisms into the central concerns of IR study; (v) avoiding ethnocentrism and exceptionalism; and (vi)

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recording multiple forms of agency, including the normative agency of non-Western actors. To be sure, these pathways stood firm in their determination to overtake the limitations of Western IR. However, the erratic labelling of research projects pursuing these pathways as ‘non-Western’ or ‘postWestern’ continued to generate substantial ambiguity. This ambiguity emanated from the disagreements about the relative merit of ‘nonWestern’ and ‘post-Western’ projects in the Global IR research agenda on the one hand, and the obscurity in forming a general definition of ‘non-Western’ and ‘post-Western’ on the other (Shahi 2019b). From the viewpoint of merit, the strategy of ‘non-Western worlding’ was thought to be deficient as it ended up ‘seeing the world from a particular perspective centred by Western epistemology, [thereby] projecting the world as imagined by the Western eye’ (Ozkaleli and Ozkaleli 2022, 192); alternatively, the approach of ‘post-Western re-worlding’ was preferred as it permitted ‘the ever-changing and differing meanings of IR to be released from the monopolistic grasp by one exclusionary epistemology, i.e., [the exclusionary epistemology of Kantian dualism, so that the] agency could be rediscovered at non-Western sites for adaptation, feedback and reconstruction of the Western influences’ (Hwang et al. 2022, 102) (emphasis added). At the level of definition, the ‘non-Western worlding’ imbibed a perspectival predisposition, whereas the ‘post-Western re-worlding’ was more open to epistemological rebuilding in IR and, thus, carried a theoretical thrust.8 To a certain extent, the perspectival predisposition stalled the prospects of framing a Global IR theory. Amitav Acharya (2016) announced: It is important to bear in mind that Global IR is not meant to be a theory, but a perspective, similar to Global History…It seeks broadening and deepening the academic study of international life in order to make it truly universal…Global IR cannot resolve inter-paradigmatic debates in IR, but should be an avenue to transcend it…So what does it mean to “do” Global IR? Doing Global IR is not simply adding a case-study from non-Western parts of the world…Such works mainly end up applying theories from the West. It is also not done by simply highlighting the exclusion of regions, themes, or non-Western voices. This has already been done in a good deal of recent work on postcolonialism and Non-Western IR Theory…it is also not done by treating Global IR as if it were a theory in itself that merely needs to be “applied” to different world contexts…the key…is to “bring the Rest in”: to end the marginalization of the non-Western and Global

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South’s ideas, history, voices, and agency…it is important to have as many voices as possible, representing different subfields: development, security, feminist IR, foreign policy, IR theory…This will be consistent with a core principle of Global IR, which is to engage in broad conversation across perspectives, rather than a dialogue of the like-minded, or preaching to the converted.

These statements conveyed three guidelines: first, Global IR was supposed to be more perspectival than theoretical; second, Global IR was distinct from post-/de-colonialism and various other strands of non-Western IR theory; third, Global IR was directed toward pluralism—or ‘diversification’ by involving ‘as many voices as possible’—on different subfields of IR, including IR theory. Differentiating ‘Global IR pluralism’ from ‘Western-centric IR pluralism’, Acharya and Buzan (2017, 355) clarified: unlike Western-centric IR where pluralism looks for ‘unity or synthesis among theories…[or] embraces theoretical diversity as a means of providing more comprehensive and multi-dimensional accounts of complex phenomena…pluralism in Global IR does not accept and preserve existing theories as is, but expects them to give due recognition to the places, roles, and contributions of non-Western peoples and societies… Global IR is…more about pluralization within theories, rather than just between them.’ Explaining the attribute of ‘pluralization within theories’, Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan (2019, 304) stated: Global IR does not leave the mainstream theories – realism, liberalism and constructivism – as is. Instead, it urges them to rethink their assumptions and broaden the scope of their investigation. For realism, the challenge is to look beyond conflicts induced by national interest and distribution of power and acknowledge other sources of agency, including culture, ideas and norms that make states and civilisations not clash, but embrace and learn from each other. For liberals, there is a similar challenge to look beyond American hegemony…Liberalism also needs to acknowledge the significant variations in cooperative behaviour that exist in different local contexts… For constructivism, taking stock of different forms of agency in the creation and diffusion of ideas and norms remains a major challenge.

Since Global IR’s ‘pluralization within theories’ proposed to subsume (not disavow/displace) the mainstream theories of Western IR, such as, realism, liberalism, constructivism etc., it remained non-Western in terms of ‘input’ (it borrowed from non-Western knowledge-forms) but

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Western in terms of ‘output’: by way of making a move to transcend, and not resolve, the inter-paradigmatic debates, it merely appended a range of non-Western perspectives upon the Western paradigms/theories of realism, liberalism, constructivism etc. Allegedly, even if the non-Western perspectives proceeded to transcend the inter-paradigmatic debates by way of appending China’s ‘moral realism’, India’s ‘Kautilyan realism’, or Japan’s ‘pacifist realism’,9 they were unable to transcend the ‘Lockean heartland’: since these non-Western perspectives re-established the idea of a Lockean state ‘governed by a constitutional monarch controlled by a parliament, a state that served a…self-regulating civil society by protecting private property at home and abroad’, they inadvertently got caught up in a ‘trap of diversity’ which reinstated ‘the antinomy between (materialist) empiricism and (religious-idealist) moral judgement, which was the main characteristic of the English-speaking social thought’ (Mena 2020). Strikingly, even though these non-Western perspectives reinstated the antinomy between materialist-empiricism and religious-moralism, they served two purposes. First, they did not leave the mainstream theories as is: for instance, the Chinese ‘moral realism’ asserted that ‘the popularity of an action defines the morality of the action, irrespective of whether the cause of the popularity is because of [religious-]political values or secular interest’ (Xuetong 2020b, 2); the Indian ‘Kautilyan realism’ presented the religiopolitical trait of ‘moral-energetic action as a form of power (‘psychological power’) and, thus, destabilized the ‘power versus morality’ debates that often caused a disquiet in multiple theories of Eurocentric IR’ (Shahi 2019a, 119); furthermore, the Japanese pacifist realists, despite being depicted as ‘religiously irrational’, ‘portrayed pacifism not as an alternative to realism, but rather as its logical conclusion’ (Gustafsson et al. 2019, 515). Second, as these non-Western perspectives did not leave the mainstream theories as is, they disrupted the taken-for-granted mindset that the ability to theorise realism/liberalism/constructivism was the sole prerogative of the West.10 In IR theory, the act of challenging this mindset (that the ability to theorise realism etc. was the sole prerogative of the West) resulted in reshuffling the fixed intellectual-strategic identities of the West and the non-West. In IR practice, this reshuffling triggered the imaginings of a ‘multiplex world order’ (Acharya 2017b): i.e., a world order that did not solely depend upon the intellectual-strategic leadership of a few Western actors (who owned the intellectual status of ‘theory maker’ and the strategic status of ‘major power’), but prioritized issue-oriented global

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governance by plural Western and non-Western actors (who were free to theorise and strategize IR on the basis of their own perspectives). At the moment, this multiplex world order does not aspire to commit to a single global order, liberal or otherwise—it disproves the vision of ‘one world’ (dominated by the Western homogeneity). Instead, it predicts the advent of a complex of crosscutting, if not competing, international orders—i.e., the idea of ‘many worlds’ (embodied by the non-Western heterogeneity). But then, this multiplex world order seems to stands for an ‘inclusive hierarchy, not against hierarchy per se’ (Parmar 2019, 10). Although this multiplexity is promising in its ability to validate both Western and non-Western contributions, it retains the West–nonWest binaries riding on Kantian dualism. With the present-day upsurge of nationalism and wavering of global institutions (which tightens the Kantian temporal-spatial separations and deepens the West–non-West binaries), an increasing number of economically weaker states of the nonWest—existing in relational binaries with the economically stronger states of the West—find it difficult to ‘think big’ and experience the paradoxical pressure to remain nationalist and globalist at once in their foreign policy-choices (Crandall and Sulg 2020). And when these non-Western and Western states become more nationalist than globalist in their foreign policy-choices, they obstruct an empirically effective Western agency in non-Western worlds and non-Western agency in Western worlds. Of late, the urgency for a strategically effective Western agency in nonWestern worlds and non-Western agency in Western worlds was sensed with the onset of the crisis-situations created by the pandemic. On the one hand, it was anticipated that this greatest global crisis of the century would witness a retreat of globalization and the return of nationalist government (democratic or authoritarian in form), thereby signalling newfound breaks between numerous Western and non-Western worlds; on the other hand, solid assertions were made about how this pandemic was itself a proof of the interconnected Western and non-Western worlds whose shared fortune lied in a human spirit able to show resilience, effectiveness, and leadership (Allen et al. 2020). Some strategists defended the prioritization of local national interests over global collective action as the ‘most optimal approach’ for analysing the responses to this crisis (Basrur and Kliem 2021), but other analysts found these realist responses as ‘far less realistic’ and stressed the need to turn to new theories. Seth A. Johnston (2020) remarked:

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Realist scholars of international relations see the coronavirus as helping to validate this school of thought…As the coronavirus struck, states moved swiftly to close or tighten international borders, restricted movement within their borders, and marshaled security and public health resources…But however much independent national action is understandable or even predictable from realism, so is its inadequacy…Better at explaining risks and dangers than offering solutions, realism’s strengths lie in diagnosis rather than treatment or prevention…Border controls and travel restrictions did not spare states from the pandemic. Even if perfect controls were possible, their desirability is doubtful…the national interest remains unrealized so long as other states have not done the same. Unlike economic or security competition that more easily fits realist considerations of “relative gains” or “zero-sum competitive logic”, transnational catastrophes such as disease unmask the limitations of individual states in an “anarchical” global system…Although realism does much to explain states’ initial reactions to the coronavirus pandemic, one should look to other theories for constructive policy ideas about how to do it better (emphasis added).

Apart from realism, one may arouse liberalism to interpolate ideas about how the capitalist self-interests of Western and non-Western states can be sufficiently served when they make policy-investments toward the vaccination of not only their own citizens but also other citizens, thereby creating favourable conditions for the operation of a free market. One may go by constructivism to further qualify that the states that see each other as friends will have better policy-collaboration in their joint fight against the pandemic than the states that assign each other the identities/intentions of enemies/rivals. Taking a feminist standpoint, one may advise that all states must draw policy-inspirations from the states where female leadership has led to an efficient handing of this crisis. And, one may stick to a post-/de-colonial perspective to argue that the Western and non-Western states with socio-economic disparities cannot execute the same policystrategy to face the hardships of the pandemic. Nevertheless, all these divergent (non-)Western-centric IR theories share an epistemological fixation with Kantian dualism and instigate divisive self-other interactions between varied time–space-bounded categories located in the West and the non-West: for instance, own citizens versus other citizens (in liberalism), friends versus enemies/rivals (in constructivism), female versus male leadership (in feminism), and developed versus underdeveloped economies (in post-/de-colonialism).

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But then, it is the need to improve upon these divisive self-other interactions in the West and the non-West that compels one to search for ‘other theories for constructive policy ideas’. Rebecca Weintraub et al. (2020) argue that the divisive interactions based on ‘vaccine nationalism’—whereby an increasing number of states adopt ‘my nation first’ approach to developing and distributing vaccines/pharmaceutical treatments—results in the failure to cooperate for planning and executing an efficient global strategy. Though some states (knowing that they are only as safe as the ‘weakest link’ in the network of states existing at regional and global levels) decide to offer assistance to ‘others’ to combat Covid-19 outbreak as part of their policy of ‘competitive generosity’, Eric T. Woods et al. (2020) cautions that the entanglement of ‘nationalism’ and ‘politics of blame’ increases the risks of conflict with individuals and communities who are perceived as ‘others’. While Philippe Legrain (2020) affirms that the global shock caused by the pandemic carries the potential to further intensify nationalism and engender a ‘more divided world’, Giuseppe Caruso (2022) sees through the psychoanalytic lenses to confess that the strategic responses of both national governments and global financial institutions have caused disabling feelings of irrelevance.11 Against the backdrop of these dilemmas, one might ask: Can Global IR be the harbinger of ‘other theories for constructive policy ideas’ to deal with the crisis-situations created by transnational catastrophes such as the pandemic? Evidently, the perspectival predisposition of Global IR—with its visualizations of ‘non-Western worlding’, ‘pluralization within theories’, and ‘multiplex world order’—does not go all-out to disrupt the basic epistemological fixation of Western IR theories (e.g., realism, liberalism, or constructivism) with Kantian dualism. The perspectival predisposition of Global IR subscribes to the Kantian temporal-spatial separations and makes minimal moves to territorially de-center IR knowledge and rationally reconcile the West–non-West binaries. The Kantian temporal-spatial separations assume that one cannot have a ‘non-perspectival perspective’ (Shapcott 2001) or an ‘unsituated moral point of view’ (Young 1990, 104): as all perspectives or moral point of views are temporally-spatially situated or territorially centered, ‘it is impossible to adopt [dialogically mediated] universal…accounts of human agency’ that could efficiently respond to global crisis-situations. However, this perspectival predisposition does not exhaust the Global IR research agenda. Some streams of Global IR endeavour to surpass the epistemology of Kantian dualism that propel the theoretical frameworks of

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Western IR, post-/de-colonial IR, and non-Western IR. As these streams of Global IR endeavour to surpass the epistemology of Kantian dualism, they evoke a de-Kantian knowledge-situation to unlock those ‘postWestern time–space spectacles’ that do not assume an essential subjectobject or self-other or West-non-West separation. Unlike Kantian dualism that implants a partition between phenomenal world-in-appearance and noumenal world-in-itself, and delimits IR study to phenomenal world-inappearance where human beings can never experience an absence of the conditioning-limits of time and space, these streams of Global IR redefine time and space so that the phenomenal-noumenal partition is removed and human beings become able to use their intrinsic scientific and metaphysical skills to reclaim their unified ‘phenomenal-territorial-self’ and ‘noumenal-de-territorial-self’. Since these streams of Global IR overstep the rigid boundaries of Kantian dualism so as to epistemologically reorientate the discipline, they turn out to be non-Western in terms of ‘input’ (they retrieve and refine a variety of non-Western knowledge-forms) but post-Western in terms of ‘output’: they dig up unexploited intellectual resources from various non-Western sites, but their style of ‘post-Western re-worlding’ reprocesses these unexploited intellectual resources for fabricating fundamentally non-derivative discourses of existing Western IR. For the reason that these non-derivative discourses of Western IR manufacture a cluster of auxiliary theories with shared hard-core assumptions about the need to reconcile the West–non-West binaries and foreground the West–non-West complementarities, they consistently operate as a Lakatosian research programme (where multiple theories cooperatively corroborate their findings of truth to cultivate strategic agreements between the one and many worlds), not a Kuhnian paradigm (where one theory claims superiority over the competing truths released by rival theories, thereby aggravating strategic disagreements between the one and many worlds).

Theoretical Thrust of Global IR: Paradigmatic or Programmatic? IR theorising has come a long way in the process of grappling with myriad mysteries, such as ‘why is there no international theory?’ (Wight 1960), ‘why there is international theory now?’ (Snidal and Wendt 2009), and ‘why is there no non-Western international relations theory?’ (Acharya and Buzan 2017). When cold war Hobbesian politics transformed into

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post-cold war Kantian politics, the inhibition in admitting the normative potential of world politics subsided. In the course of articulating the normative potential of world politics, the thinly theorised realm of ‘the international’ became thickly theorised (Gorobets 2019). This thickly theorised realm has been often explained in terms of Thomas Kuhn’s notion of ‘paradigm shift’: i.e., ‘how and why certain theories are legitimised and widely accepted…the process that takes place when theories are no longer relevant and new theories emerge…and the former way of thinking is replaced with a new one’ (McGlinchey, et al. 2017, 4). Kuhn (1970, 175–180) uses the term ‘paradigm’ in two different senses. First, ‘normal science’, i.e., the entire constellation of beliefs/values/techniques shared by research communities. Second, ‘revolutionary science’, i.e., the new elements in that constellation of beliefs/values/techniques, the puzzle-solutions which, when employed as models and examples, can replace regular rules as a basis for the solution of the remaining puzzles of normal science.12 According to Kuhn, the interruption of normal science by revolutionary science emerges only when a sequence of non-cumulative developmental episodes leads to a new paradigm that is ‘incommensurable’ (or incompatible) to the old paradigm. Before the entrance of an incommensurable new paradigm, all the developmental episodes are merely ‘breakthroughs’ that improve upon earlier theories. Usually, with the occurrence of a ‘relatively sudden and unstructured event’, some ‘anomalies’ (or epistemological challenges) within a paradigm crop up and, given the suitable conditions, a paradigm shift occurs, i.e., an epistemological shift that resembles a ‘change in visual gestalt’ whereby the phenomenal world that formerly appeared one way to research communities later appears in a different way. Before paradigm shift, different schools compete for acquiring dominance in a discipline. But after paradigm shift, the number of these schools is reduced, ordinarily to one, and a more scientific mode of puzzle-solving becomes predominant. In the first instance, a paradigm seems to govern not the subject matter but rather a group of researchers/practitioners related to a discipline. In IR study, some relatively sudden and unstructured events—e.g., inter-war period, cold war, end of cold war, dawning of post-cold war world, global financial crises, war on terror etc.—instigated some breakthroughs that repositioned the preceding perspectival predisposition of researchers/practitioners to the phenomenal world. Mark Hoffman (1989, 60) noted:

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International Relations as an academic discipline…has moved through a series of ‘debates’ with the result that in the course of its development, and as a consequence of these debates, International Relations theory has been undergoing constant change and modification. After moving through the debate between Idealism and Realism in the inter-war period, between Realism and Behaviouralism in the Great Debate of the 1960s, through to the complementary impact of Kuhn’s development of the idea of ‘paradigms’ and the post-Behavioural revolution of the early 1970s and on to the rise of International Political Economy and neo-Marxist, Structuralist dependency theory in the late 1970s and early 1980s, International Relations has arrived at a point that…[is] termed [as] the ‘inter-paradigm debate’.

Though this line of constant change and modification emitted the symptom of breakthroughs (or developmental episodes that improve upon earlier theories), it was miscomprehended as paradigm shifts: e.g., the third great debate was referred to as the ‘inter-paradigmatic debate’ between realism, pluralism and structuralism; but when realism, pluralism and structuralism came to be understood as diverse branches of positivism and, thus, constantly commensurable (not incommensurable) ways of doing science, it was realized that Kuhn’s conceptualisation of paradigm shift was inappropriate for classifying IR theories (Jackson and Nexon 2009). Later, the models of post-positivist anti-science claimed incommensurability to the positivist ways of doing science in IR. Arlene B. Tickner and David Blaney (2013, 2) asserted that the propensity to allot the ‘throne of science’ or ‘power of god trick’ to neopositivist paradigm belittled the post-positivist theories as inferior discourses incompetent to add to the ‘pluralist science of IR’, thereby hindering ‘global knowledge production’. Even so, Robert O. Keohane’s (1998, 197) branding of the researchers who did not follow the neopositivist paradigm as ‘IR non-believers’ persevered. Luuk Molthof (2011) reported: Even though the post-positivist theories seem to be gaining more influence, they do not form a paradigm themselves and thereby fail to offer the secure foundations that the positivist paradigm offers. Afraid to end up in a situation where ‘anything goes’ (Feyerabend 1975), many IR scholars remain faithful to the positivist paradigm (Campbell 2007) …both positivist as well as post-positivist theorists, either consciously or not, take part in activities through which the dominance of the positivist framework is reinforced. While the positivist theorists have been especially effective in

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setting the standards for what counts as ‘proper’ science, the post-positivist approaches, through their ‘theorizing about theories’, ironically reinforce the same framework that they want to crack open… [It seems to be] a false belief that the discipline is guided by several competing paradigms… To deny, however, that the discipline is in fact dominated by a single paradigm gives students of International Relations a false sense of choice. More importantly, it diverts the attention away from the debate over what type of science International Relations may be (Kurki and Wight 2007).

Apparently, the positivist science and post-positivist anti-science shared overlapping contacts with ‘human geography’ (Berg 1993). While the positivist theories relied on causal inference, the post-positivist theories hinged on descriptive inference; as such, both qualified as science (King et al. 1994). Pragmatically, the explanatory and descriptive hypotheses of the positivist and post-positivist theories required to be compared to concrete realities of the phenomenal world. In point of fact, both the positivist and post-positivist theories inculcated normative commitments (Dunne et al. 2013) in a given knowledge-situation characterized with subject-object separation (Berg 1993).13 Consequently, the ghosts of Kant’s phenomena-noumena divide haunted not only the positivist theories but also the post-positivist theories (Hutchings 2013): the common epistemological base of Kantian dualism made these theoretical traditions commensurable and, thus, incapable of being projected as paradigms. In IR theory, the ‘early Kuhn’ is cherished for foreseeing a ‘scientific world’ wherein the research communities worked according to realist principles (Guilhot 2016), and ‘later Kuhn’ (who reinterpreted ‘incommensurability’ as ‘semantic differences’) is admired for placing the ‘non-scientific worlds’ of certain cultural groups on the same footing as the paradigm-related scientific world (Ghins 2003). Nevertheless, when it comes to IR practice, it is believed that the relation of ideas to practical logics elides the distinctness of paradigmatic frameworks, and therefore, it is time to recognize the Kuhnian limits in explaining stability and change in policymaking (Jabko and Schmidt 2021). Actually, the dominance of Western political realism creates an illusion that the role of alternative theoretical traditions is not necessarily to provide knowledge by which foreign policy may be guided, but to ensure that rival narratives can be heard for each policy-problem, thereby preventing practitioners from the temptation of premature closure in the framing of foreign policy (Zambernardi 2016). Though the value of IR theorising

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as a critical component in nurturing ‘engaged global citizens’ is recognized (Frueh and Youde 2020), one does not recognize how these rival narratives can bridge the ‘theory-praxis-gap’ that splits our phenomenal existence into seemingly irreconcilable zones: ‘one world’ (dominated by the Western homogeneity) and ‘many worlds’ (embodied by the nonWestern heterogeneity). From a Kuhnian position of ‘puzzle-solving’, the superiority of Western political realism over the competing truths released by Western or non-Western critical theoretical traditions hardens the seemingly irreconcilable strategic disagreements between the one and many worlds. In contrast to Kuhn’s presupposition (1970, 61) where ‘not all theories are paradigm theories’ (and only one theory claims superiority over or incommensurability with the rival theories), Imre Lakatos’s concept of ‘research programme’ (1980, 41–50) contains a ‘protective belt of [multiple] auxiliary theories’ with shared ‘hard core’ assumptions. Here, the auxiliary theories work together to add fresh findings to the research programme, and the research programme readjusts in the light of fresh findings. However, even when the research programme readjusts, the shared hard-core assumptions of its auxiliary theories remain unchanged. That is to say, the auxiliary theories of a re-adjustable research programme remain guided by a ‘heuristic’ (i.e., a set of problem-solving techniques): while the ‘negative heuristic’ gives instructions to ‘modify’ auxiliary theories rather than to change the hard-core, the ‘positive heuristic’ works to ‘protect’ auxiliary theories from the ‘ocean of anomalies’. It is the protective belt of auxiliary theories that has to bear the brunt of tests and get (re-)adjusted, or even totally replaced, in order to defend the hard-core. A research programme is effective if it readjusts the protective belt of auxiliary theories and resolves anomalies so as to make ‘progressive problemshift’, and it is ineffective if it fails to do so and slips toward ‘degenerative problemshift’. Since the research programme comprises not only the substantive truth-claims made by auxiliary theories but also the directives on how to appraise the progressive or degenerative shifts in these truth-claims despite the probable variances among auxiliary theories, the research programme paves the way for ‘inter-theoretical adjudication’ which, in turn, aids its ‘rational reconstruction’. As the progressive or degenerative character of a research programme is ascertained on the basis of rational (not psychological) decisions of research communities, there is an absence of psychological incommensurability of rival paradigms: unlike Kuhn, Lakatos upholds that the rational decisions

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of research communities authorize a recurring inter-theoretical adjudication (akin to inter-paradigmatic dialogue) throughout the history of a research programme. In fact, the inter-theoretical adjudication of a research programme—and its historical twists and turns—can only be understood in retrospection. Lakatos (1980, 48) proclaims: The actual hard core of a [research] programme does not actually emerge fully armed like Athene from the head of Zeus. It develops slowly, by a long, preliminary process of trial and error.

In IR study, the evolution from ‘Kuhnian paradigm’ to ‘Lakatosian research programme’ has been hailed as an opportunity to move toward a more plural field that remained open to interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary scholarship, i.e., International Studies (Aalto 2011). To begin with, the Lakatosian parameters were awakened to pass a verdict on the degenerating character of neorealist research programme (Vasquez 1997). Afterward, this verdict was rejected as a misapplication of the Lakatosian criteria of appraisal and a misguided conflation of neorealism with the proposition that balancing was a common foreign policy (Elman and Elman 1997). In the light of the caveat that neorealism could thrive as a progressive Lakatosian research programme if it not only rescued its theory from being rejected but also produced ‘novelties’ or ‘fresh findings’ (Keohane 1986), a group of researchers came forward and made appeals to implement the Lakatosian mechanism of ‘monster-adjustment’ (or say, inter-theoretical adjudication) as a way to extend the scope of neorealism beyond centralized territorial states (Brenner 2006). A few parallel studies on ‘security communities’ (Starr 1992), ‘power-transition theory’ (DiCiccio and Levy 1999), and ‘democratic peace thesis’ (Ray 2003) were also carried out to expand the scope of neoliberalism beyond centralized territorial states. But these studies neither stated the objective criteria to appraise the progressive/ degenerative character of their truth-claims nor seemed adversely affected by the criticisms regarding the degenerative character of their theoretical aggregates. Therefore, the Lakatosian metrics were disqualified as an appropriate apparatus for rational reconstruction of IR’s disciplinary history. Patrick Thaddeus Jackson and Daniel H. Nexon (2009, 12–15) recommended:

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[I]f we desire to apply Lakatosian metrics for theory choice, then we must demonstrate that the theoretical aggregates we classify as…“research programmes” qualify as such…We need to identify internal incommensurabilities that differentiate them from other theoretical aggregates…The “hard core” of a research programme…consists not merely of a list of variables that adherents believe to be relevant to their explanations… [i.e.,] substantive [truth-]claims [or conceptual framework of hard core assumptions ], but also…commitments to particular kinds of observational theory: ideas about…how terms are to be defined…how measurement works…and how auxiliary hypotheses derived from the theory’s hard core are to be evaluated…a set of favoured techniques for gathering and evaluating empirical data [i.e., objective criteria for appraisal ]…and epistemological and ontological differences that preclude naïve falsificationism or… inter-theoretical adjudication [i.e., negative and positive heuristic].

Intriguingly, the auxiliary theories delineated in contemporary Global IR writings qualify as a Lakatosian research programme. While these auxiliary theories of Global IR borrow from several Chinese, Indian, and Japanese worldviews to originate a ‘post-Western re-worlding’, they work together as a protective belt around some clearly identifiable hard-core assumptions. For sure, these theories can activate a set of negative and positive heuristic in the process of protecting their hard-core assumptions and making inter-theoretical adjudication. In addition, as these auxiliary theories attempt to activate some negative and positive heuristic in the process of protecting their hard-core assumptions and making inter-theoretical adjudication, their momentary progressive- and degenerative-problemshifts can be carefully monitored via well-defined objective criteria for appraisal. Let us review how these theories of Global IR—as they are laced with shared hard-core assumptions, negative and positive heuristic, and objective criteria for appraisal—induce researchers/practitioners to foresee a possible merger of the particularity of many separated worlds with the universality of one connected world. The hard-core assumptions of Global IR theories spring from a deKantian epistemology of ‘monism’. Principally, it is this epistemology of monism that differentiates Global IR theories from the theoretical aggregates of other Kant-inspired Western IR, post-/de-colonial IR, and non-Western IR. The dualism of Kant-inspired theories retains the West– non-West binaries that provoke divisive self-other interactions: here, the visible many-ness of phenomenal world (manifested as West–non-West binaries) remains separated from the invisible oneness of noumenal world

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(masked as West–non-West complementarities). Differing from Kantinspired theories, the Global IR theories put forward the ‘hard-core assumptions’ that the realm of ‘the international’ is a fusion of phenomena (world-in-appearance with subjective many-ness) and noumena (world-initself with objective oneness); and that it is humanly possible to reconcile the visible many-ness of phenomenal world with the invisible oneness of noumenal world. The Tianxia IR theory based on the Chinese relatedness of Tian (heaven) and xia (under) claims that the oneness of the world, implied as all-under-heaven, expresses itself in all its diversity. In this allunder-heaven condition, the self-existence cannot be safeguarded at the expense of other-existence; instead, the self-other or West–non-West existence are inter-reliant (Li 2021). The Advaita IR theory arising from the Indian philosophy of Advaita (non-duality) asserts that the subjective many-ness of phenomena and the objective oneness of noumena are not divided existential zones, but continual cognitive zones of the same time–space-indivisibility that underpins global connectedness. In this situation of global or West–non-West connectedness, the self/other positioned at a fleeting moment does not bear permanent selfhood/ otherhood. Rather, the phenomenal self and other/s are varyingly yet continually subsumed in each other through a third dimension—i.e., noumenal invisible oneness; therefore, the self-other pluralities must be seen as non-binary interlinked categories (Shahi 2018). The Japanese IR theories enlightens that there are many ways of explaining the self-other or West–non-West relations. These binary relations become political only when studied in a definite time–space intersection, not otherwise; it is only by confessing the invisible amorphousness of these binary relations and subtlety of our differences that we can make borders that separate us less salient and ensure that we are different and simultaneously the same (Watanabe and Rösch 2018).14 The dualism of Kant-inspired theories argues that human beings do not experience time–space; rather, they experience in time–space; and, therefore, the time–space-bounded categories of nations, cultures, regions (e.g., West/non-West or global North/global South) etc. become obligatory for assigning human identities. Indeed, ‘the Kantian possibilities of knowledge are grounded on an analytic of human finitude…Only thinking beyond these [Kantian limits to] human condition can allow us to fully appreciate history as becoming’ (Popolo 2016, 28–29). One method of thinking beyond these Kantian limits is to redefine time–space so that the phenomenal-noumenal partition is removed. This method

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is made available by the theories of Global IR. The Tianxia IR theory refers to the cosmic movements that unfold in time–space between heaven and earth: the abstract forms of bi (round heaven) and cong (square earth) are deployed as ideational tools to instill links between the human and supra-human worlds, or say, the phenomenal and noumenal worlds (Mingming 2012). The Advaita IR theory defines the time–space as compulsory means to know the phenomenal world; but whatever is known or unknown in the phenomenal world is treated as a fragmented reflection of an all-pervasive noumenal world (Goswami 1995); thus, the time–space obtains limitless extension across the phenomenal and noumenal worlds. And the Japanese IR theory, influenced by Nishida Kitaro’s spatial and temporal expressions of ‘nothingness’ and ‘eternal present’ respectively, considers the noumena as the unifying power of reality and the phenomena as the state of conflict in reality’s progress through differentiation (Shimizu 2018). From this theoretical standpoint, the phenomena-noumena divide is nothing but a mistaken misrepresentation of the real unity of phenomenal and noumenal worlds. Obviously, these auxiliary theories of Global IR congregate to revive the innate phenomenal-noumenal expanse of human consciousness, thereby restoring an invisible yet inescapable connectedness between multiple deterritorialized/non-geocentric self and other/s who otherwise subsist in a territorialized/geo-centric Global world: here, an instant recognition of de-territorialized as well as territorialized self and other/s rationalizes the epistemology of monism (one world) without diluting the ontology of pluralism (many worlds). In IR theory, the acceptance of the epistemology of monism (one world) combined with the ontology of pluralism (many worlds) boosts the efforts to territorially de-center IR knowledge and rationally reconcile the West–non-West binaries. But in IR practice, when one tries to reconcile the West–non-West binaries (or reconcile the visible phenomenal many-ness with the invisible noumenal oneness) so as to implement an effective global strategy to transform the volatile crisis-situations, the customary compulsions of the temporally-spatially separated ‘being’, ‘identity’, ‘interaction’, ‘mentality’, ‘emotion’ ‘consciousness’ etc. often pop up and create complications. For instance, it was widely witnessed how the customary compulsions of ‘my nation first’ approach created complications in implementing an effective global strategy during the fight against the pandemic. In the face of such complications, it becomes

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mandatory to undertake a two-fold plan of action. First, one must extensively demonstrate the illogicality of those policy-choices that aggravate strategic differences between the one and many worlds and justify the temporally-spatially separated ‘being’, ‘identity’, ‘interaction’, ‘action’, ‘mentality’, ‘emotion’ ‘consciousness’ etc. In the context of the pandemic, one can measure how the unintended consequences of the nationalist vaccine policy caused more harm than good (Bardosh et al. 2022). Second, one must suggest a set of alternative policy-prescriptions that rises above the temporally-spatially separated units so as to buttress the unity of a single world underlying the diversity of plural worlds. For example, one can elucidate how the alternative ‘one health approach’ that sees ‘risk anywhere as risk everywhere’ can balance and optimize the health of peoples, animals, and ecosystems around the globe (Berthe et al. 2022). Throughout the performance of this two-fold plan of action, one must activate the following ‘objective criteria for appraisal’: the more the noncentric invisible oneness (noumena) beneath the geo-centric visible many-ness of lives on earth (phenomena) is taken seriously, the more politically responsible the humankind will be in nurturing a sustainable global world order. Here, the term ‘politically responsible’ means making efforts to foreground the hidden aspects concerning the policy-prescriptions: first, the ‘hidden stakes’ inherent in implementing the divisive policy-actions that disregard global connectedness; second, the ‘hidden capacities’ integral to the alternative policy-actions that forecast global connectedness. And the term ‘sustainable global world order’ means commitments to that understanding of globality which starts with the presupposition that the self is merged with the other/s and nature. Undeniably, the constituents of the world (e.g., different individual/institutional political actors) remain willingly or unwillingly interconnected through a ‘strategic chain of action’: that is to say, the harms and healings of different individual/institutional political actors are reciprocally tangled in such a way that the self’s act of harming the other/s can in effect be an act of harming the self, and the self’s act of healing the other/s can in effect be an act of healing the self. Unlike Kantian dualism, wherein a self (or a political actor who is supposedly separated from other/s) seeks to gain power by treating the other/s as an object to be harmed and suffer from that harm, the auxiliary theories of Global IR demonstrate how the self (as subject) cannot afford to harm the other/s or nature (as object). Harm only truly becomes harm when it is the result of the self who perceives the other/s or nature as an object to be harmed and suffer from that harm—a characteristic of a dualist

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knowledge-situation. But when the self knows that the act of harming the other/s or nature is an act of harming the self—as in a monist knowledgesituation, there is no rigid self-other separation despite the diversity in thinking and agency of different individual/institutional political actors— then the dormant ‘Global spirit’ of the self resurfaces. It is the awareness of this Global spirit—which is demonstrated by a strategic chain of action enforcing an essential interdependency between the harms and healings of the self and the other/s—that persuades the researchers/practitioners to foresee a possible merger of the particularity of many separated worlds with the universality of one connected world. Keeping this strategic chain of action in mind, one can show how the self’s promises to provide Covid-19 care by fanning the fire of nationalism magnified the surge of divisive racism and xenophobic sentiments that harmed not only the minorities (or other/s) in a few selected states (Elias et al. 2021) but also created an overall political environment of fear and conspiracy, thereby severely paralyzing the capability of global institutions to supply ‘global security’ across the world (Bieber 2022). Alternatively, one can evaluate the potential policy-scenarios where the enforcement of a Covid-19 agreement that promises to regulate vaccine production and trade by forming layers of ‘self-other interdependence’ can effectively reduce fears of those vaccine-producing states which apprehend that distributing their products might deprive their ‘own populations’ (Bollyky and Bown 2020). Only those policy-prescriptions that are monitored by the rationalities of this sort of strategic chain of action can realistically contribute to a sustainable global world order. In the final analysis, the divisive ways of thinking about world politics—which, in turn, provoke divisive ways of interactions between many temporally-spatially separated binary groupings—emerge from three principal side-shoots of Kantian dualism: (i) phenomena-noumena dualism (ii) science-metaphysics dualism, and (iii) subject-object dualism. The auxiliary theories of Global IR—with their emphasis on the standards of a sustainable global world order—remain committed to operate as an alternative to Kantian dualism. Thus, the hard-core assumptions of the auxiliary theories of Global IR must be protected by applying those ‘heuristic techniques’ that could realign these side-shoots of Kantian dualism by giving them a monist tilt. In this respect, the negative heuristic must fine-tune the auxiliary theories of Global IR so that they become equipped to unveil the often-overlooked monist continuum interlinking the seemingly disconnected opposites of phenomena-noumena, science-metaphysics

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and subject-object; also, the positive heuristic must safeguard the auxiliary theories of Global IR in those situations of world politics that impose superficial ruptures upon this monist continuum.15 Ultimately, it is the combination of negative and positive heuristic that can streamline the procedures of inter-theoretical adjudication among the auxiliary theories of Global IR, thereby making room for rational reconstruction of the ever-evolving Global IR research programme.

Concluding Remarks Global IR is steadily developing as an antidote to the compartmentalized knowledge-forms of both Western IR and non-Western IR. Different categories of theories related to Western IR and non-Western IR (including post-/de-colonial IR) remain subscribed to Kantian dualism (i.e., phenomena-noumena, science-metaphysics and subjectobject dualism), and, therefore, instigate divisive ways of interactions between wide-ranging temporally-spatially separated binary groupings in the West and the non-West. By contrast, the multiple theories of Global IR spring from epistemological monism and restore the hidden connectedness between various temporally-spatially separated binary groupings in the West and the non-West. As such, the theories of Global IR attempt to reconcile the West–non-West binaries and foreground the West–non-West complementarities. Positively, the theories of Global IR, inspired by several Chinese, Indian and Japanese worldviews, rationalize an epistemology of monism (one world) without diluting the ontology of pluralism (many worlds), thereby making an appeal to recognize the unity of a single world underlying the diversity of plural worlds. These theories function as a Lakatosian research programme that seeks to dissolve the strategic differences between different worlds by putting forward the hard-core assumptions that the realm of ‘the international’ is a fusion of phenomena (world-in-appearance with subjective manyness) and noumena (world-in-itself with objective oneness); and that it is humanly possible to reconcile the visible many-ness of phenomena with the invisible oneness of noumena. Strategically, the Global IR research programme countersigns only those policy-prescriptions in world politics that remain dedicated to the non-centric invisible oneness that lies underneath the geo-centric visible many-ness of lives on earth. In so doing, the Global IR research programme strives to foster a sustainable global world order which presumes an essential interdependency between the potential

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harms and healings of the self and the other/s. It is this interdependency between the potential harms and healings of the self and the other/s (defined as strategic chain of action) that works as the objective criteria for appraising the progressive or degenerative shifts of the Global IR research programme. As the Global IR research programme endeavours to achieve progressive shifts, it mobilizes some heuristic techniques to protect its hard-core assumptions, i.e., the assumptions about the fusion of phenomenal diversity and noumenal unity. In practice, these heuristic techniques unveil the monist continuum interlinking the disconnected opposites of phenomena-noumena, science-metaphysics, subject-object, self-other, West–non-West etc. Innovatively, these heuristic techniques— that unveil the monist continuum interlinking the disconnected opposites of phenomena-noumena, science-metaphysics, subject-object etc.—impel the multiple auxiliary theories of the Global IR research programme to capture the particularist local-pictures of somewhere/s in conjunction with the universalist global-pictures of anywhere/s, a spectacular setting scrutinized in the next chapter.

Notes 1. Drawing an analogy between ‘mapping’ and ‘IR theorising’, Stephen McGlinchey, Rosie Walters, and Dana Gold (2017, 2) write: ‘[IR] theories are like maps. Each map is made for a certain purpose and what is included in the map is based on what is necessary to direct the map’s user…Each different theory of IR puts different things on its map, based on what its theorists believe to be important…Variables to plot on an IR map would be…states, organisations, people, economics, history, ideas, class, gender…Theorists then use their chosen variables to construct a simplified view of the world that can be used to analyse events…and to have a degree of predictive ability. In a practical sense, IR theories can be best seen as an analytical toolkit as they provide multiple methods for students to use to answer questions.’ Since Western-centric mapping of the Global world and IR theories more or less excluded ‘non-Western variables’, e.g., colonial wars, millions of battle-deaths during the outwardly peaceful phase of cold war, and extra-systemic wars fought by democracies in the so-called ‘third world’ (Acharya 2014), those variables were omitted from the analytical toolkit meant for student’s use to answer questions. 2. The evolution of IR is described through the four great debates: idealism versus realism; traditionalism versus behaviouralism; inter-paradigmatic debate between pluralism, realism, and structuralism; and rationalism versus reflectivism. These debates have fashioned IR’s view of itself as an

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academic discipline. Though it is argued that these debates have oversimplified the nature of IR in inter-war and post-second world war periods (McCarthy 2009), they are still useful in attaining a threefold objective: first, noticing the shifts in dominating meanings of IR; second, showing how the Western inclination of IR, right from the very beginning, sidelined non-Western discourses; and, third, emphasizing how the inclusion of non-Western discourses can provide an extra-layered overview of IR. 3. These Chinese and Indian views not only refute Morgenthau’s assertion (1985, 4) that ‘human nature, in which the laws of politics have their roots, has not changed since the classical philosophies of China, India, and Greece endeavoured to discover these laws’, but also verify ‘the existence of a universal cannon of strategy which puts a premium on [codification of political practice]…and acknowledges the consequentiality of utilitarian morality in global politics within the structural restrictions of the international system’ (Trigkas 2020, 950). Notably, the Japanese Shint¯ oist outlook does not offer absolute ideas of good and evil, and, thus, it does not provide ‘an elaborate and systematic ethical proscriptions’ (Wargo 1990, 504). Here, it is crucial to pinpoint that the classical philosophies of China, India or Japan do not have a unanimous opinion on human nature. Several strands of Chinese philosophies (e.g., Mencius, Xunzi, Legalism, Confucianism and Taoism) (Yen 2015), Indian philosophies (e.g., Samkhya-Yoga, Lokayata, and Advaita) (Coward 2008), and Japanese philosophies (Lyman 1885) highlight the changeable (not unchangeable) feature of human nature. 4. Critiquing the post-/de-colonial imagery of an identifiable non-Western geo-cultural context, Marco Vieira (2019, 1) argues that ‘the asymmetrical encounter between the colonised and the coloniser has fundamentally and extensively redefined human subjectivity in a way that largely negates decolonial emancipatory projects. This is the result of the all-encompassing penetration of Western coloniality (in its political, economic and cultural representations) into the spaces of pre-colonial or uncolonised forms of subjectivity’. Vieira draws inspirations from the ideas of Frantz Fanon and Jacques Lacan to suggest that the attempts to recover non-Western forms of self-identification are an illusory psychological mechanism to stabilise hybrid postcolonial subjectivities, not an actual restoration of non-colonial purified forms of existing in the world. 5. In Western IR, the rationalist theories accepted the Kantian view of time as a ‘moment’ and delivered a ‘material view’ of space, whereas the reflectivist theories took a neo-Kantian turn to represent time as a ‘duration’ and provide a ‘discursive view’ of space. But both types of theories undermined the noumenal world and restrained the temporal-spatial understandings of world politics to the subject’s encounter with the phenomenal world.

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For a detailed discussion on the implications of ‘Kantian legacies’ for IR theoretical traditions, see Weber (2003). For an understanding of the ongoing discussions on ‘de-centering agenda’ in Global IR, see Nicolaïdis (2020), Bilgin (2021), Carrozza and Benabdallah (2022). In this context, one may refer to Catherine Owen, John Heathershaw, and Igor Savin’s (2018) work that evokes Homi Bhabha’s concept of ‘mimicry’ and James C. Scott’s notion of ‘m¯etis’ to assess the rise of a post-Western type of world politics that carries a postcolonial aspect but without the substantive mimicry and hybrid spaces characteristic of postcolonial relations. Based on interviews with Central Asian political, economic, and cultural elites, these scholars argue that Russia mimics the West and there are some suggestive examples of the role of m¯etis in its foreign policy. The Central Asian states also show the signs of formal mimicry and m¯etis, but the dialectical struggle between ‘colonial clientelism’ and ‘anti-colonial nationalism’ remains in its early stages in these states. As IR theorising gained more sophistication, it preoccupied itself with the interrogatives of ontology, methodology, and epistemology. While ontology probed what exists and methodology enquired how to know what exists, epistemology – as a theory of knowledge – tested how we know what we know of what exists. In Global IR, the ‘non-Western worlding’ offered perspectives on ontology (what exists ), whereas the ‘post-Western re-worlding’ also designed theories on epistemology (how we know what we know of what exists ). For an elaborate explanation of China’s ‘moral realism’, India’s ‘Kautilyan realism’, and Japan’s ‘pacific realism’, see Xuetong (2020b); Shahi (2019a); and Gustafsson, Hagström and Hanssen (2019) respectively. At this point, it is important to recall that the quality of theoreticaluniversality was traditionally assigned to the West, not the non-West. To a great extent, this trend resembled Edmund Husserl’s hierarchical differentiation, whereby ‘Greek-European science’ (presented as theoreticalphilosophical knowledge) was considered superior to ‘Oriental practical attitude’ (reduced to empirical-anthropological archetypes): according to Husserl (1970, 273), the English Dominions, the US, and the like clearly belonged to Europe, whereas the Eskimos and Indians presented as curiosities at fairs, or the Gypsies, who wandered about Europe, did not. Of course, the post-colonial discourses came from the non-West but they preferred to provincialize (not universalize) the scope of theory-making; similar to de-colonial discourses, they claimed to theorise only the local domains of world politics. Joshua Busby (2020) provides a general commentary on what do the mainstream IR theories (mainly, realism and liberalism) tell us about why the policy-responses to the global pandemic have been so ineffective.

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While Daniel W. Drezner (2020) opines that Covid-19 is not likely to have transformative effects on world politics, Sara E Davies and Clare Wenham (2020) suggest that it is absolutely necessary to find the entry points where IR theories/methods must inform public health decision-making and policy-coordination so as to deal with this crisis. 12. Fred Chernoff (2005) informs that the Kuhnian narrative of the history of science requires one to know the difference between moments of ‘normal science’ (i.e., empirical work within a paradigm) and ‘revolutionary science’ (i.e., empirical work that constructs a new paradigm). 13. At the outset, the positivist theories demanded ‘methodological unity’ (King et al 1994), whereas the post-positivist theories supported ‘methodological pluralism’ (Lapid 1989). The positivist theories showed methodological unity in following the Popperian science of conjectural refutation and finding ‘subject-object correspondence’ (Neufeld 1995); in finding subject-object correspondence, the positivist theories related mental representations of a subject/perceiver to innate properties of an object. By contrast, the post-positivist theories – moved by the Frankfurt School’s criticism of Popperian inattention to the social conditions under which science is formulated – maintained methodological plurality in calibrating interest-based intersubjectivity (Fluck 2017); in calibrating intersubjectivity, the post-positivist theories related differing interpretations of the subjects with regard to an object. As such, the positivist finding of subject-object correspondence required ‘hypothesis testing’ that matched deductive studies (e.g., neorealism and neoliberalism) – here, one quantitatively arrived at phenomenal reality by applying generalized theories to concrete cases (Copeland 2000). Whereas the post-positivist calibrating of intersubjectivity entailed ‘hypothesis-generation’ that prompted inductive studies (e.g., constructivism) – here, one qualitatively examined specific cases before offering generalized hypotheses about phenomenal reality (Ruggie 2002). Regardless of these variations, it was observed that the positivist and post-positivist theories were to be treated as two competing ‘explanatory hypotheses’; and, the historical episodes were to be treated as data/evidence on the basis of which philosophers, sociologists and other interested parties were to choose between the hypotheses (Nelson 1994). 14. Though this chapter revolves around the Chinese, Indian, and Japanese worldviews that cooperatively collaborate to enrich the specialized theoretical pillars of Global IR, one can mention some additional IR approaches that offer a comparable opinion on self-other relations: for instance, the African conceptualisation of ubuntu (collective personhood) presumes that the self owes its existence to the other/s; as such, whatever happens to the self happens to the others/s, and whatever happens to the other/

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s happens to the self (Smith 2018); the Sufi notion of baqa (annihilation) considers the merger of the self with the other/s as the culminating stage in the methodological journey of capturing the hidden core oneness of reality (Shahi 2019b); and the Buddhist concept of mu (nothingness) pinpoints the illusion of an ‘established self’ that exists in an ever-changing chain of relationalities with the other/s (Shimizu 2021). 15. In IR, the superficial ruptures imposed upon the monist continuum interlinking the seemingly disconnected opposites of phenomena-noumena, science-metaphysics, and subject-object bring to the forefront some unsettled disputes: namely, (i) homogenous versus heterogenous, (ii) nationalism versus internationalism, and (iii) geographical versus philosophical. For an explanation on how the heuristic techniques of the Global IR research programme can rationally resolve these disputes, see Chapter 2 of this book. And for a discussion on how the Global IR research programme can mobilize its objective criteria of appraisal to revaluate the truthcontent of its ‘theory-praxis-interface’ as it proceeds to transform current world politics, see Chapter 3 of this book.

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Reid, Jennie. 2022. “The Old UK Growth Model is Dead’: What a Long-term Weak Pound Means for Britain”. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/ 07/what-a-long-term-weak-pound-means-for-the-uk-economy.html. Ruggie, John Gerard. 2002. Constructing the World Polity: Essays on International Institutionalisation. London: Routledge. Schmidt, Brian C. 2014. “A Realist View of the Eurocentric Conception of World Politics.” Millennium 42, no. 2: 464–471. Shahi, Deepshikha. 2018. Advaita as a Global International Relations Theory. London: Routledge. Shahi, Deepshikha. 2019a. Kautilya and Non-Western IR Theory. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Shahi, Deepshikha. 2019b. “Introducing Sufism to International Relations Theory: A Preliminary Inquiry into Epistemological, Ontological, and Methodological Pathways.” European Journal of International Relations 25, no. 1: 250–275. Shani, Giorgio. 2008. “Toward a Post-Western IR: The ‘Umma’, ‘Khalsa Panth’, and Critical International Relations Theory.” International Studies Review 10, no. 4: 722–734. Shapcott, Richard. 2001. Justice, Community and Dialogue in International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shimizu, Kosuke. 2018. “Do Time and Language Matter in IR?: Nishida Kitaro’s Non-Western Discourse of Philosophy and Politics.” The Korean Journal of International Studies 16, no. 1: 99–119. Shimizu, Kosuke. 2021. “Buddhism and the Question of Relationality in ˙ skiler Dergisi 18, no. 70: 29–44. International Relations.” Uluslararası Ili¸ Smith, Karen. 2018. “Reshaping International Relations: Theoretical Innovations from Africa.” All Azimuth 7, no. 2: 81–92. Snidal, Duncan, and Alexander Wendt. 2009. “Why there is International Theory Now?” International Theory 1, no. 1: 1–14. Sørensen, Georg. 1998. “IR Theory After the Cold War.” Review of International Studies 24: 83–100. Starr, Harvey. 1992. “Democracy and War: Choice, Learning and Security Communities.” Journal of Peace Research 29, no. 2: 207–213. Strandsbjerg, Jeppe. 2010. Territory, Globalization and International Relations. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Taylor, Lucy. 2012. “Decolonizing International Relations: Perspectives from Latin America.” International Studies Review 14, no. 3: 386–400. Thakur, Vineet, and Peter Vale. 2020. South Africa, Race and the Making of International Relations. London: Rowman and Littlefield. Tickner, Arlene B., and David Blaney. 2013. Claiming the International. New York: Routledge.

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Global IR: A Glimpse of Somewhere? No, of Anywhere

We are born with our basic expectations; with them we turn the world into ‘our world’ but must then live for ever in the prison of our world…But [then again], it is we who create our ‘prisons’ and we can also, critically, demolish them ( Lakatos 1980, 20). Our basic expectations vis-à-vis ‘the international’ have turned our phenomenal existence into two seemingly irreconcilable cognitive prisons: ‘one world’ with homogenizing propensities (dominated by the West) and ‘many worlds’ with heterogenizing predispositions (embodied by the non-West). Often, these cognitive prisons—oscillating between the extreme homogenizing propensities of the West and heterogenizing predispositions of the non-West—become obstacles in implementing effective global partnerships that are required to tackle the challenges thrown by global crisis-situations, e.g., the spectres of world war, financial crisis, climate change, pandemic, and the like. The Global IR research programme struggles to demolish these cognitive prisons of ‘one world versus many worlds’ regardless of their geographical centering in the West or the non-West. It realizes that the drive to reconcile the West and the non-West is vital, specifically when it comes to handling global crisis-situations. In its effort to reconcile the West and the non-West, the Global IR research programme finds rational support from multiple auxiliary theories that derive stimulus from hitherto denigrated knowledge-forms flourishing in different corners of the world. Of late, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Shahi, Global IR Research Programme, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39121-7_3

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several denigrated knowledge-forms have been evoked to enhance the theorisation/conceptualisation of the Global IR research programme e.g., Tianxia (‘all-under-heaven’) (Zhao 2021), Dao (‘the way’) (Ling 2014), and Guanxi (‘relationality’) (Yaqing 2018; Kavalski 2018) from China; Advaita (‘non-duality’) (Shahi 2018), Anvikshaki (‘science of enquiry’) (Kamal 2023), and Dharma (‘right conduct’) (Shani and Behera 2022) from India; Mu No Basho (‘place of nothingness’) (Shimizu 2022a), Basso Ostinato (‘recurrent underlying motif’) (Watanabe 2019), and Engi (‘occurring relationality’) (Shimizu and Noro 2020) from Japan; Dhikr, Takrar, Tawil (‘repetition, lack of repetition, interpretation’) from Turkey (Balci 2015); Gumannyi Sotsializm (‘humane socialism’) from Russia (Tsygankov and Tsygankov 2010); Margén de Maniobra (‘search for latitude’) (Frasson-Quenoz 2016) and Runa (‘human and nonhuman’) (Reddekop 2021) from Latin America; and Ubuntu (‘collective personhood’) from Africa (Tieku 2012). However, the conditioned reflexes of many IR researchers and practitioners compel them to receive the emergent knowledge-forms by constrictively correlating their ‘source’ and ‘scope’. Generally, the knowledge-forms having their source in the West are granted a global scope, whereas the knowledge-forms having their source in the nonWest are given a local scope. Because the state-of-the-art Global IR research programme remains expansively enriched with the knowledgeforms having their source in the non-West, it is habitually suspected that these local non-Western knowledge-forms cannot grasp the larger global scenario. Needless to say, these conditioned reflexes hinder the progress of the Global IR research programme. In effect, these conditioned reflexes regroup the old cognitive prisons of ‘one world versus many worlds’ under the new guise of ‘somewhere versus anywhere’: the narratives of/from ‘many worlds’ (embodied by the non-West) are registered as local-pictures of somewhere/s, whereas the records of/from ‘one world’ (dominated by the West) are applied to globalpictures of anywhere/s. Philosophically, the cognitive prisons of ‘one world versus many worlds’ or ‘somewhere versus anywhere’ emanate from a Kantian dualist knowledge-situation that forms the rigid disconnected opposites of phenomena-noumena, science-metaphysics, subjectobject, self-other, West–non-West, etc. Going beyond a usual Kantian dualist knowledge-situation, this chapter substantiates how the Global IR research programme—driven by a cluster of Chinese, Indian,

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and Japanese auxiliary theories—can activate a set of heuristic techniques to reconnect these disconnected opposites (i.e., phenomenanoumena, science-metaphysics, subject-object, self-other, West–non-West etc.), thereby demolishing the cognitive prisons that separate the one and many worlds, and adjoining the superficial ruptures that segregate the local-pictures of somewhere/s and global-pictures of anywhere/s. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first section explains the persisting perplexities related to the Global IR research programme: it offers an overview of how the cognitive prisons of ‘one world versus many worlds’ and ‘somewhere versus anywhere’ sometimes lead to an ambiguous appraisal of Global IR, which, in turn, points to some unsettled disputes in IR study: namely, (i) homogenous versus heterogenous, (ii) nationalism versus internationalism, and (iii) geographical versus philosophical. The second section suggests the conceivable comebacks of the Global IR research programme: it locates the Kantian thinking at the source of IR’s familiar cognitive prisons; and then, clarifies how the deKantian auxiliary theories can overcome these cognitive prisons, thereby vindicating Global IR from its alleged ambiguities and allowing it to transform the aforementioned unsettled disputes in IR study. Finally, the third section enumerates several heuristic techniques for prospective progressions of the Global IR research programme: it shows how these heuristic techniques can protect the hard-core of this research programme by redirecting its de-Kantian auxiliary theories toward inter-theoretical adjudication, especially in those unpredicted crisis-situations of world politics that deceitfully enforce estrangements between the one and many worlds, or somewhere/s and anywhere/s.

Global IR Research Programme: The Persisting Perplexities One of the persisting perplexities facing the Global IR research programme is to rationalize how we concomitantly inhabit the one and many worlds. In conventional IR study, the answer to the question of oneand-many-ness of the world oscillates between two incompatible poles: (i) one world with many theories; and (ii) many worlds with many theories. A few IR scholars argue that we live in the ‘one world of globalizing capitalism, of global security dynamics, of a global political system that, for many, revolves around a single hegemonic power, of global institutions and global governance, and of the drive to develop and embed a

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global cosmopolitan ethic’ (Hurrell 2007, 127). This one world (historically dominated by the West) can be explained via different theoretical approaches. Different theoretical approaches become accessible to us because we pursue different ontological and methodological pathways to perform a ‘multi-level’ or ‘multi-regional’ enquiry of world politics (Gebhard 2016). Customarily, the liberal, realist and constructivist theoretical approaches inform policy debates (Walt 1998). By contrast, other scholars reject the idea of one world and call for an openness to many worlds: the struggles for ‘a just world peace’ signify the voices from many worlds (Walker 1988), mainly the voices of indigenous people often relegated to the realm of myths, legends, and beliefs (Querejazu 2016). Even when these voices are heard to prevent strategists from the temptation of hassled closure in policy-framing, they scarcely constitute concrete policy-measures (Zambernardi 2016). Still, the inclusion of these voices results in ‘worlding’, i.e., the making of many worlds (embodied by the non-West) (Tickner and Blaney 2013). Noticeably, the making of one world and many worlds breeds ‘rival theories’ (Snyder 2004): ‘each theory offers a filter for looking at a complicated picture…as such, they help explain the assumptions behind political rhetoric about foreign policy; [as they] act as a powerful check on each other…they reveal the weaknesses in arguments that can lead to misguided policies.’ While these rival theories (that intensify the contestations of ‘one world versus many worlds’) aim to develop a multifaceted understanding of world politics, they end up creating the problem of epistemological relativism. Cristina Inoue and Arlene B. Tickner (2016, 2) warn: ‘Worlding’ entails not only processes by which the world is made intelligible and by which ‘we’ determine who we are in relation to ‘others’, within and beyond fields of study, but also, how such sense-making exercises – that are always socially situated and power saturated – actually constitute the worlds that we inhabit…While pluralizing the International Relations discipline is highly desirable, a few dilemmas emerge, such as how to avoid falling into spiral of epistemological relativism, how to construct a hybrid space between uniformity and difference, how to encourage diversity along with some sense of unity or community, and how perhaps to create a middle path.

It is the goal to construct this ‘middle path’ or ‘hybrid space’ between uniformity and difference—or say, diversity and unity—that steered the

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scholarly schemes of Global IR. To begin with, the agenda to ‘bring the non-West in’ became the pivotal point of Global IR (Acharya 2016). But then, the agenda to bring the non-West in—or ‘include the non-Western perspectives’—was common to some parallel strands of non-Western IR, including post- and de-colonial IR. Far from the intent to demolish the cognitive prisons of ‘one world versus many worlds’, the ‘non-assimilative’ stance of these parallel strands of non-Western IR restored them: just like the Western IR separated Western worlds (as subject) from non-Western worlds (as object), the post-/de-colonial IR reversed this knowledgesituation and separated non-Western worlds (as subject) from Western worlds (as object) (Shahi 2018).1 Because of the overlapping agenda to include the non-Western perspectives, it was lamented that Global IR was attempting to ‘reinvent the wheel’ while it strived to do something that was initiated by post-/de-colonial IR. From an epistemological standpoint, these non-Western perspectives made little value-addition in terms of ‘theoretical innovation’2 : it was suggested that instead of being a loose platform to back the normative concerns of prevailing non-Western perspectives, Global IR must focus on ‘being not only normative but also intellectual’ (Barnett 2021). Here, the recommendation of ‘being intellectual’ implied the search for Global IR’s distinctive ‘conceptual cores’ (Jackson 2021) and ‘ideological-theoretical dimensions’ (Anderl and Witt 2020). Though some works of Global IR adopted the approach of ‘pluralization within theories’ by appending the plural non-Western perspectives upon the existing Western IR theories of realism, liberalism, or constructivism, they succeeded in forming ‘middle-range-theories’ (Acharya and Buzan 2017). Due to the dominance of American-based scholars, the prospects of making new full-fledged IR theories seemed bleak. John J. Mearsheimer (2016, 148) remarked: The dominance of American-based scholars is reinforced by the fact that they have developed a rich variety of theories that are very useful for comprehending the politics of the international system…The extent to which American theories cast a giant shadow over the IR field is reflected in how undergraduate and graduate students outside of the United States talk and think about international politics…[they] seem to read the same articles and books…This means, however, there is not a lot of room for new theories or even major twists on existing theories. To be sure, this is not to say that there is no room for new theories, especially when it comes to middle-range theories. Plus, there is always room to refine existing theories. Still, there are limited opportunities in 2015 for scholars outside the

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United States – as well inside it – to develop wholly new theories. If this were 1945, the situation would be markedly different.

This skeptical attitude toward the prospects of forming new full-fledged IR theories led to the apprehension that Global IR’s ‘project of turning Hoffman’s “American science”3 into something more sensitive to alternative, subaltern approaches [was merely a general cry] …translating this general cry into real theoretical proposals [was] far more difficult than what one might think’ (Arias 2016, 184). Even if Global IR managed to build concepts/approaches (if not new full-fledged IR theories) from non-Western contexts on their own terms and wanted to apply them not only locally but also to the larger global canvas (Acharya 2014), the scholars in the periphery showed sporadic interest in using their ‘own local products’, thereby exposing ‘structural defects in the current cry for Global IR’ (Aydinli and Erpul 2022). Even worse, the importance attached to the use of one’s own local products (‘homegrown theories’) created the misperception that Global IR made a demand for ‘national traditions’ and, therefore, Global IR must be perceived as an ‘ethno IR’. Audrey Alejandro (2018, 118–119 and 181–182) noted: By incentivising the internationalisation of IR around the ‘national’ traditions, the ‘Global IR’ literature essentialises and legitimises certain positions as being the national – i.e., ‘the Indian [/Chinese/Japanese]’ – tradition…By doing so, it not only collapses the complexities of the co-construction of identities on the ground, but also subsumes it to the image of ‘Indianness[/Chineseness/Japaneseness]’ that the critical literature projects on to Indian [/Chinese/Japanese] scholars…The same logics of inclusion/discrimination debated at the international level by ‘Global IR’ literature happen at the national level. Meanwhile, the critical literature fails to acknowledge, and thus, contradicts the scholars’ primary engagement for diversity in their national field …Our quest for non-Western IR made us fall into the same trap as ethnologists who developed ethnosciences…I argue that Global IR is an ethno IR…Quoting a sentence from Amitav Acharya as an illustration: ‘Alienation occurs when one is asked to view the world through a Waltzian, Gramscian or Foucauldian prism instead of a Gandhian or Fanonian one’…This posture is not only damaging intellectually, it is also flirting dangerously with ethnicism.

Alejandro’s annotations suffer from three severe slipups. First of all, they not only presume that any reference to ‘the national’ (e.g., Indianness,

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Chineseness, Japaneseness etc.) is bound to bear a homogenous tone, but also misconstrue ‘the national’ (with possible baggage of ethnicism) and ‘the international’ as mutually discordant domains. Second, they restrictively correlate the terms Waltzian, Gramscian, Foucauldian, Gandhian, Fanonian etc. with their ‘geographical sources’, not to their ‘philosophical forms’. And third, they fail to distinguish between ‘non-Western IR’ (including post-/de-colonial IR) and ‘Global IR’, thereby furnishing an inaccurate account of the Global IR undertakings. Amitav Acharya (2021, 316) (in conversation with Arlene B. Tickner and Andrew Hurrell) retorts: Sometimes, terms such as… “non-Western” or “Global IR” can be associated with “nativism” and “ethnicism” …For instance, Alejandro…took issue with my invoking of Gandhi and Fanon…I never thought of [the philosophical content of] Fanon’s writings as “ethnicist” or “nativist”, a term Alejandro also uses to describe the work of IR scholars in India who draw upon Indian history…She (mis)labels this as doing “Global IR”. In reality, very few Indian scholars use the term Global IR to describe their work, and calling them as such is deeply problematic. Moreover, there is no evidence that all those who use “culturalist” knowledge are working as official mouthpieces or reinforcing academic hierarchies; most do not…Those from India…who do use Global IR, do so exactly the opposite way than Alejandro’s labelling suggests. They explicitly point to and call against exceptionalism, [e.g.], Shahi’s edited volume, Sufism: A Theoretical Intervention in Global International Relations (2020), takes Sufism not as a “nativist” Indian tradition, but as a transnational movement…I am concerned that even critical and reflexivist approaches such as that of Alejandro’s…that call Global South scholars “nativist”…and “ethnicist” may be viewed, despite good work and good intentions, as carrying out but another way of silencing Global South ideas and scholarship.

Global IR neither imagines ‘the national’ as a homogenous conceptual category nor establishes ‘the national’ and ‘the international’ as mutually discordant domains. Indian IR emphasizes the need to ‘avoid a monolithic conception of IR that emerges from India’ (Mallavarapu 2014, 8). Acknowledging the fundamental ‘solidarity of life’ in the national and international domains, Indian IR argues that the ‘progress in the national [/local] domain demands progress in the [international/] global domain and vice versa’ (Shahi 2018, 29). Announcing the absence of a singular Sinocentrism, Chinese IR confirms that the ‘Chinese ideas

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enter into IR theory…not as the singular solution, but as one of many options’ (Cunningham-Cross and Callahan 2011, 362). Making an effort to synchronise the physical, psychological and institutional aspects of worldly existence, Chinese IR introduces the principle of ‘world-ness’ that transcends the norms of (inter-)nationality: the principle of worldness instructs to analyse the affairs of the world by a ‘world standard’ rather than a ‘national standard’ (Zhao 2006, 29). Furthermore, Japanese IR asserts that ‘there is no such thing as Japanese IR theory…there is a variety of ways of thinking relations between the self and the other, the West and the East, peace and war, the region and the state, private and public, the egg and the wall, local and global. They become political only when interpreted in a particular space-time intersection. This is what we call singularity.’ (Watanabe and Rösch 2018, 9). Exceeding this understanding of singularity, Japanese IR enquires how IR discourses cause suffering by victimizing peoples for the sake of the temporally-spatially fixed ideals of national sovereignty or world order which, in reality, are nothing more than passing ‘temporal visions’ or ‘subjective snapshots’ (Shimizu 2021, 36). In fact, the call for Global IR underlines the need to avoid ethnocentrism and exceptionalism irrespective of ‘source and form’ (Acharya 2014, 647): as such, the ‘Global’ credentials of any given theoretical frameworks (e.g., Waltzian, Gramscian, Foucauldian, Gandhian, Fanonian, and so on) have to be judiciously assessed on the basis of not only their ‘geographical sources’ (e.g., Western or non-Western) but also their ‘philosophical forms’ (e.g., dualist or monist). While varied shades of dualist and monist philosophical forms have their geographical sources in the West and the non-West, the qualifications of Global IR theoretical frameworks rest on their ability to thrash the ‘West-non-West binary’: the impact of colonialism yesterday and globalization today have diluted the pristine origins of the labels ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’; in the Global IR debate, these labels lose their analytical significance and exist only as terms of convenience (Acharya and Buzan 2019). Yong-Soo Eun (2022, 110) notifies: The Global IR project sets out to safeguard against a tug of war between Western and non-Western IR and the subsumption of one of them in favour of the other. Being wary of both problems, namely the current West-centrism of IR and the potential danger of nativism in non-Western IR theorisation, it attempts to render international relations

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studies more inclusive and pluralistic. While recognition and exploration of local experiences of non-Western societies as yet-to-be discovered sources of theory-building is being encouraged, the Global IR project also reminds us that scholarly enterprises of this kind should not lead to a nativist or self-centred binary thinking…in this respect, there is emerging literature on ‘dialogue’4 beyond the West/non-West distinction in the Global IR debate.

Contrasting a few premature works that engaged with non-Western knowledge-forms and ended up fixating on ‘national schools with an inward-looking character’ (Hellmann and Valbjørn 2017), more recent literature on Global IR adopts an ‘embedded observer approach’ wherein the representative non-Western scholarships are treated as those ‘situated dialogues’ (not isolated monologues) that seek to creatively open up spaces for critical discussions with counter-hegemonic potential both locally and beyond; surely, this kind of approach appreciates the nonWestern agency without reproducing ethnocentrism and exceptionalism (Chu 2022a). Belying Mearsheimer’s forebodings, several scholars have aroused a range of non-ethnocentric and non-exceptionalist Chinese, Indian, and Japanese worldviews to form new full-fledged Global IR theories.5 The Chinese IR borrowed from the Confucian worldview to design the ‘Tianxia theory’ (Zhao 2021). Though the Tianxia theory is criticized for having an ‘uncritical attitude toward its own ethnocentrism’ (Chu 2022b, 57), Xioating Li (2021, 1408–1409, 1419) explains how the ‘dialogic spirit’ enables this theory to ‘keep exceptionalism at bay’: Since its inception, Zhao Tingyang’s theory – or “philosophy,” as Zhao entitles it – on Tianxia or “All-under-Heaven” has incurred a lasting censure for its exceptionalist implications…On careful review, however,…[these] criticisms are mainly targeted at Zhao’s earlier (i.e., pre2011) works and so overlook Zhao’s later efforts to disconnect Tianxia from Sinocentrism theoretically…Zhao never denies that his critics may have got a point there: from the outset, he states candidly that Tianxia is a utopian ideal (Zhao 2006, 36; 2011, 26), or a “theoretical or conceptual empire that has never really existed” in Chinese history (Zhao 2006, 34). Nevertheless, in Zhao’s (2011, 27) opinion, that a utopia is hard to realize does not detract from its latent significance, which lies in reminding us of the discrepancy between ideal and reality. Moreover, Zhao (2011, 52) admits that such discrepancies were nothing new in the historical Chinese empire, which failed to live up to the ideal of Tianxia in many quarters.6 By

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implication, this admission undercuts exceptionalist claims about China’s ability to make this world a better place (again). Relatedly, if China is no paragon in pursuing the realization of Tianxia, then there is no reason why Tianxia must become a Sinocentric order…Zhao’s more recent understandings of Tianxia are intricate enough to contain a number of principles that, if taken seriously, can serve as an intellectual bulwark against exceptionalism of any kind…the need for more frequent and productive dialogues is more pronounced than ever among the entire East Asian IR community.

While we will return to the Tianxia principles that can serve as an intellectual bulwark against exceptionalism of any kind (including the potential danger of nativism associated with ‘national schools’) in Chapter 3, it is significant to keep in mind that there was much less interest in India in developing an IR school of its own because such a theoretical mission seemed to accentuate the likelihood of self-centrism: Acharya (2011) reported that this risk was foreseen by Kanti Bajpai, before anyone took note of India’s rise, when he warned that efforts to develop an IR theory out of India might carry the perils of lapsing into unsuspecting nativism or pursuing some essentialist Indian prophecy. Yet, the awareness of the potential danger of nativism related to ‘national schools’ did not undervalue the promises of cultural and spiritual knowledge for crafting an Indian IR theory. When Deepshikha Shahi and Gennaro Ascione (2016, 317) explored the ancient Indian philosophy of Advaita (nonduality) for formulating a post-Western IR theory, they clarified how the ‘Advaitic philosophical insights surmount the narrow confines of nativism, ethnocentrism and other forms of ideological essentialism’: The Indian scholars are apprehensive about the supposed nativist outlook [of] a ‘dualist’ form of knowledge wherein Indian IR theory could acquire an ethnocentric…overtone: an Indian or Hindu or Asian or Eastern theory of IR in opposition to the non-Indian or non-Hindu or nonAsian or non-Eastern theory of IR. However, the very possibility of looking at knowledge through the prism of ‘Advaitic monism’ eliminates the likelihood of manufacturing a dualist form of knowledge. Distinguishing between ‘dualist degenerative nativism’ and ‘monist regenerative nativism’, Ramchandra Gandhi (1984, 464–465) writes: ‘Unfortunately those who pejoratively shout ‘Nativism!’ have no notion at all of unfallen or [monist] regenerative nativism…there is no need to abandon even the word ‘nativism’ defensively in favour of words of euphemism and growing respectability such as ‘tradition’, ‘aboriginality’, ‘ethnicity’ etc.

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because there is always a greater hope for the fallen and abused than the secure and unharmed in language as in spiritual life!…Dualist nativism and dualist universalism are by this token equally alienating and unacceptable…Existentially and metaphysically, the monist regenerative nativism is Advaita…atmanubhuti [or non-dual self-consciousness] in all its forms… [Here], nativity becomes Resurrection! Self-conscious Indian nativism cannot, therefore, be any of the narrow things possible to it in ignorance of itself, in falleness.’ The monist philosophical underpinning of Advaita, which makes allowance for a merger between the ‘self’ and the ‘other(s) ’ [at the level of consciousness], qualifies as a non-nativist…epistemological resource for theorising post-Western IR.7

As the Advaita theory appeals to invest in ‘dualism-monism reconciliation’ as an unexplored dialogic strategy to ‘induce a Global spirit in IR’ (Shahi 2018, 111), the Japanese IR theory—enriched with multiple knowledgeforms (including Nishida Kitaro’s philosophy)—advises to ‘reframe’ the idea of dialogue while communicating across boundaries for a Global IR. Notably, Nishida’s focus on abstract theorising with little reference to actual political realities makes it difficult to assess if he was sufficiently attentive to those neighbouring countries whose perception of Japan’s leadership role might be different from his own (Shimizu 2018); but Nishida never supported Japan’s imperialist monologue8 (Heisig and Maraldo 1995). Refuting an ‘imperialist gaze of IR’, Atsuko Watanabe and Felix Rösch (2018, 2–3) opine: Aiming to going global…might paradoxically run the risk of reiterating rather than dissolving the imperialist gaze of IR by falling back to a hegemonically imposed monologue…to avoid the risk, in agreement with Naoki Sakai (1997 and 2007), we do not aim to demonstrate an alternative way of conceiving dialogue, but to reframe it…the dialogue we want to investigate is a product of “difference”…communicating globally and therefore beyond boundaries does not merely refer to what is generically common and human; rather it considers humanity to be the product of fruitful intercourse between its members…mankind’s division into many cultures…Our interest is therefore “excess”…[Japanese IR theorising] shows “different pathways” to understand difference as excess…Better paraphrased as “universal singularity”… Kitaro Nishida’s (1982) emphasis on Kobutsu (das Einzelne)…maintains that the “universal” is not fixed or timeless, but an open-ended project to be built according to the given historical circumstances by all those who share a commitment to the subversion of relations of domination within and beyond IR.

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These non-ethnocentric/non-exceptionalist Chinese, Indian, and Japanese auxiliary theories approve multiple dialogic pathways to boost the research agenda of Global IR—i.e., the agenda to territorially de-center IR knowledge and rationally reconcile the West–non-West binaries. In so doing, they enable the Global IR research programme to transform the ongoing disputes in IR study: i.e., (i) homogenous versus heterogenous, (ii) nationalism versus internationalism, and (iii) geographical versus philosophical. The next section revisits these ongoing disputes and enlightens how the aforementioned Chinese, Indian, and Japanese auxiliary theories of the Global IR research programme are better equipped to transform them.

Global IR Research Programme: The Conceivable Comebacks When IR study gets involved with divergent Western and non-Western voices in the process of responding to global crisis-situations engulfing the present-day neoliberal world order, it inevitably faces a core unresolved tension: i.e., the tension between the ‘single/homogenous’ and ‘plural/heterogenous’ depictions of political realities. F. V. Kratochwil (1998, 215) states: [Q]uite different from the philosophical argument that we are part of just another episode of the [single/homogenous] relentless historical process leading to ever more inclusive forms of political organization, the spread of universalism [by Western IR] is strongly counteracted by the equally strong assertion of particularities [or say, pluralities/heterogeneities by non-Western IR]. Precisely because the packed imagery of the visionary global culture is either trivial or shallow.

In Western IR, the imagery of a single/homogenous global culture rides on a logical divide between the domains of ‘national/hierarchical’ and ‘international/anarchical’: one begins by accepting the conceptual dichotomy that the national and international domains are governed by separate organizing principles of hierarchy and anarchy respectively; in due course, the wearing away of nation-state’s territorial trap flattens this hierarchy-anarchy-divide, thereby making more room for a global culture. M. N. Barnett and K. Sikkink (2011) elaborate:

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[IR] was organized around the concept of anarchy [absence of world government]…and state [container of hierarchy], radiating power from the center to the territorial border, where it comes to a dead halt…anarchy narrative shaped a post-Second World War research agenda…Under the shadow of the cold war…when the once-neglected study of international political economy finally got the attention it deserved…a defining theme was the tension between the logic of capital and the logic of anarchy…how the rise of global corporations could undermine the state’s autonomy and sovereignty… Beginning in the 1980s, and picking up steam in the 1990s, [there was a] desire to find an exit option from the [nation-state’s] territorial trap (Agnew 1994)...[After] the end of the cold war...though the label of [IR] has had clear staying power, scholars of [IR] have gone global as they have become more comfortable with operating outside the [nation-state’s] territorial trap.

By operating outside the nation-state’s territorial trap, IR scholars of the West (or global North) perceive a disciplinary move away from the infamous hierarchy-anarchy-divide: when IR relaxes the national/hierarchical and international/anarchical divide, the planet shrinks and the interaction between different parts of the world (e.g., West and non-West, or global North and global South) increases, thereby marking the arrival of a single/homogenous global culture. But IR scholars of the non-West/ global South push for a plural/heterogenous global culture and hold another opinion: ‘the [nation-]state in the global North was an accomplishment, while in the global South it was a project, needing to solidify its territorial base, to monopolize the means of coercion, and to eliminate all the other rivals to its authority…[Consequently], scholars of the global South developed a range of theories—including dependency, postcolonial, world-systems, and empire; for them, hierarchy and not anarchy seemed to be the defining organizing principle of IR; [furthermore, IR] was always global’. For them, IR was always global not only because the hierarchized positionality of the non-West/global South in the (neo)colonial period had worldwide impacts (as discussed in dependency, world-systems, and post-/de-colonial theories), but also because the rise of the non-West/global South against the decline of the West/global North in the post-2007 financial crisis phase is likely to have worldwide effects (as highlighted by some recent non-Western IR perspectives). But these ‘worldwide impacts/effects’—understood as ‘the global’ in post-/de-colonial or other streams of non-Western IR—feed on the same Kantian ‘time-space-bounded’ human identities as expressed in Western

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IR theories. Like Western IR theories, these non-Western IR theories adhere to Kantian geographical-centrism, whereby human beings are scientifically placed in the phenomenal world-in-appearance (and prohibited from metaphysically entering into the noumenal world-initself).9 In the phenomenal world-in-appearance, human beings cannot experience an absence of time and space because Kant assumes that human beings do not experience time and space; rather, they experience in time and space (Ward 2006). Since they experience in time and space, the geographically-centered time-space-bounded categories of cultures, civilizations, societies, regions, nation-states etc. (including the West–non-West and global North–global South) become necessary for determining human identities.10 So long as human identities are determined via geographically-centered time-space-bounded categories, the technologically meditated realities of ‘the global’ (unfolding in global North/global South) are best defined as ‘compression of time and space’ or ‘annihilation of space by time’ (Rosenberg 2005). But then, this technologically meditated compression/annihilation is not enough to break free from the territorial trap (Abadía 2018). One still grapples with the ‘territorial trap of the territorial trap’: even if a state’s territory is not taken as a political ideal, the subsequent trap of understanding territory largely as the ‘physical substratum’ of the sovereign nation-state persists (Shah 2012). Thus, a kind of re-territorialization occurs, whereby the cultures, civilizations, societies, nation-states etc. of the West and the non-West (or global North and global South) continue ‘to be seen as [time-space] bounded [categories], with their own internally generated authenticities, and defined by their difference from the other places which lay outside their borders’ (Massey 2012, 40). This, in turn, provokes controversies around ‘new anarchy’ (i.e., globality with new multidimensional heterogeneities) (Cerny and Prichard 2017) or ‘hierarchy alongside anarchy’ (i.e., globality with heterogeneities as well as homogeneities) (Hobson 2014). In nutshell, the geographically-centered ideas of territorialization arising from Kantian dualism continue to control plural homogenous and/or heterogenous human identities; ‘any notion of deterritorialization involves traumatic losses of meaning and very real identity crisis’ (McDougall 2017). Whenever one summons a de-Kantian non-Western philosophical form to understand the non-geographically-centered (de-) territorialized politico-cultural realities of the Global world, the scope of that philosophical form is confined to its geographical source. Due to

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the Kant-inspired conditioned reflexes, a de-Kantian non-Western philosophical form is mistakenly considered relevant only to the extent of the temporal-spatial boundaries of its geographical source. Needless to say, these types of mentalities further deepen IR’s familiar cognitive prisons of ‘one world versus many worlds’ and ‘somewhere versus anywhere’. On the one hand, the Kantian Western, post-/de-colonial, and several other non-Western theories reinforce IR’s cognitive prisons of ‘one world versus many worlds’ or ‘somewhere versus anywhere’. On the other hand, the multiple de-Kantian Chinese-Indian-Japanese Global IR theories stand well-equipped to rise above these cognitive prisons and find a way out of the enduring disagreements over ‘homogenous versus heterogenous’, ‘nationalism versus internationalism’, and ‘geographical versus philosophical’. To be sure, Kantian dualismwhich manifests itself as stubborn polarities between phenomena-noumena, science-metaphysics and subject-object—has exercised a lasting impact on IR study. Heikki Patomäki (2003, 33–34) comments: Kant introduced a far-reaching dualism to Western political philosophy, that of phenomena/noumena…for Kant, international relations are in a state of nature. This is indeed the origin of what Ashley (1988) calls the anarchy problematic. [Though] Kant also introduced the noumenal world, the site of reason and morality…this world was cut off from the causal phenomena. To demonstrate that his theory was also practically useful, Kant was at pains to introduce all kinds of ‘secret mechanisms’ that would eventually establish and then maintain the legal order of perpetual peace. These ‘mechanisms’ resonated with the ideas of the late eighteenth century, and they included: the ‘invisible hand’ of free trade and the civilizing effect of commerce; the republican constitution of states, guaranteeing freedom and peacefulness; and attempts to curb the capabilities of states to finance and wage wars…Since Kant’s world is dualistic, the moral reasons (noumena) can do very little to change determinist [causal] chains of constant conjunctions (phenomena)…Ultimately, Kant had to rely on the anachronistic teleological/Aristotelian assumptions about God-given telos of humanity.

Kant preferred to cut off the noumenal world (‘moral reasons’) from the phenomenal world (‘causal chains of constant conjunctions’) with an objective to establish perpetual peace in a cosmopolitan world order. However, his causal explanations of the phenomenal world were fraught

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with ‘ethical dilemmas’, which in turn, ended up naturalizing a ‘divisive politics’. Analysing from a Tianxia (all-under-heaven) position, Zhao Tingyang (2021, 15–16) stated: Kant thought that international law should develop a “cosmopolitan law” wherein everyone not only has their own set of rights associated with being a citizen of a nation-state but also should be conceived as part of a “cosmopolitan commonwealth” with the rights belonging to a world citizen. However, …before the world becomes a world of shared co-existence [emphasis added], there can be no world citizenship…Kant himself discovered that an imagined world commonwealth was unreliable (and could even lead to authoritarian despotism) …What ultimately can be trusted for Kant…is the ideal order of the “commonwealth of autonomous sovereign states”. [But] such perspectives cannot deal with the challenges of the deep conflicts of self-interest and culture…Kant’s ideal could perhaps be put into practice in relatively favourable [homogenous] cultural conditions (like Europe) but is powerless to address adequately the political problems of the entire [heterogenous] world – [e.g.,] civilizational clashes, global financial warfare, hegemony, and so on. Such an ideal is even powerless to secure long-term international agreements, with the current fragmentation of the European Union [e.g., Brexit] an illustrative example…The concept of human rights implies all sorts of “ethical dilemmas”. Since every individual’s rights are absolute, then what to do about disputes between different individuals involving the violation of their rights? And what if the human rights of one geographic region and another geographic region were to come into conflict?...What do we do about the conflicts of interests and rights arising from the inability to enter shared deliberations, intolerance, and a failure to reach contractual agreements, in addition to profound cultural and religious differences…Modern politics…is obsessed with drawing all sorts of “borders”…Individual rights are a boundary for individual and sovereignty is a boundary for nation-states…these are part of a basic logic that splits up the world…to protect all these boundary divisions, modern politics is focused in seeking out external enemies…This sort of divisive politics can be seen in virtually every kind of context: from definition of religious heterodoxy to racism; from hot to cold wars; from colonialism to human rights interventions; from economic and militarized hegemony to financial oligarchy; from technological domination to cultural imperialism – even to the point of Star Wars sci-fi scenarios in which we [as ‘self’] always witness the urge to seek out an enemy [as ‘other/s’]. To clearly demarcate oneself from another, one need only to turn the original state of [noumenal] non-opposition into one of [phenomenal] oppositional conflict.

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The Kantian split between ‘oppositional phenomenal many-ness’ and ‘non-oppositional noumenal oneness’ has affected the process of establishing Western IR as a social science. For Kant, a scientific enquiry occurs when the ‘subjects’ encounter the geographically-centered phenomenal things that they give to themselves as ‘objects’ of a knowledgeproduction. Surely, the moral-ethical knowledge does not originate from an encounter between the subjects and the geographically-centered phenomenal things, but from a metaphysical critique (often specified as ‘metaphysics of morals’ by Kant). Though Kant is not dismissive of metaphysics in favour of science, he endorses a discrepancy between the phenomenal and noumenal procedures of knowledge-production11 : while the phenomenal zone permits scientific knowledge-production, the noumenal zone allows metaphysical knowledge-production. And the academic discipline of IR has embraced this Kantian dualism while treading the path of (anti-)scientificity.12 But this Kantian dualismlimiting the ability of the subjects (i.e., actors/scholars who study actors) to a divisive politics that remains driven by a phenomenal geo-centric temporal-spatial logic—becomes blind not only to diverse forms of behaviour, dynamics and actors in world politics but also to its own restricted (anti-)scientific perspectives (Chan 1997; Valbjørn 2008). Alternatively, the scientific-metaphysical-project started by Advaita (nonduality) discloses that the subjects can surpass the divisible temporalspatial logic of phenomenal many-ness and act in accordance with the indivisible noumenal oneness: here, the subjects as ‘jivanmukta’ are defined as disinterested observers of the changing phenomenal world who remain unaffected by the fortunes of their personal lives and the vicissitudes of worldly temporal-spatial settings (Fort 1998). Deepshikha Shahi (2018, 128 and 125) elucidates: The subject (as jivanmukta) acts in the phenomenal world, but does not derive inspirations from the divisible temporal-spatial logic of phenomenal many-ness. In this context, it is significant to be mindful of the continuous existence of a vast populace (subjects/actors) across the globe who have been demonstrating the capabilities to transcend the divisible temporalspatial logic of phenomenal many-ness, and to act in accordance with the monist principle of indivisible noumenal oneness…one can refer to a few Americans who valiantly encountered the charges of sedition and some of the greatest state repression in the history of the United States for speaking out against the divisible temporal-spatial logic of the First World War (Zinn and Arnove 2014); a few Germans affiliated to the groups like White Rose

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who…confronted the charges of execution while protesting against the violence of Nazi Germany and defending the temporally-spatially indivisible conscience of humanity during the Second World War (Scholl 1983); [the] Indians who lost their lives while…chasing Gandhi’s policy which declared that the freedom from British colonialism could be attained not by the assertion of temporally-spatially divided identities, but by losing them (Mukherjee 2010); [the] Africans who eagerly struggled to pursue Nelson Mandela’s anti-apartheid doctrine which announced that the accomplishment of freedom was not merely about casting off one’s chains but also about living in a way that respected the freedom of others (Evans 2011); the anti-Vietnam-War assembly of native Americans under the leadership of Martin Luther King which carried the slogan ‘Americans – Do Not Do to the Vietnamese What You Did to Us’ (Isserman 2017); [the] Mayan cultural activists in Guatemala who atypically adopted non-oppositional tactics, thereby…helping to dispel the impression that they were engaged in a…frontal hostility toward ‘the system’ (Nelson 1996; Hale 1997); a few Sufi Muslims who…fight in Syria and Lebanon while powerfully raising voice against the divisible communal identities propagated by the Political Islamists (including ISIS) (Rabil 2011)…The Kant-inspired IR asserts that we (as subjects/actors) cannot acquire ‘noumenal knowledge’…[but], the [de-Kantian] Advaita Global IR theory affirms that we…regularly can and occasionally do derive direct inspirations from noumenal oneness… unlike the conventional subject in theories of Eurocentric IR, who remains motivated by an ‘outward-looking phenomenal power’, the unconventional subject (as jivanmukta) in Advaita [theory]…engages with an ‘inwardlooking noumenal power’13 …[and] acts as an ‘empty-signifier’ within whom the seemingly separate phenomenal binaries/oppositions/dualities tend to securely get immersed as an always-already noumenal oneness.

This ‘noumenal oneness’ finds expression in Nishida Kitaro’s conception of ‘pure experience’, a reality that precedes the subject-object division of the phenomenal world and calls for a political responsibility to recognize the flexible identities of human beings, nations, and regions (including the West and the non-West). Explaining how Nishida’s concept of pure experience can be systematically applied to disrupt the conventional temporal-spatial understandings of world politics, Kosuke Shimizu (2018, 503–505 and 516–517) writes: What is being?... There have been many philosophers who tackled the same question regardless of the regions in the past. Kant’s noumenon, which ‘must be cogitated not as an object of sense, but as a thing in

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itself’, makes a typical example…Nishida developed philosophy of being on the basis of pure experience. Nishida argues that what is essential in existence is experience. However, [unlike Kant], the concept of experience Nishida developed is not an experience we usually assume in everyday life. Rather it is ‘pure’ that means before any existence… He contends that it is not a human being that goes through experiences. It is rather experiences, which construct a human being… There is no human being prior to an experience, and the subject and the object are before the division in the pure experience…If human beings are constructed every single moment of pure experience, how could one have an identity, which is presumably continuous?...Nishida answered this question [of human identity] with his idea of mu no basho (place of nothingness) [emphasis added]....He argued that the place of nothingness encompasses everything within it but does not exist in a fixed form… The pure experience does not have meanings…The pure experience is given meanings through the interpretation process of which language has importance…pure experience is rather unspeakable…However, we can search for expressions coming close to it. What are they in IR? …Nishida’s philosophy is substantially influenced by Buddhism…recently…the IR community [has made efforts] to bring Buddhist thought into IR theorisation. Among those…ideas in Buddhism, koan would be most relevant …Koan is a Zen Buddhist practice of dialogue. It sometimes appears in the form of ‘an absurdity, paradox, or non sequitur’ (Ling 2016, 2). This unconventional style of dialogue disturbs the conventional use of language, and reminds the practitioners the fragility and unfixedness of identity [e.g., the identity of the West and the non-West].

Evidently, a de-Kantian undercurrent runs through these diverse Chinese, Indian and Japanese Global IR theories. And this de-Kantian undercurrent assists these theories in transmuting the disagreements over ‘homogenous versus heterogenous’, ‘nationalism versus internationalism’, and ‘geographical versus philosophical’. The Chinese Tianxia theory stresses the prerequisite to envisioning a world of shared co-existence to resolve the ethical dilemmas of homogenous and/or heterogenous individual, cultural and regional identities. The Indian Advaita theory recognizes the temporally-spatially indivisible conscience of humanity that devalues the divisive politics based on the temporal-spatial logic of nationalism and internationalism: ‘when the indivisibility of phenomenal-territorialself and noumenal-de-territorial-self makes provisions for the perpetual globality of the international, the act of ‘going Global’ converts into the

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act of ‘being Global’ (Shahi 2022, 191). And the Japanese IR theories introduce the concept of mu no basho (place of nothingness) to inaugurate a philosophical dialogue that problematizes the geographical fixity of human and regional identities. To overcome the shortfalls of Kantian dualism, these Chinese, Indian and Japanese Global IR theories try to reunite the polarities of phenomena-noumena, sciencemetaphysics, subject-object, and so on. While these Global IR theories suggest some heuristic techniques to reunite these polarities, they remain ready for inter-theoretical-adjudication and join forces for facilitating the prospective progressions of the Global IR research programme.

Global IR Research Programme: The Prospective Progressions The manifold shortfalls of Kantian dualism have been noticed on more than a few occasions. Even though one discerns the ‘plurality of Kantian legacies’ in IR theorisation (Weber 2003), one appreciates the ‘universal validity’ of Kantian ideas in IR practice: this universal validity is derived from the fact that Kant does not entrench differential rules for a divided world fragmented along republican and non-republican lines (Hurrell 2013). Yet, one does not deny that Kant’s cosmopolitan governmentality has managed to be ‘universal but not truly global’ (Vrasti 2013). While Kant’s writings on anthropology and geography have revealed a range of racist assumptions that weaken his claims to cosmopolitanism (Bernasconi 2001),14 the refusal to bring Kant’s cosmopolitanism into dialogue with his geography has been seen as both a ‘moral failing’ and a ‘political liability’ (Harvey 2000). Presumably, Kant’s writings provide a ‘historical high-water mark in attempts to think how politics may succeed on a worldwide scale’ (Franke 1995, 279). Nonetheless, a group of scholars identify a ‘West-West divide’ when they allocate the ‘Kantian paradise’ to the Europeans and the ‘Hobbesian world’ to the Americans (Elden and Bialasiewicz 2006, 626). What is more, other group of scholars detect a ‘West–non-West divide’ when they grapple with the problems of a ‘transcultural Kant’: e.g., the problems of reception that lead to a deliberate restructuring of Kant’s philosophy in Asia (Rieu 2011, 741). Since Kantian dualismalong with its polarities of phenomena-noumena, science-metaphysics and subject-object—supplies a hackneyed IR theory/

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practice that remains anchored in geographically-centered ideas of territorialization, this kind of ‘West-West divide’ and ‘West–non-West divide’ is logically expected in the reception of Kant’s philosophy. In the context of the logically expected ‘West–non-West divide’ in the reception of Kant’s philosophy, it is important to remember that Kant played a key role in devising a separation between science and metaphysics: ‘Kant was convinced that metaphysics cannot furnish man with the knowledge about the world of observable phenomena’ (Frank 1952, 138). With the passage of time, science (as ‘knowledge’ about observable phenomena) became ‘Western’, and metaphysics (as ‘cosmology/worldview’ about unobservable noumena) became ‘nonWestern’ (Iwaniszewski 2008). Besides, the idea of science as an ‘objectcentred view’ of phenomena came to regulate the beliefs and interests of different ‘international subjects’ (Allan 2017). Marwa Elshakry (2010, 99 and 109) informs: The division of the world into the West and the rest has a long history…and the history of science has played a major part in that…the history of science itself started off by asking if science was the specific product of Western civilization or – in the language of a slightly later era – of the West. Early scholars argued that it was not, while current historians don’t bother to ask the question at all and would probably recoil at the antiquated Eurocentrism embedded in it. Some, though perhaps not as many today as a few decades ago, might even challenge the singularity of the term “science.” Once one begins to speak of a plurality of sciences the question has much less bite – though perhaps also less meaning. The specter of recurring “relativistic nightmares” meant that the postmodern turn never really caught on in the history of science – or, rather, that it did not ultimately impact our epistemological and disciplinary categories…[One must ask] how the very concept of “Western science” as the equivalent of “modern science” got established in the first place…how the “history of [this Western] science” – as opposed to the “history of the [non-Western] sciences” – has shaped our disciplinary categories …What did people outside Europe make of the idea of “Western” science? How did their understanding of this change ideas, practices, and disparate categories of knowledge – as well as belief – more broadly?... the discipline of the history of science itself was very much shaped by the search for a global narrative; but in the process it also invented a notion of Western science that flattened out knowledge communities and traditions and placed them into a single historical teleology. Perhaps by appreciating what was lost in

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the historicization of the idea of science in this way we may come to see how to write more genuinely global histories in the future.

With a resolve to disseminate the ‘global histories of science’ and to destabilize the implausible partition between ‘Western science’ and ‘nonWestern non-science’, the auxiliary theories of the Global IR research programme take a de-Kantian turn and cooperatively function in accordance with the hard-core assumptions that the realm of ‘the international’ is a fusion of phenomena (world-in-appearance with subjective manyness) and noumena (world-in-itself with objective oneness); and that it is humanly possible to reconcile the visible many-ness of phenomenal world with the invisible oneness of noumenal world. In an effort to protect these hard-core assumptions, the auxiliary theories of the Global IR research programme suggest some heuristic techniques that seek to unveil the monist continuum interlinking the polarities of phenomena-noumena, science-metaphysics, subject-object etc. Voicing an urge to reconnect these polarities, which, in turn, might bring together the one world (dominated by the West) and many worlds (embodied by the non-West), Amitav Acharya (2011, 633–636) observes: Patrick Thaddeus Jackson [2010] …strikes a powerful blow against the claims of those who have found it convenient to dismiss non-Western experiences and voices as the ‘stuff of area studies’ or as ‘unscientific’. But Jackson also insists that putting the ‘science question’ to rest certainly does not mean that we enter a realm where anything goes. Scientific knowledge for him has three indispensable constituent components: it must be systematic, it must be capable of taking (and one presumes tackling successfully) public criticism, and it must be intended to produce worldly knowledge…But one has to be careful here. A good deal of [theoretical insights] one might bring into IR…from the non-Western world may indeed be ‘worldly knowledge’. But… [their intellectual] sources could be religion and cultural and spiritual knowledge that might not strictly qualify as ‘this-worldly’. They may lie at some vague intersection between science and spirituality or combine the material with the spiritual [or the scientific with the metaphysical] …Can we bring these insights into IR knowledge if we insist on a [Kantian] conduct of enquiry that demands a strict separation between this- and other-worldliness [or between phenomenaland noumenal-worldliness]? ...There are lots of alien [de-Kantian] ways of producing knowledge out there, including the wisdoms of other civilisations and classical and modern international and regional systems which are wonderfully and creatively ‘unscientific’. IR can ignore them at its own

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peril, especially in its moment of liberation from the disciplining hands of an American social science now being resisted from within.15

In fact, the urge to reconnect the polarities of science and metaphysics (and, by extension, the polarities of phenomena and noumena, subject and object etc.) is very much reflected in Lakatos’s design of a research programme. Assigning an equivalent intellectual value to both science and metaphysics, Lakatos (1980, 47, 96 and 115) articulates: [Any aspirational research] programme consists of methodological rules: some tell us what paths of research to avoid (negative heuristic), and others what paths to pursue (positive heuristic) …One may point out that the negative and positive heuristic gives a rough (implicit) definition of the conceptual framework…the history of science is the history of conceptual frameworks… Even science as a whole can be regarded as a huge research programme…But what I have primarily in mind is not science as a whole…I go much further…in blurring the demarcation between ‘science’ and ‘metaphysics’: I do not even use the term ‘metaphysical’ any more…I only talk about scientific research programmes whose hard core is irrefutable not necessarily because of syntactical but possibly because of methodological reasons which have nothing to do with logical form …‘metaphysics’ is a vital part of the rational reconstruction of science.

Obviously, a Lakatosian research programme remains willing to employ metaphysics for the rational reconstruction of science and systematic development of a conceptual framework that surpasses the established logical form and sets up its own distinctive methodological rules. How do, then, the Chinese, Indian and Japanese auxiliary theories engage with metaphysics for the rational reconstruction of Western science? And how does this rational reconstruction of Western science surpass the Kantian logical form for designing a novel conceptual framework? Also, what are the methodological rules (or heuristic techniques) that these auxiliary theories postulate for protecting their conceptual framework from possible anomalies, thereby ensuring prospective progressions of the Global IR research programme? The inclination to mobilize metaphysics for restructuring the Kantian Western science has recurrently resonated in the writings of Chinese, Indian, and Japanese scholars. Chinese IR has overturned Kant’s contempt for ‘Confucian morality’ (Suri 2013, 231) and reinvigorated the methodical usage of the ‘metaphysical component’ of Confucianism to theorise a Global IR (Christensen 2019, 6).

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Indian IR has awakened the Advaita philosophy to resolve the ‘Kantian problem of the unknowability of self’ (Raghuramaraju 2013, 3) and revived the ‘metaphysical ethos’ of Advaita that gradually eradicates the discontinuities between the external-phenomenal and internal-noumenal self to formulate a Global IR theory (Tripathi 2020, 40). Correspondingly, Japanese IR has identified the ‘challenges of Kant studies in Japan’ (Terada 2021) and examined how the ‘metaphysical notion of historical consciousness’—as propagated by Nishida Kitaro’s ‘logic of emptiness’— can serve as a guideline for Japan to regain a sense of purpose after its defeat in the second world war and build a theory of Global IR (Ong 2016). The conceptual framework arising from these Chinese, Indian and Japanese Global IR theories revisualizes a world which is concurrently ‘one and many’: that is to say, the noumenal unity of a single world lies underneath the phenomenal diversity of plural worlds. Remarkably, the metaphysical reality of noumenal unity preserves the scientific reality of phenomenal diversity. As such, the metaphysical foundation of the conceptual framework of Global IR theories—which asserts the compulsory coexistence of ‘one and many worlds’—is not averse to science; it rather seeks to reconfigure the Kantian logical form of Western science by launching ‘integrated scientific-metaphysical research’. The Tianxia theory is based on the metaphysics of the ‘way of nature’: it argues that the way of nature (tian/heaven) ‘does not require any confirmation because it is already wholly manifest in the modes of existence of myriad things’; while the metaphysical reality of tian (heaven above) has perfectly harmonious order, the tianxia (heaven below) must scientifically strive for a perfectly harmonious order; thus, tianxia is a place where the ‘metaphysical and empirical converge’ (Zhao 2021, 51, 173 and 237). The Advaita theory endorses a strategy of ‘science-metaphysics conflation’: as it ascends from a ‘blurry juncture between science and metaphysics without rendering the phenomenal and noumenal realms and procedures of knowledge-production as mutually incommensurable’, the Advaita theory calls for the need to find ‘commonalities in scientific and metaphysical attitudes that otherwise seem to come from two disciplines at either end of the spectrum, namely Western science or Eastern religion’; by fitting together the scientific and metaphysical threads of Western science and Eastern religion, the Advaita theory ‘rebuffs the dualist divide between the presumably distinct ontological worlds of god (noumena/ metaphysics) and worlds of man (phenomena/science)’ (Shahi 2018, 28,

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32 and 135). The Japanese theories are influenced by Nishida Kitaro who ‘intends to have a metaphysical perspective that goes beyond both Eastern and Western traditions’ (Hojo 2009), and Tosaka who tries to synthesize ‘scientific morality and technological spirit’ (Kasai 2011): as such, these theories maintain that the combination of scientific perception with metaphysical fantasies makes it possible for socio-political problems to ‘reach ordinary people with diverse values’, thereby letting them ‘take those problems as their own’ and make sense of the complex contemporary world affairs (Shimizu 2022a, 104). While Global IR theories propose an integrated scientific-metaphysical research programme to make sense of the complexities of contemporary world affairs, they may come across some anomalies (or ‘counterevidence’, to use Lakatos’s lexicon). Broadly speaking, these anomalies may appear as varying expressions of any (or all) of the following ‘unjustifiable claims’: first, there exists a fundamental methodological discontinuity between Western science and non-Western metaphysics that the Global IR theories tend to ignore; second, the Global IR theories reproduce binaries by emphasizing the dissimilarities between Western metaphysics (dualism) and non-Western metaphysics (monism); and third, the Global IR theories seem more abstract (metaphysical) and less factual (scientific) and, thus, they exhibit a predisposition toward policyirrelevance.

Several crisis-situations of world politics may be brought forward to validate these types of unjustifiable claims that enforce estrangements between the one and many worlds, or propagate knowledge hierarchies between the West and the non-West. D. Andreucci and C. Zografos (2022, 3) illustrate how the policies-responses to global climate crisis are routinely based on some of these unjustifiable claims that propagate ‘West–non-West knowledge hierarchies’: [D]ominant actors – such as main-stream development, financial or supranational institutions – mobilize “expert” [scientific] knowledge that discursively constructs certain [‘other’] territories and populations as in need of improving and/or of sacrificing. Such a focus on dominant discourse is by no means intended to deny the agency of the “subaltern” [or the ‘other’]. Representations of the ‘other’ are plural… however, knowledge production

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is imbued with (and reflects) asymmetries of power. Critically unpacking colonial constructions of the other…is not to entail that other cultures are the supine creations of the modern, but it is to acknowledge the extraordinary power and performative force of colonial modernity… while the “objects” of such discursive constructions are not blank spaces that await the projection of colonial imageries, imagining such a blank or “uninscribed earth”…is intrinsic to colonial ways of “worlding”…It is true that modern-colonial ways of seeing and mapping, classifying and cataloguing the earth and its inhabitants – as reproduced in contemporary development practice by institutions like the World Bank – do not take place independently of the pre-existing cultural and geographical diversity. Yet, they do filter such diversity through dominant – arguably neo-colonial and neoliberal – systems of knowledge, with their own [scientific-metaphysical] classification hierarchies…which divide up people and resources depending on their economic (or, at best, conservation) value…Policies for mitigating climatic changes…work, in different ways, as development interventions, and as such require prior discursive work to construe the targeted populations or territories as “in need of improvement” – through narratives that stress vulnerability, underdevelopment, and victimhood.

To counter such West–non-West knowledge hierarchies, the Global IR research programme must activate some heuristic techniques. At the outset, the Global IR research programme knows that the mainstream IR scholars express a preference for empirical theories comparable to natural science theories that remain free of moral/metaphysical judgments (Chernoff 2007). Disproving those who claim a methodological continuity between science and metaphysics or argue that focusing solely on methodology is insufficient to advocate a sharp demarcation between science and metaphysics (Milena and Farr 2020), these mainstream IR scholars sanction an essential science-metaphysics methodological discontinuity and question the utility of metaphysics per se by proclaiming that the metaphysicians (unlike scientists) fail to generate consensus due to the absence of external methodological validation: allegedly, there is no external/additional methodological vantage point from which to evaluate the achievements of metaphysics; so, the metaphysicians can only rely on a priori judgments to do so (Allzén 2023). While the anomalies related to this alleged science-metaphysics methodological discontinuity may continue to produce puzzlements regarding the relative merits of science and metaphysics, the Global IR research programme must remind how the entire Kant-inspired Western science is itself situated upon the

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considerations of ‘time’ and ‘space’ as the subject’s a priori intuitions that apply to the knowledge of the phenomenal world only in so far as this world is perceived by the subject as an appearance (Vollet 2013): there is no external methodological validation for the Kantian premise that human beings cannot experience the phenomenal world beyond time and space (Richards 1974), and, therefore, the geo-centric time-space-bounded categories of cultures, civilizations, nation-states etc. must be needed for determining human identities. In fact, all kinds of science (Western or non-Western) have ‘metaphysical preconditions’ (Mumford and Tugby 2013). Above and beyond, the ‘science of metaphysics’ is logically prior to the ‘particular sciences’ (Western or non-Western) (Collingwood 1940). Rather than passing value-judgements on the relative merits of science and metaphysics, the scholars working on the Global IR research programme must expose how the science-metaphysics-dichotomy has formed false records of rational disparities between the West and the non-West. In this context, one must raise some underexplored questions as proposed by Yiftach Fehige (2016, 1–2): Is the science that Christianity in the West has been interacting with over the past 500 years ‘Eastern’ in important respects?... Does the East have ‘religions’ [or metaphysics] in the way we refer to Western Christendom as a religion since the Enlightenment?… The predominant narrow focus on Western Christendom in the scholarly analysis of the relationship between science and religion may be partly a function of the Eurocentrism that still characterizes much of mainstream history. History of science has played an important role in the emergence of the field of science and religion[/ metaphysics] … However, its own spin of Eurocentrism is most likely a reflection of the European origins of modern science…In consequence, the claim prevails that modern science was exported to the East (Eurocentrism) and created conflicts with established religions there, as much as it did in the West (secularism)…The more work is done on the relationship between science and religion at the intersection of East and West, the clearer it becomes that the modern science’s relation to religion[/metaphysics] and the East is more intrinsic than is commonly portrayed.

To assure progressive shifts in the Global IR research programme, an equally fruitful exercise is the mapping of the intersecting trajectories of Western and non-Western metaphysics. Appreciating the value of this exercise for fostering harmonious West–non-West relationship, Kenneth K. Inada (1991, 361–367) narrates:

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The world has indeed become one, but nations and cultures of the world are still at variance with each other…Yet, people are in contact with each other and must live together. There must be a unifying factor or force to show the way to harmonious relationship. One of the ways, perhaps, is to reassess the nature and function of metaphysics…the concept of metaphysics has been understood in the traditional sense of substance, object, subject, world, space, time, etc…[In Western metaphysics], human minds began to concentrate on the obvious tangible entities which seem to give the impression of durability and stability…since the appearance of Cartesian dualism… man’s attempt to crown human reason or mind over the total nature of human perceptions… accelerated the rise of the sciences… Yet we have begun to see signs of displeasure from the sciences…The reason for this is that the realm of the tangibles alone does not inform all that there is in nature…while Western experience is still essentially based on tangible and rationally deducible nature in perception…the Eastern experience is essentially built on a ‘novel organic metaphysics [that] is two-faceted: one facet…relates to human endeavours in the realm of the senses, the other in subtle ways refers to the realm beyond human endeavours…the senses and non-sense realms reveal different natures but both are infrastructural and united…When the mind focuses on understanding the phenomenon, it seems inevitable that the phenomenon itself will be divided into…two [facets i.e., the senses and non-sense realms which] are in dynamic relationship but not as separate or independent entities. There is no dualism involved here, nor is there a monism for that matter. These terms, dualism and monism, are rigid metaphysical absolutes which the Chinese [or] Indians…did not conceive of from the very beginning. This is not to say however that there had not been any dualistic interpretation later by commentators in and out of China [or India].

It is this ‘organic metaphysics’ (also referred to as ‘naturalistic metaphysics’) that the Chinese, Indian, and Japanese auxiliary theories of the Global IR research programme invoke to perform a holistic study of worldly realities: ‘logically speaking, Tianxia designates the entire world, that is, both a natural world and a political world’ (Zhao 2021, 45); Advaita ‘professes that the human beings are primarily natural beings, and secondarily socio-political beings (Shahi 2018, 135); and the Japanese theories divulge that the ‘world’ (composed of natural beings ) exists as ‘one unified society’; the historicization of natural law [makes sure that] any dividing line [is] never stable but always in flux’ (Watanabe and Rösch 2018, 38). For sure, the holistic study commenced by these

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auxiliary theories calls for an innovative methodological merger of ‘epistemological monism’ (i.e., the metaphysical precondition of noumenal unity) with ‘ontological pluralism’ (i.e., the scientific postcondition of phenomenal diversity). In IR study, this methodological merger implies the presupposition of an ‘always-already connected world’. The Tianxia theory proclaims that the ‘existence presupposes co-existence’ (Zhao 2021, 232). The Advaita theory argues that ‘the perpetually connected world along with its multiple subjects and objects has no separate existence apart from [the presumed originating point of] Brahman, the ‘single hidden connectedness’ (Shahi 2018, 62). And the Japanese theories accept that the individual existence is in contradiction with a largescale universal existence, and the ‘transcendental existence’ of selfhood always includes otherhood; thus, ‘to be morally aware is to see the self as the other’ (Shimizu 2022a, 89). As these auxiliary theories varyingly arouse non-Western naturalistic metaphysics (epistemological monism) as a substitute for Western metaphysics (epistemological dualism), they may be accused of reproducing binaries by positioning the Western and non-Western forms of metaphysics as polar opposites. Dismissing such misleading impressions, Deepshikha Shahi (2018, 137) simplifies: A few up-and-coming models of non-Western/non-Eurocentric worldviews revolve around the philosophy of ‘monism’ in order to offer…alternatives to the philosophy of ‘dualism’ that fundamentally typifies Eurocentric IR…[e.g.], the monist dissolution of self-other dichotomy in Zhao Tingyang’s theory of ‘Tianxia (all-under-heaven)’ is something that distinguishes Chinese IR from the dualism of Eurocentric IR (Wang 2009). Likewise…the monist philosophy of Nishida Kitaro, which influences Kyoto school’s conceptualization of ‘emptiness’ or ‘nothingness’ in IR, could grow as the Japanese alternative to the dualism of Eurocentric IR. The thematic reinforcement of monism in Chinese IR, or Japanese IR, or Indian IR might create possible misleading impressions that the non-Eurocentric parts of the globe are emerging as flag-bearers of monism ‘in opposition to’ the traditional dualism of Eurocentric IR. Nevertheless…Global IR advocates a downright dismissal of such possible misleading impressions. It, rather, calls for a revolutionary reconciliation of dualism with monism in IR theory and practice, thereby confidently putting forward the argument that the ‘dualism-monism debate’ (which anticipates a reallocation of the epistemological hierarchies in IR theorization) is not simply symbolic of the geopolitical repositioning resulting from the rise of non-Western powers in international politics such as

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India and China. In fact, it is expressive of the extent to which a reconciliation of ‘Eurocentric dualism’ with a few up-and-coming models of ‘non-Eurocentric monism’ could leverage a ‘Global’ theoretical-practical spirit in IR.

Even as the Global IR research programme proposes a reconciliation of dualism with monism to leverage a ‘Global’ theoretical-practical spirit in IR, one is likely to doubt that the abstract meta-theoretical gesture of this research programme may perhaps thwart its policy-relevance. While some scholars may argue that only factual (not abstract) theories are policy-relevant (Walt 2005), other scholars may mention how the separate visions of scientific developments lead to the execution of separate policy agencies, programmes and standard evaluation criteria in the West and the non-West (Hofmänner and Macamo 2021). Although the Global IR research programme does not shut out the need for contextual sensitivity (or say, historical, socio-cultural, or politico-economic sensitivity) when it seeks to adjoin the local and global pictures of different worlds, it discards the obligation to pursue a predetermined geo-centric ‘unit-of-analysis’ or ‘level-of-enquiry’ approach in the process of policy designing and implementation. The Advaita theory declares that ‘the relations between the constituents of the world cannot be understood by following a rigid unit-of-analysis or level-of-enquiry: individuals and institutions at any political level (local, international or global) bear the same symptom of connectedness’ (Shahi 2018, 151). Congruently, the Tianxia theory warns that ‘the research policies totally aimed at defeating the enemies [at local, international or global level] are powerless in resolving international conflicts’ (Zhao 2021, 12). And the Japanese theories instruct that a nation must plan its policies in accordance with the thought that it operates as an ‘intermediary between universal humanity and individuals’ (Shimizu 2022a, 70). Nevertheless, the predicaments related to the ‘practicable parameters of policy-responsibility’ is a concern-area that requires a sort of intertheoretical adjudication at the present stage of development of the Global IR research programme. Although the auxiliary theories of this research programme unanimously share an anti-authoritarian (or anti-imperialist) policy-thrust, there seems to be an element of haziness regarding the expanse of policy-responsibility that this research programme aspires to fulfill. The Tianxia theory shows an eagerness to undertake the policyresponsibility to pre-empt ‘the failure of the political’: to do so, it raises an

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alarm that ‘as long as the world is oppositionally divided and conflicted, all societies will suffer the negative consequences of such exteriority’ (Zhao 2021, 114). For the purpose of avoiding the negative consequences of such exteriority, the Advaita theory adopts the policy-responsibility of ‘lokasamgraha’: i.e., the ‘supra-moral activity of the preservation of the natural world order’ by dodging the regular approach of ‘defining selfidentity in terms of non-identity with others’ (Shahi 2018, 4 and 134). While one needs to further sharpen the relatedness of these obscure policy-orientations to the realities of contemporary world politics, the Japanese scholarship draws attention to a firm tension between ‘pluralism in theory’ and ‘universalism in practice’: it counsels that ‘the takeaway for our current age of “Western” decline and “non-Western” rise is that we must resist any utopian temptation emanating from any moral-ethical system to say “we will save the world”…before jumping into the engagement of “us” as non-Westerns to “change the world,” we need to stop at the question of who “we” really are…and…whether the “West” and the “East” are really divided’ (Shimizu 2022b, 1–7). In line with Lakatos’s edict (1980, 6) that ‘one must treat budding programmes leniently; programmes may take decades before they get off the ground and become empirically progressive’, only time will tell how these auxiliary theories inter-adjudicate and set clear-cut parameters of policy-responsibility for proficiently protecting and progressing the Global IR research programme.

Concluding Remarks The Global IR research programme excavates a range of denigrated knowledge-forms to destabilize the conventional cognitive prisons of IR study whereby one presumes a separation between the one world (dominated by the West) and many worlds (embodied by the non-West). However, many of these knowledge-forms supporting the Global IR research programme have their geographical source in the non-West, and, therefore, it is mistakenly believed that these knowledge-forms can only explain the local realities of the non-West (somewhere/s), not the global realities of the West as well as the non-West (anywhere/ s). These cognitive prisons essentializing the separation between the one and many worlds, or somewhere and anywhere have their roots in the Kantian philosophical thinking that forms the disconnected opposites of phenomena-noumena, science-metaphysics, subject-object,

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self-other, West–non-West, etc. As an alternative to this Kantian philosophical thinking (informed by the Western metaphysics of epistemological dualism), the de-Kantian knowledge-forms shaping the auxiliary theories of Global IR invoke a non-Western naturalistic metaphysics which suggests a merger of epistemological monism with ontological pluralism: in this method, epistemological monism presupposes the invisible noumenal unity of a single world, whereas ontological pluralism inspects the visible phenomenal diversity of plural worlds. The Global IR research programme—encompassing the Tianxia theory, Advaita theory, and Japanese theories—pursues a methodological merger of epistemological monism with ontological pluralism so as to adjoin the local and global pictures of different worlds before initiating the process of policy designing and implementation. As this research programme sets out to adjoin the local and global pictures of different worlds, it is supposed to invoke some heuristic techniques in order to protect its hard-core assumptions about the compulsory coexistence of ‘one and many worlds’. Broadly, these heuristic techniques perform a three-fold task: they explain the methodological continuity between science and metaphysics, recommend a reconciliation of dualism with monism (rather than treating them as polar opposites), and mobilize the ‘Global’ spirit unleashed by this dualism-monism reconciliation to determine practicable parameters for policy designing and implementation. Even if the material-ideational particulars of this style of policy designing and implementation remain obscure at present, the next chapter sets out to investigate how the policyorientations of the Global IR research programme can be consistently attuned to the concrete realities of current world politics so as to push forward the collective political agenda of a world which is concurrently ‘one and many’.

Notes 1. According to Kosuke Shimizu (2022a), many post-/de-colonialists have already pointed out that the ‘Western worlds’ (as subject) frequently condemned the so-called outdated, barbaric and uncivilized characteristics of the ‘non-Western worlds’ (as object). Nevertheless, in the eyes of the non-Western worlds, Western modernity was problematic. This was because the non-Western worlds (as subject) wanted to find a way for the reconciliation between Western modernity and their local cultures by problematizing the Western world as ‘other’ (or object). But then, in

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its attempt to find a way for the reconciliation between Western modernity and their local cultures by problematizing the Western world as ‘other’ (or object), the non-Western worlds ended up embracing the same Western Kantian style of dualist knowledge-production that endorsed subject-object separation. This is the reason why Richard Ned Lebow (2023) recently argued that ‘even postcolonialism [and to some extent de-colonialism], are Western in origin, reflect Western concerns, Western ways of thinking, and Western-conceived projects.’ 2. In the academic discipline of IR, the terminology ‘innovation’ conveys different meanings. Stephen Gill (1997, 9) opines that, ‘an innovation introduces something new – a new method, a new theory, a new perspective – in ways that have some practical effect on the way that we may think about and potentially act in the world…Often this simply involves…rearticulating existing [Western] Republican arguments in different [non-Western] political contexts.’ However, Linsay Cunningham-Cross (2012, 1) argues that ‘measuring [theoretical] innovation against ostensibly Western markers restricts the scope for innovation in contemporary Chinese [or other non-Western IR] research, and also works to reinforce an asymmetric relationship between… [the non-West] and the West. Reconsidering innovation as an ideational factor that has a ‘deep impact on collaboration as well as on competition between countries’, Jos Leijten (2019, 1) characterizes ‘innovation as a global public good’, in which everybody benefits, and global collaboration [i.e., the West–non-West collaboration] emerges as the dominant model.’ 3. In his seminal article, ‘An American Social Science: International Relations’, Stanley Hoffmann (1977) argued that the field of IR was dominated by North American scholars, and especially the United States, in part due to the dominant role played by the United States in the post-world war world politics. Justifying Hoffmann’s controversial take, John M. Mearsheimer (2016) wrote an article, ‘Benign Hegemony’, in which he commented: ‘In the mid-1970s, Stanley Hoffmann called IR an “American social science.” That label was appropriate then, and it is still appropriate today especially with regard to the all important ideas and theories that dominate discourse in our discipline…It is often said that the…(IR) scholarly community is too American-centric and needs to broaden its horizons. I disagree…This situation is not likely to change significantly anytime soon and for entirely legitimate and defensible reasons.’ The ‘legitimate and defensible reasons’ discussed by Mearsheimer revolved around the notion of ‘benign hegemony of American-centric IR’: as per Mearsheimer, the American-centric IR generously offered opportunities to non-Western IR scholars for presenting their perspectives, but the IR scholars outside the United States lacked the ability to

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make whole new IR theories. In a more recent talk, ‘Is IR Theory Not Global Enough?’, organised by the Bilkent University on 12th April 2022, Mearsheimer agreed that the making of new full-fledged IR theories can allow non-Western IR scholars to draw a lot of popularity across the globe. 4. In mainstream IR, the discussion on ‘dialogue’ developed as corollaries to the ‘great debates’: Thucydides’ ‘Melian dialogue’ was related to the first great debate (or idealist-realist debate) (Korab-Karpowicz 2006); ‘dialogue as methodological interaction’ was seen as an extension of the second great debate (or history-science debate) (Curtis and Koivisto 2010); likewise, ‘dialogue as engaged pluralism’ advanced the third great debate (or interparadigmatic debate) (Lapid 2003); and ‘dialogue as an inter-epistemic synthesis’ forwarded the fourth great debate (or positivist– post-positivist debate) (Moravcsik 2003). Though the ‘great debates’ are one of the most established means of telling the conceptual evolution of ‘dialogue’ in IR, a few scholars have begun to not only differentiate between ‘debate’ and ‘dialogue’ (Lapid 2003), but also interrogate the dominant tendency among IR scholars to prefer ‘debate’ over ‘dialogue’ (Hellmann 2003). While some scholars have problematized the Western-centric bias in various notions of dialogue that omit ‘Third World’ (Rosenau 1993) or show an ‘inside-out-prejudice’ by attributing the West’s development of higher levels of rationalization and morality to its own unique capacity to learn and borrow from other non-Western cultures (Linklater 2005), other scholars have discussed how the performance of dialogue within the ambit of Global IR is also not hassle-free: for understanding the complexities of a dialogic approach to Global IR, see Shahi (2020a); for learning about the prerequisites to dismantle the epistemic hierarchies and asymmetrical dialogues through Global IR, see (Ersoy 2022). 5. Several publications have captured the emerging exemplifications of Global IR theories inspired by a number of non-Western ancient, medieval, and modern philosophical heritages: for instance, Re-Writing International Relations History and Theory Beyond Eurocentrism in Turkey (Çapan 2016); Watsuji Tetsurô’s Global Ethics of Emptiness: A Contemporary Look at a Modern Japanese Philosopher (Sevilla 2017); The Guanxi of Relational International Theory (Kavalski 2018); Advaita as a Global International Relations Theory (Shahi 2018), Widening the World of International Relaotar¯ o tions: Homegrown Theorizing (Aydinli and Biltekin 2018); Tanaka K¯ and World Law: Rethinking the Natural Law Outside the West (Doak 2019); Paulin Hountondji: African Philosophy as Critical Universalism (Dübgen and Skupien 2019); Critical International Relations Theories in East Asia: Relationality, Subjectivity, and Pragmatism (Shimizu 2019); Globalizing IR Theory: Critical Engagement (Yaqing 2020); Sufism: A

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Theoretical Intervention in Global International Relations (Shahi 2020b); Globalizing International Theory: The Problem with Western IR Theory and How to Overcome It (Layug and Hobson 2022); Bridging Two Worlds: Comparing Classical Political Thought and Statecraft in India and China (Bell et al. 2023); The Russian Idea in International Relations Civilization and National Distinctiveness (Tsygankov 2023); and Between India and China: An Ancient Dialectic for Contemporary World Politics (Ling and Banerjee 2025), among others. 6. Q. Edward Wang (1999, 285) informs: ‘In its formative years, the Chinese outlook revolved around the axis of Han ethnic culture, with its two poles, the Han and non-Han. There was also a spatial concern, which was reflected in the dynamic center-periphery relationship and alluded to by the terms zhongguo and tianxia. The term zhongguo, which originally meant “the capital [or center] of all states,” referred primarily to the central geographical position that Han China occupied in the tianxia or “the entire human world.” This spatial dimension of the Chinese worldview became increasingly visible in later periods when the zhongguo, the center of world space, was sometimes occupied by non-Han peoples. The Han Chinese still hoped to sinicize their barbarian rulers, but although they achieved some success in this, they were no longer able to maintain their ethnocentric approach to imagining the world. 7. It is believed that Advaita has its roots in the ‘Vedas’—the earliest body of Indian scriptures comprising the Rig Veda, Sama Veda, Yajur Veda and Atharva Veda. Advaita survived a prolonged pre-history of oral tradition. It was only at the turn of the 700s that Advaita occupied the central position in the Indian intellectual space, thereby upstaging other rival philosophies, such as Samkhya, Mimamsa, Nyaya, Yoga and Buddhism. For a detailed discussion on how Advaita, under the guidance of the key philosopher Shankara, critiqued rival philosophies (especially Buddhism) while drawing from them a set of sophisticated technical arguments and discarding the rest, see Collins (1998). For analytical purposes, the evolutionary history of Advaita is divided into three phases, i.e., ‘preShankara’, ‘Shankara’ and ‘post-Shankara’ (Balasubramanian 2000). For understanding how the political appeal of Advaita increased during colonial period, see Bhushan and Garfield (2011). And for knowing how Advaita was modified to serve specific strategic interests during colonial period, see Deshpande (2015). 8. Kosuke Shimizu (2011, 158–159) argues: ‘Nishida’s theory of world history was based on the perception of subjectivity of contradiction, and was thus exclusively culture-oriented. By emphasizing cultural aspects, he tried to disturb the coherence and consistency of the colonialist discourse on which the dominant regime of Japan of the time was entirely reliant.

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9.

10.

11.

12.

However, because Nishida’s theory of world history completely lacked the recognition of the material relations of the colonizer and the colonized, as a direct consequence of his understanding of the term ‘culture’, his attempts were unrealized…Nishida represents his political engagement in the production of a counter-narrative to the dominant imperialist regime. However, his attempt to influence Japan’s foreign policy and to change its course toward more cooperative relationships with other Asian countries was, by no means, successful…Despite that, many Japanese IR scholars, even today, subconsciously adopt his theory of the construction of subjectivity.’ Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781) enforces a definite split between ‘phenomena’ (i.e., mind-based sensation of world-in-appearance) and ‘noumena’ (i.e., mind-independent makeup of world-in-itself) (Wallace 2005), and his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786) prescribes that the phenomena can be studied according to ‘scientific principles of observation and experimentation’, whereas the noumena can merely yield ‘metaphysical or philosophical inspections’ (James 2007). The conceptual categories of culture, societies, nations, civilizations etc. can be scientifically established as a ‘logical whole’ only if they are operationalized as closed systems limited to the field of ‘time and space’ (Coomaraswamy 1989). In fact, the scientific study of the realities of worldly life, human consciousness, and intersubjectivity demands a structural construction of these realities in terms of ‘distinctive time-space sectors’ (Berger and Luckmann 1966). In this context, it is interesting to specify that Richard N. Lebow (2014, 43) in his study on causation in IR realizes that the noumenal world could indeed be a ‘useful starting point for causal narratives or forecasting’. He agrees that the noumenal world of abstract relations is unlike the empirical world of international relations. Still, this noumenal world of abstract relations could provide insights into the empirical world of international relations. It is generally held that the explanatory function of modernist-rationalist theories is ‘science’, whereas the contemplative function of postmodernistreflectivist theories is ‘anti-science’. But Kant’s influence continues to structure not only the ‘problem-solving’ modernist-rationalist theories but also the ‘critical’ postmodernist-reflectivist theories of IR. Sheila Dow (2001, 61) simplifies: ‘[As] postmodernism evolved out of modernism as the anti-thesis to modernism’s thesis, [one may guess that] postmodernism is also anti-modernism…[Nonetheless], postmodernism has carried forward modernism’s [Kantian] dualism and it is the consequences of this [neo-Kantian] dualism which are driving thought beyond postmodernism.’ Unsurprisingly, Gary King, Robert O. Keohane and Sidney Verba (1994) illustrate that the modernist-rationalist theories deal with causal

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inference, whereas postmodernist-reflectivist theories deal with descriptive inference; as such, both qualify as science. Also, both types of (neo-)Kantian theories presume a dualist divisibility of time and space: this dualist divisibility becomes quite apparent when temporal fragmentations are defined as linear or non-linear (MacKay and Roche 2017), and spatial fragmentations are discussed as spatial-fetishism (space as material) or spatial-exorcism (space as discourse) in different (anti-)scientific IR theories (Kleinschmidt and Strandsbjerg 2010). 13. Achin Vanaik (2017) argues that the Indian contribution to the reshaping of the discipline of IR will require mining of metaphysically inspired thoughts: most helpful perhaps would be the Vedic concept of Advaita or non-dualist monism that rejects the binaries of the self and other, subject and object, creator and creation, thereby proving to be more conducive to the development of a fluid more harmonious, non-hierarchical self which is less imposing on others, whose power is ‘inward-directed’ (seeking selfmastery) rather than, as in the West ‘outward-directed’ (seeking control over others). 14. Charles W. Mills (2005) attributes Kant a threshold notion of ‘moral personhood’ according to which some races (Chinese, African, native American etc.) do not qualify for consideration under the categorical imperative. While Lucy Allais (2016) opines that Kant cannot be made consistent on race, Oliver Eberl (2019) argues that Kant indeed made some racist statements but his theory of race was not meant to ground moral judgements on a racial hierarchy but to defend the unity of mankind under the given empirical reality of colonial hierarchies. 15. For understanding the key issues related to the definition of IR as a discipline, the definition of IR as a science, and the definition of IR as an American social science, see D’Aoust (2017). For learning about the stratification structures within the American and Western European IR and the decline in US dominance in IR journals, see Kristensen (2015). For a discussion on the steep rise of the meta-category of ‘Global South’ in the academic research on world politics, see Haug et al. (2021).

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Vollet, Lucas Ribeiro. 2013. “The Transcendental Problem of Time and Space.” Studia Kantiana 15: 135–152. Vrasti, Wanda. 2013. “Universal But Not Truly Global: Governmentality, Economic Liberalism, and the International.” Review of International Studies 39, no. 1: 49–69. Wallace, Robert M. 2005. Hegel’s Philosophy of Reality, Freedom, and God. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walker, R. B. J. 1988. One World, Many Worlds: Struggles for a Just World Peace. Colorado: Lynne Rienner. Walt, Stephen M. 1998. “International Relations: One World, Many Theories.” Foreign Affairs 110: 29–46. Walt, Stephen M. 2005. “The Relationship Between Theory and Policy in International Relations.” Annual Review of Political Science 8: 23–48. Wang, Q. Edward. 1999. “History, Space, and Ethnicity: The Chinese Worldview.” Journal of World History 10, no. 2: 285–305. Wang, Yiwei. 2009. “China: Between Copying and Constructing.” In Global Scholarship in International Relations, edited by Arlene B. Tickner and Ole Wæver, 103–119. New York: Routledge. Ward, Andrew. 2006. Kant: The Three Critiques. Cambridge: Polity Press. Watanabe, Atsuko. 2019. Japanese Geopolitics and the Western Imagination. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Watanabe, Atsuko, and Felix Rösch. 2018. Modern Japanese Political Thought and International Relations. London: Rowman & Littlefield. Weber, Martin. 2003. “Keeping it Real? Kant and Systemic Approaches to IR—A Reply to Harrison.” Review of International Studies 29: 145–150. Yaqing, Qin. 2018. A Relational Theory of World Politics. Cambridge: CUP. Yaqing, Qin. 2020. Globalizing IR Theory: Critical Engagement. London and New York: Routledge. Zambernardi, Lorenzo. 2016. “Politics Is Too Important to be Left to Political Scientists: A Critique of the Theory-Policy Nexus in International Relations.” European Journal of International Relations 22, no. 1: 3–23. Zhao, Tingyang. 2006. “Rethinking Empire from a Chinese Concept of ‘AllUnder-Heaven’ (Tian-xia).” Social Identities 12, no. 1: 29–41. Zhao, Tingyang. 2011. Tianxia tixi: shijie zhidu zhexue daolun [The Tianxia System: An Introduction to the Philosophy of World Institution]. Beijing: Chinese People’s University Press. Zhao, Tingyang. 2021. All Under Heaven: The Tianxia System for a Possible World Order. Translated by Joseph E. Harroff. Oakland: University of California Press. Zinn, Howard, and Anthony Arnove. 2014. Voices of a People’s History of the United States. New York: Seven Stories Press.

Global IR: An Agenda of One or Many? No, of One and Many

Most simultaneous discoveries, theoretical or factual, are explained by the fact that the research programmes being public property, many people work on them in different corners of the world, possibly not knowing of each other (Lakatos 1980, 115). The Global IR research programme is progressively amalgamating simultaneous discoveries made by scholars working in different corners of the world. The theoretical conjectures of these discoveries call for the visualization of a world which is concurrently ‘one and many’: that is to say, the global and local narratives of the ‘one world’ (dominated by the West) and ‘many worlds’ (embodied by the non-West) are essentially entangled and equally enlightening. As such, the creative knowledge-forms coming from any parts of the globe (Western or non-Western) can potentially impact theory-building and policy-making in the remaining parts. Conventionally, various forms of global(ized) theoretical-knowledge-production by the West came to set the terms and conditions for praxeological/policy-relevant knowledgeapplication in the non-West. In order to improve these imbalanced patterns of West–non-West intellectual involvements, the non-West made efforts to engage with local(ized) theoretical-knowledge-production. This local(ized) theoretical-knowledge-production hoped to better resolve the policy-problems of the non-West. Nevertheless, these efforts continued to retain the differential intellectual roles played by the West and © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Shahi, Global IR Research Programme, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39121-7_4

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the non-West: while the West commanded monopoly over global(ized) theoretical-knowledge-production, the non-West sought to establish monopoly over local(ized) theoretical-knowledge-production. Alternatively, the Global IR research programme strives to dismantle all sorts of global/local monopoly of knowledge-production/knowledge-application imposed by either the West or the non-West. It, rather, proposes an innovative practice of theory-building and policy-making which seeks to transcend the geo-centric limitations of knowledge-production and knowledge-application. In this context, the main resolve is not only about scientifically exploring the ‘technologically connected conditions of a globalized world’ wherein the events in one part of the world affect the remaining parts due to the compression of geographical distances (an orthodox modernist exposition contained in Western IR), but also about scientifically-metaphysically recognizing the ‘perennially interdependent co-existence within a Global world’ wherein the strategic action of harm or healing performed anywhere is bound to affect the human condition everywhere regardless of geographical juxtapositions. This chapter demonstrates how the auxiliary theories of the Global IR research programme presuppose this all-inclusive (or temporally-spatially indivisible) human condition, and, thus, focus on the collective political agenda of the one and many worlds while preparing and executing policy-plans, especially when it comes to tackling global crisis-situations. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first section discusses the innovative ways of theory-building proposed by the Global IR research programme: it clarifies how the customary ontological-epistemologicalmethodological postures of IR theory-building are reshuffled by the key propositions of the auxiliary theories of this research programme. The second section specifies the opportunities for introducing novelty in policy-making within the framework of the Global IR research programme: it explains how this research programme transmutes the enduring debates on theory-praxis gaps when it mobilizes its innovative theoretical acumens to review the set procedures for conceiving competent policy programmes, specifically during global crisis-situations. Finally, the third section emphasizes the need for regular reappraisal of the theorypraxis-interface of the Global IR research programme: it exemplifies how this research programme arouses its objective criteria of appraisal for revaluating the truth-content of its theory-praxis-interface and for rationally reconstructing its road ahead.

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Global IR Research Programme: Reshuffling the Theory-Building Postures IR theorising is grounded in the interrogatives of ontology, methodology, and epistemology. While ‘ontology’ probes what exists and ‘methodology’ enquires how to know what exists, ‘epistemology’—as a theory of knowledge—tests how we know what we know of what exists. It is acknowledged that there are different ways in which the decisions about matters of ontology, methodology, and epistemology can be made, and that these decisions have important implications for how research agendas are put together (Hansen 2010). Nonetheless, it is the Kantian dualist knowledge-situation that has mostly shaped the research agendas of Western IR. In respect of theory-building postures, this Kantian dualist knowledge-situation dictates a threefold sequential ontological-methodological-epistemological prearrangement: (i) ontological commitment to phenomena/world-in-appearance (not noumena/ world-in-itself); (ii) methodological preference for scientific principles (not metaphysical opinions); and (iii) epistemological scepticism toward subjectified facts (not epistemological anti-scepticism toward objectified truths).1 In agreement with this Kantian dualist knowledge-situation, the primary responsibility of Western IR theories is to make sense of the phenomena of world politics in terms of the contested visions of how the world ‘is’ and how it ‘ought to be’ (Wight 2006). In fact, these contested visions of the world—emerging from a variation of multiple societies which incessantly interact and come to acquire new forms via dialectical process of hybridization—constitute Western IR’s distinctive ontology (what exists ) (Rosenberg 2016). Countering this distinctive ontology— i.e., IR’s universe of modernity or mere societal-cultural multiplicity— the non-Western post-/de-colonial IR redefine ontology as the source of a different kind of cosmopolitics (Jaeger 2017). Many approaches related to the non-Western post-/de-colonial IR contest the ontological parochialism of the West and make a plea to hear, know, and speak to the non-West in their ‘own ontological terms’: such approaches ‘generate a skewed picture of the kinds of knowing and being practiced in distinct parts of the world’, thereby highlighting the ‘intelligibility gap’ between Western and non-Western worlds (Trownsell et al. 2019). Methodologically (how to know what exists ), the contested visions of the world coming from the West or the non-West can be studied by means

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of ‘positivist subject-object correspondence’ (whereby mental representations of a subject are related to the innate properties of an object) or ‘post-positivist intersubjective correlation’ (whereby differing mental perceptions of the subjects about an object are recalibrated). But both positivist subject-object correspondence and post-positivist intersubjective correlation depend upon ‘mind-based rationalities’ for explaining and describing the reality of world politics.2 While the positivist theories (such as, different versions of realism, liberalism and structural Marxism) presume that reality is positioned outside the human mind, the postpositivist theories (for example, postmodernism, feminism, and critical international theory) assume that reality is placed inside the human mind. Clarifying how the centrality of mind-based rationalities fuel a positivist–post-positivist debate in IR study, Fred Chernoff (2007, 6) comments: Many scholars…make a fundamental distinction between “inside” and “outside” approaches to the study of IR. The “outside” refers to the “scientific” [positivist] approach, which emphasizes causal reasoning and identifying regularities in the behavior of nation-states or other social actors. The “inside” [post-positivist] approach rejects the notion that human behavior, as individuals or in any sort of groupings – governments, banks, political parties – can be studied scientifically. These scholars generally focus on getting “inside” the mind of the actors, trying to understand the world the way they understand it, and trying to find meaning in the actions we observe. The inside approach is often viewed as “interpretive”: it views the study of the social world more like the process of decoding meanings of literature than like the hypothesizing of causal relationships that natural scientists do. The outside approach has been dominant in the study of IR in the United States over the past half-century. But in the past twenty years it has run into a lot of opposition.

Noticeably, the positivist theories deduce ‘total externality of reality’: the reality (object) is situated out there, outside the mind-based knowledge practices of human actors (subject). But the post-positivist theories construe ‘relative internality of reality’: the reality (object) is situated within, fairly inside the mind-based knowledge practices of human actors (subject). Yet, both positivist and post-positivist theories locate reality somewhere in or between the mutually separated ‘internalized subject’ and ‘externalized object’, thereby endorsing an essential separation between the subject and object of a Kantian dualist knowledge-situation.

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In addition to the ‘total externality’ and ‘relative internality’ of reality (object), a more nuanced statement on the subject-object relations has been offered by Roy Bhaskar’s ‘critical realism’. Bhaskar (1998) suggests that the ‘internality’ of human actors (subject) with respect to their objects of study must be distinguished from the ‘existential intransitivity’ of those objects of study: here, an object’s existence (or not), and properties, are considered quite independent of the act of investigation of which it is the putative object, even though such an investigation, once initiated, may modify that object. Alexander Wendt’s ‘social constructivism’ gains stimulus from Bhaskar’s critical realism, and, thus, attempts to attach an equal importance to both ‘object-aspect’ and ‘subjectaspect’ of reality (Wendt 1999; Patomaki and Wight 2000). However, like positivist and post-positivist theories, Wendt’s social constructivism maintains that the thoughts of human actors (subject) stand separated from the reality (object), and it is the presence/absence of ‘factual correspondence’ or ‘perspectival intersubjective correlation’ that verifies the consistency of constructivist knowledge about reality. Indeed, the discussions on constructivist knowledge about reality have regenerated the same old contentions between ‘positivist constructivism’ and ‘post-positivist constructivism’ (Hamchi 2011). Overall, the peculiarity of Wendt’s social constructivism gets watered down by the commonality it shares with the rest of Western IR theories: i.e., the approval of a Kantian dualist knowledge-situation that remains marked with subject-object (or say, self-other or West–non-West) separation.3 Typically, the finding of positivist subject-object correspondence entails ‘hypothesis testing’ that sits well with deductive studies (e.g., neorealism/neoliberalism): here, one quantitatively arrives at reality by applying generalized theories to concrete cases (Copeland 2000). And the formation of post-positivist intersubjectivity demands ‘hypothesis-generation’ that supports inductive studies (e.g., constructivism): here, one qualitatively examines specific cases prior to producing generalized hypotheses about reality (Ruggie 2002). Irrespective of these variations, it has been simplified that the positivist and post-positivist theories are to be treated as two competing ‘explanatory hypotheses’; and, the historical episodes are to be treated as data/evidence on the basis of which philosophers, sociologists and other interested parties are to choose between the hypotheses (Nelson 1994). Pragmatically, the explanatory hypotheses of positivist and post-positivist theories need to be compared to the concrete dilemmas of the real world (i.e., the ontological world), and, while doing that,

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it is advised to employ the formula of ‘analytical eclecticism’ that selectively combines the narratives embedded in competing (post-)positivist explanatory hypotheses (Sil and Katzenstein 2010). In fact, Western-centric IR declares that the ontological and methodological investigations remain deeply intertwined with epistemology (how we know what we know of what exists ): ‘ontology crucially affects what can be accepted epistemologically…the reverse is also true’ (Hollis and Smith 1996, 112). That is to say, our assumption about ontology (‘what exists’)—which, in IR study, is the contested visions of the world— affects our epistemology (‘how we know what we know of what exists’). Despite accepting the alternative viewpoint that our revised approach to epistemology may recondition our ontology (‘the reverse is also true’), mainstream IR theories presume that the ‘ontology precedes epistemology’ (Marsh et al. 2017, 179). Thus, the ontological ‘specifications of the object under study…logically precede any [mainstream IR] theory, regardless of whether we explicitly address them or not’ (Moreira 2021). Also, when mainstream IR theories start the ontological-methodological investigations of an object under study by activating those Kantian scientific principles that perceive the object of a knowledge-situation as temporally-spatially separated from the subject, they succumb to ‘epistemological scepticism’: a variety of subjectified facts related to Western/ non-Western experience are evoked as key sources to justify the knowledge claims about objective-reality of world politics (Matilal 1986), and a sceptical attitude is adopted that doubts all kinds of knowledge claims, thereby upholding the belief that the gaps between subjective-experience and objective-reality remain unbridgeable (Ayer 1973). The limitations of this sequential ontological-methodologicalepistemological prearrangement in Western-centric IR—whereby the contested visions of the world are examined through the Kantian scientific principles that temporally-spatially separate the subject/s and object/s of a knowledge-situation, thereby solidifying the gaps between diverse subjective-experience of the West or the non-West (as theorist) and objective-reality of world politics (as theorised)—are increasingly being put under scrutiny. To overcome these limitations, IR scholars have begun to call for not only ‘reshuffling the ontologicalmethodological-epistemological sequence of theory-building’ (Ascione 2022 and 2023) but also accomplishing a ‘properly reflexive reconstruction of epistemology’. Inanna Hamati-Ataya (2018, 21 and 25) recommends:

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[One may go for the option of] an autonomous reconstruction of epistemology suited to a post-Kantian consciousness…[so as to produce] a very different contextualization of IR knowledge than either the geoepistemic one informed by post-[/de-]colonial realities and ethno-cultural differences between and within core and periphery scholarship, or the sociohistorically informed comparative genealogies of classical and contemporary discourses on the world that contextualizes them in relation to the Zeitgeist, institutions, and problem-constellations of their time and place…[The] knowledge produced within [G]lobal IR would consider how the way we existentially and praxically inhabit differently carpentered environments along the spectrum of populated socioecological landscapes affects our theoretical, metatheoretical, praxical, and practical engagement with our objects of study, from the international and the global to our conceptions of order, territory, space, and borders, but also what shapes [our] epistemic dispositions and preference.

The auxiliary theories of the Global IR research programme aim at reshuffling the fixated ontological-methodological-epistemological sequence of theory-building. For that reason, they select epistemology rather than ontology as the starting point for IR theorising. And when they select epistemology rather than ontology as the starting point for IR theorising, they undertake an autonomous reconstruction of epistemology suited to a de-Kantian consciousness. In effect, a de-Kantian consciousness steers the auxiliary theories of the Global IR research programme in the direction of an alternative epistemological-ontologicalmethodological predisposition: (i) ‘epistemological anti-scepticism’ that prioritizes objectified truths over subjectified facts; (ii) ‘ontological overhaul’ that revisits phenomenal world-in-appearance as a corollary of noumenal world-in-itself; and (iii) ‘methodological eclecticism’ that mixes and matches scientific principles along with metaphysical opinions. Precisely, it is this alternative epistemological-ontological-methodological predisposition that enables the Global IR theories to serve as an intellectual bulwark against geo-centric exceptionalism and ethno-centrism. Before analysing the interpellations of epistemological ant-scepticism in Global IR theories, it is important to understand the fundamental difference between epistemological scepticism and epistemological antiscepticism. Distinctly, ‘epistemological scepticism’ (guiding Western IR) offers the thesis that the knowledge or justified belief about external reality (object) is impossible. Therefore, an intellectually satisfying reasoning of how knowledge claims about external reality can be made

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possible needs to meet certain desiderata: these desiderata can include the fulfilment of internalist access requirements, such as how reflective knowledge can be produced on the basis of subjectified facts, that it is revisionary, and so on (Ranalli 2017). Since epistemological scepticism doubts all kinds of knowledge claims, it produces a dualist knowledge-situation wherein the gaps between subjective-experience and objective-reality remain fairly unbridgeable. By contrast, ‘epistemological anti-scepticism’ (shaping Global IR) begins with an intellectual assurance that our beliefs about objectified truths are correct, and then moves on to explain how justified knowledge claims about objectified truths can become possible by fulfilling epistemic priority requirements and objectivity requirements. Because epistemological anti-scepticism bears an adjustable belief in proposed knowledge claims, it generates a monist knowledge-situation wherein the gaps between subjective-experience and objective-knowledge are somewhat bridgeable. Even though diverse forms of epistemological dualism and epistemological monism have a long history of sustenance in Western and non-Western philosophical legacies, it is the Kantian epistemological dualism/scepticism that has guided mainstream IR theories,4 thereby positioning the categories of the West and the non-West as unbridgeable polar opposites. Kosuke Shimizu (2022, 20) elaborates: [On]e of the issues that has been questioned in the context of non-Western discourse is the ontological and epistemological quality of the dichotomy between the West and the non-West. There has been a heated debate whether the category of ‘non-Western’ is ontologically and epistemologically feasible and whether it is preferable to refer to discourses outside the mainstream IR literature. Kimberly Hutchings critically commented on the debate that using ‘non-West’ would remain defined in ‘a negative relation to the “West” and the geography-based ontology and epistemology would inevitably direct us to “a geopolitical relocation of disciplinary hegemony” at the best’ (2011, pp. 644-5). A similar point is made by a prominent Asian postcolonial thinker, Ching-Chang Chen, who argues that non-Western IR inevitably results in locating the West as the reference point because the category of ‘non-Western’ is predetermined from the beginning. The easy acceptance of the ‘non-West’ as an ontological and epistemological category would only result in constituting a ‘derivative discourse’ of the predominant IR theories (Chen, 2011). What they implicitly argue for, in this context, is not only the ontological need to widen the space of IR but also to ensure that ‘excluded voices are included’ for the

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sake of our epistemology to understand the world (Hutchings, 2011, 6456). In doing so, they explicitly question the given ontological quality of the non-Western as a pre-existing category. This is because they see a fixed ontology [derived from Kantian epistemological dualism/scepticism] as the disruption of the process of constructing epistemological democracy…for the sake of epistemological democracy, the salvation of the ‘dialogue as a mode of unsettling taken-for-granted truths about the world, specifically the taken-for-granted truths of the powerful’ is desperately needed. (Hutchings 2011, 643)

Refuting the fixed ontology derived from Kantian epistemological dualism/scepticism which prioritizes subjectified facts over objectified truths, the auxiliary theories of the Global IR research programme embrace the element of epistemological monism/anti-scepticism which attaches more importance to objectified truths than subjectified facts. Observing from the Chinese standpoint of Tianxia (all-under-heaven), Zhao Tingyang (2021, 201–203) notes: Because the political unit of tianxia [all-under-heaven] has been absent, the largest and most effective category of political logic has been limited to the nation-state, and the very ideal of world order has been forsaken…international politics belongs to an extension of national politics, and as such can only serve nations, not the world…[But] human life has come to a point wherein we need most urgently a world politics. Without such a politics it becomes nigh impossible to secure the universal human need for peace, safety, coexistence, and cooperation. This is to say that world politics fulfills certain objective needs, and as such is more than simply a matter of appealing to relative and subjective values [emphasis added] …To transcend every [subjective] individual standpoint, and to transcend every [subjective] “we” grouping, there must exist a naturally exterior “otherness” that reciprocally limits all freedom of action…This is an objective fact recognized by Xunzi, Hobbes, and many other original position theorists. Recognizing such naturally exterior alterity, though, leads to problems of conflict, and just as Hobbes described, such conflict is necessarily a nasty and brutish competition. However, despite competition for mere existence within conditions that are nasty and brutish, it is not the case that such natural conflicts must go unresolved…theoretically and practically, despite having experienced numerous examples of destructive zero-sum games, it is always possible to hope that conflict for existence will come to an end via some kind of a rational equilibrium reached in the course of competition. Whether in a cooperative or noncooperative balance, both parties

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can explicitly or implicitly acknowledge a shared division of interests. And this suggests that struggles for existence don’t have to end in a life-ordeath battle, but can precipitate a search for an acceptable distribution of benefits…Xunzi’s model [unlike Hobbesian model] uses the benefits of cooperation to entice outsiders to become internal participants, and in so doing, establishes a stable cooperative order. This is a logic of interiorization…From the course of history, we can see that a logic of interiorization is more akin to a Chinese style of [epistemologically monist] political thinking [wherein the self and other/s can potentially meet via interiorization], while a logic of…subjugating exteriority…is more akin to European styles of [epistemologically dualist] political thinking [wherein the subject/ self and object/other stand separated].

As the epistemologically monist political thinking of Tianxia prefixes the objectified universal human need for peace, safety, coexistence and cooperation to resolve the problems of conflicts arising from differing subjectified standpoints, the epistemologically monist political thinking of Advaita pre-installs the objectified universal reality of time-space indivisibility to deal with the issues of irreconcilability related to divergent subjectified annals of geo-historical realities. Deepshikha Shahi (2018, 104–105 and 117–118) elucidates: [The Kant-inspired Western] theories restrain the temporal-spatial understandings of international politics to the subject’s encounter with the phenomenal world and consequently stick to the ‘subjectified’, not ‘objectified’ commotions of time and space in IR…Though these rationalistreflectivist theories provide relevant glimpses of the plurality of temporalspatial realities of the phenomenal world-in-appearance, the dualist projections of this plurality…more often than not create ‘mutually opposing’/ ‘mutually clashing’/‘mutually irreconcilable’ theoretical-practical positions in international politics…In contrast to these portrayals of temporality and spatiality that emerge from epistemological dualism, the philosophy of Advaita offers an alternative option of epistemological monism…Rather than arranging these two realms of phenomena and noumena as distinct temporal-spatial configurations in rational hierarchy, the Advaita epistemological monism reconfigures these two realms…as two rationally inseparable cognitive zones of an all-pervasive temporal-spatial indivisibility …or single hidden connectedness or Brahman. As the hidden connectedness across many-ness of phenomenal time-space is to be subjectively explored, the oneness of noumenal time-space remains an always-already accomplished objectified reality… The net result of…this interconnected subjective-phenomenal and

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objective-noumenal temporal-spatial realities in Advaita not only enables the overcoming of the problem of mutually irreconcilable accounts of geohistorical realities of international politics, but also provides an unexplored scientific-metaphysical (phenomenal-noumenal) schema that could peculiarly inform the theorisation of Global IR…in the theoretical schema of Advaita, the apparent many-ness of reality emerging from the ‘phenomenal world of dualism’ is supplemented (not contradicted) with the presumption of hidden oneness of reality rooted in the ‘noumenal world of monism’, [thereby] heralding a ‘reconciliation of dualism with monism’, which in turn, enables a navigation through the exteriors…of Eurocentric IR in a…universalist (not particularist) manner.

The Advaita theory repositions the wide-ranging mutually irreconcilable subjectified accounts of geo-historical realities as phenomenally fragmented but noumenally interconnected indices of the objectified universal reality of time-space indivisibility. Likewise, the Japanese theories (inspired by Nishida) rearrange the plural subjectified self-consciousness of phenomenal world as capable of absolute disappearance in the preexisting objectified universal noumenal world of ‘pure experience’ or ‘nothingness’. Kosuke Shimizu (2022, 44–47) explains: [Nishida] was…searching for something fundamental and universal to our existence, regardless of cultural or traditional differences. What he saw as the key concept in this context was ‘pure experience’ or junsui keiken…This purity becomes obtainable only when experience occurs before the division of subject and object; it is thus prior to language…When we dig into the mind of the subject to the extent that subjectivity itself dissolves into nothing, we encounter something universal in the form of [the objectified truth of] pure experience [emphasis added]…This process contributes to philosophy by understanding the world in a way in which ‘pure experience’ constructs and constitutes the subject. If the subject is constructed by a series of different pure experiences, how does the subject maintain an integrity of subjectivity rather than dissolve into many different pieces?... To understand the continuity of human consciousness…experience must transcend time…Yesterday’s self-consciousness must be connected to today’s self-consciousness. In this way, the integrity of the subject could be guaranteed. [Similarly], experience must transcend space – one self-consciousness is connected to another…What is important here is that [Nishida’s] inquiry into subjectivity in which he regarded the integrity of experience as being more essential than individual distinction led him to the point where he began to grapple consciously with the

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issue of universality…His universal orientation was further developed in his logic of ‘the place of absolute nothingness’ [mu no basho], in which his thought arguably transcended the limit of self-reflective consciousness. If one is to be perfectly self-reflective, one needs to be self-reflective to the self-reflective consciousness. Nishida saw this process as infinite, always incomplete. To transcend this incompleteness, he posited the concept of the ‘place of absolute nothingness’, a space where the subject disappears…while things appear in their ‘suchness’ (ari no mama). Nishida’s anti-subjectivist tendency …brings him to define the true subject as ‘the predicate that cannot become subject’, this predicate being the extreme limit of the universal: the place (or universe) of absolute nothingness…is identical to the true individual thing, disappearing into it.

Clearly, the Global IR theories support epistemological monism/ anti-scepticism as the starting point for performing ontologicalmethodological investigations of world politics. In so doing, they inflate the prominence of universalist objectified truths and accordingly adjust the roles of particularist subjectified facts in the process of theorybuilding. While Tianxia prefixes the ‘objectified universal human need for peace, safety, coexistence and cooperation’ and Advaita pre-installs the ‘objectified universal reality of time-space indivisibility’, the Japanese theories foreground the pre-existing ‘objectified universal noumenal world of pure experience or nothingness’. Remarkably, when we remake sense of the contested visions of the world from the epistemologically monist vantage point of these universalist objectified truths, we tend to notice loopholes in those ontological projections of the world whereby miscellaneous subjectified facts pertaining to Western and non-Western experience are rigidly represented as binary opposites, which, in turn, normalize and, sometimes, even moralize divisive politics. The Tianxia theory condemns the theories of Western realism, liberalism and constructivism that postulate the ontological reality of divisive politics in almost every context: ‘from definition of religious heterodoxy to racism; from hot to cold wars; from colonialism to human rights interventions; from economic and militarized hegemony to financial oligarchy; from technological domination to cultural imperialism—even to the point of Star Wars sci-fi scenarios in which we [as ‘self’] always witness the urge to seek out an enemy [as ‘other/s’]. To clearly demarcate oneself from another, the [‘self’] turns the original state of [noumenal] non-opposition into one of [phenomenal] oppositional conflict [with the other/s] …When divisive politics encounters difficulties based on

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oppositional conflict, the only responses it can come up with are peaceable solutions in the form of ‘assemblies’ among international alliances. However, the world within such a political dynamic cannot be assembled because all of the actors involved in oppositional conflicts cannot be made into an assemblage. Thus, with certain a priori presuppositions regarding the externality of alterity [emphasis added], it doesn’t matter whether we follow a Hobbesian tradition that emphasizes war, a Lockean tradition that emphasizes competition, or even a Kantian tradition that seeks peaceful contracts—no matter how much we understand the dangers of conflict, all of these positions are unable to dispel such ‘intersubjective’ tension and conflict’ (Zhao 2021, 16–17). The Advaita theory points out that Western rationalism, reflectivism and constructivism underline the need to correlate the rival hypotheses (made up of subjectified facts) with the actual operation of world politics (comprising ontologically separated objects) for creating dependable knowledge claims. This presumption of a dualist subject-object separation directs the plural theorisations of rationalism, reflectivism and constructivism. By separating the subject from the object and by extrapolating the former from the world s/he observes, the theories of Western IR convert the abstracted distance into ontological difference. And this ontological difference acquires an obvious Western-centric bias: the West ontologically stands out as the active, transformative and modern ‘subject’, while the Rest ontologically gets reduced to a passive, stagnant and traditional ‘object’. Consequently, the ‘universal reality outspread by the West (subject) stands separated – by its own principle of ontological dualism – from what is still outside of it, that is, the Rest (object) [emphasis added]. Even the replacement of this knowledge-situation with a reversed subjectobject positioning, wherein the Rest transfigures into the subject and the West becomes the object (as it happens in the cases of post-/decolonial IR), ends up manufacturing the same fragmented account of reality just because it involuntarily buttresses the same supposition of ontological dualism. While the theoretical frameworks of Western or nonWestern post-/de-colonial IR fall into the trap of mutually opposing self-other binary categories, it is the Advaita methodology of subration (badha) – a continuous knowledge-process of casting off all falsifiable distinctions – that is able to come up as a workable alternative to this hurdle of ontological dualism…From the [Advaita] perspective of…single hidden connectedness or interconnected categories, there is nothing in the world that can be truly described as the ‘other’…[As the Advaita

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theory] suggests to…visualize single hidden connectedness across dualist pluralities, it does not seek to represent itself as an Eastern theory opposed to Western theory, but as a Global theory that seeks to connect the East with the West. And it seeks to do so by making a rational appeal to …time-space-indivisibility and a political appeal to noumenal hidden reality of one world underlying the phenomenal apparent reality of many worlds’ (Shahi 2018, 103 and 148). Collectively, the theories of Tianxia and Advaita problematize those ontological identifications of universality whereby one assumes an ‘externality of alterity’ and, as a result, ‘the West (subject) stands separated from what is still outside of it, that is, the Rest (object)’. Analogous to the theories of Tianxia and Advaita that sponsor the ontological principle of ‘non-exteriority’ (Zhao 2021, 317) or ‘nothing outside’ (Shahi 2018, 99), the Nishida-inspired Japanese theories emphasize the need to transcend the binary oppositions of an apparently divisive world— e.g., inside/outside, civilised/barbaric, advanced/underdeveloped, superpower/small-power, hard/soft, political economy/civil society, and so forth—for the purpose of imagining an alternative universalist world order. The basic intention of Nishida-inspired Japanese theories ‘is to find an origin of human culture…Even though there are different cultures in the world, we can reveal a deep essence of the human culture by comparing different cultures and mutually complementing each other… [According to Nishida], it is not acceptable that the development of Eastern culture absorbs Western culture, or that Western culture absorbs the Eastern. Nor it is that East and West remain distanced from each other…we should rather see them as two branches of the same tree. They are physically apart, but the same at the root. It is impossible to imagine [a universalist phenomenal] world culture without finding a deep [noumenal] root from which both of the cultures emanate’ (Shimizu 2022, 47). Methodologically, these Global IR theories—as they try to tie the ontological loose ends of particularist phenomenal many-ness with an all-encompassing universalist noumenal oneness—incorporate not just scientific principles but also metaphysical opinions. The Tianxia theory posits a metaphysical ideal. Here, ‘heaven and earth are the horizonal limit concepts of all possibilities and thus they are the ultimate axiological points of reference. As heaven and earth are all-inclusive, it follows that tianxia must embrace pluralism as a value… [Certainly, the Tianxia theory calls for] a spiritual revolution: it presumes that

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without a spiritual revolution, merely material revolutions might just bring the world to an even more apocalyptic place’ (Zhao 2021, 8 and 200). Echoing a similar outlook, the Advaita theory warns against the dangers of both ‘materialist scientific excess’ (wherein science tends to gather a religious trait) and ‘spiritualist metaphysical excess’ (wherein religion tends to procure a scientific trait). It cautiously invests in a well-balanced scientific-metaphysical-project which ‘maintains that the denigrated status of multiple non-Eurocentric and Eurocentric worldviews (that do not subscribe to Kantian phenomena–noumena divide) is an outcome of the shifting political power configurations in international politics, which, in turn, depend upon historically determined conditions in the long run, not on the inner properties of the concepts/ categories/philosophical traditions per se. It [further] anticipates that the inner properties of diverse Eurocentric and non-Eurocentric concepts/ categories/philosophical traditions remain connected to each other in myriad ways’ (Shahi 2018, 44). Correspondingly, the Japanese theories forbid those ‘metaphysical concepts such as the Japanese spirit and national polity [that can make] intellectuals, as well as ordinary citizens, disrespect the significance of scientific knowledge’ (Shimizu 2022, 96). But they surely emphasize the necessity for spiritual ties in world politics: ‘if one plans for exchange between ethnic cultures without mutual respect…the result will be merely the acceptance of a mutual invasion of cultures…Cultural agreements then become nothing more than efforts by the state to continue the work of various private organizations that seek to promote international culture as conventionally understood…even such private work must be built on spiritual ties (seishin-teki ch¯ utai) between the countries involved, ties that are both established in fact and open to the possibility of expansion…we must understand that better spiritual and cultural relations are the foundation for better political and economic relations…The spiritual dimension of jishu illuminates the desperate need for an active commitment from people, both colonizers and colonized, to the creation of an inclusive, multiethnic society’ (Watanabe and Rösch 2018, 61, 69 and 112). Evidently, the key propositions of these Global IR theories lay down an innovative model of theory-building. To begin with, this model awakens epistemological monism/anti-scepticism whereby one accepts some pregiven objectified truths of the perennially interconnected world. Explicitly, these pregiven objectified truths of the perennially interconnected world necessitate an ontological overhaul

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whereby one sets out to re-explain a range of usually taken-forgranted subject-object, self-other and West-non-West binaries as interdependent non-binary categories. Finally, the acts of these interdependent non-binary categories—hinting complementarities among varied Western and non-Western actors/worldviews/philosophies/narratives/ discourses—are examined via methodological eclecticism whereby one initiates a joint application of scientific principles along with metaphysical opinions. It is significant to explore how this model of theorybuilding in the Global IR research programme—channelizing the features of epistemological monism/anti-scepticism, ontological overhaul and methodological eclecticism—results in reviewing the routine procedures for conceiving competent policy programmes, precisely during global crisis-situations.

Global IR Research Programme: Reviewing the Policy-Making Procedures Do Global IR theories merely yield empirical knowledge about or pass normative judgement on world politics? Or, can we extract the policylevel implications of these Global IR theories that focus on complementarities between Western and non-Western worlds? If yes, how do the policy-level implications of these Global IR theories (that focus on complementarities between Western and non-Western worlds) prescribe/ promote a considerate renovation of world order? Notwithstanding the reaffirmations about the relevance of theory-building for policy-making procedures, the debates surrounding the theory-praxis gaps in IR study recurrently re-emerge. John J. Mearsheimer (2021) observes: There is no question that many policy makers or people outside of academia think that theory is unimportant to them, and that theory is something that academics do… Nothing could be further from the truth…Theory is God…The world that we all confront is incredibly complicated…There is only one way you can make sense of that world. And that is by coming up with simple theories that isolate the key factors that define that world, and then explain how those factors fit together to further explain that world, and to allow to formulate policies. There is no way you can manoeuvre your way through life whether you are making economic policy, domestic policy or foreign policy…Everybody thinks about foreign policy in terms of theory. Theory is not something that is restricted to academia.

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These observations unmistakably underscore the (un)conscious theoretical preoccupations of both policy makers and academia. Nonetheless, only certain kinds of ‘simple theories’—e.g., the neorealist, neoliberal and constructivist theories that isolate key factors such as, ‘anarchy’, ‘security dilemma’, ‘complex interdependence’, ‘identities’, ‘interests’ etc. to make sense of the world and to accordingly formulate foreign policy—are recognized and regularized as ‘policy-relevant work’. Stephen Walt (2005, 23) remarks: Policy makers pay relatively little attention to the vast theoretical literature in IR, and many scholars seem uninterested in doing policy-relevant work. These tendencies are unfortunate because theory is an essential tool of statecraft. Many policy debates ultimately rest on competing theoretical visions, and relying on a false or flawed theory can lead to major foreign policy disasters. Theory remains essential for diagnosing events, explaining their causes, prescribing responses, and evaluating the impact of different policies. Unfortunately, the norms and incentives that currently dominate academia discourage many scholars from doing useful theoretical work in IR. The gap between theory and policy can be narrowed only if the academic community begins to place greater value on policy-relevant theoretical work.

A careful reading of these remarks suggests that the theory-praxis gaps in IR study persist because of not only policy makers who are averse to exploring the vast theoretical literature but also academia (or a specific section therein) that remains uninterested in manufacturing policy-relevant theoretical work. While policy makers hesitate to access the theoretical work ‘locked within the circle of esoteric scholarly discussion’ (Newsom 1995–1996, 66), it is alleged that a specific section of academia adds to this seemingly useless esoteric scholarly discussion and, therefore, gets ‘rightly ignored by specific foreign policy officials’ and ‘usually held in disdain by their fellow academics as well’5 (Kurth 1998, 29). Suggesting how the so-called ‘policy-relevant rationalist approach’ and ‘policy-irrelevant reflectivist approach’ need to be melded for the purpose of enabling better theoretical intervention in policy-making process, Robert O. Keohane (1988, 379 and 396) articulates: To understand international cooperation and discord, it is necessary to develop a knowledge of how international institutions work, and how they change…[T]he intellectual predominance of the rationalistic approach has

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been challenged by a reflective approach, which stress the impact of human subjectivity and the embeddedness of contemporary international institutions in pre-existing practices… Advocates of reflectivist approach make telling points about rationalistic theory, but have so far failed to develop a coherent research program of their own…Both rationalistic and reflective theories need further work…Rationalistic theories of the institutions need to be historically contextualized…Reflective approaches are…more adept at pointing out what is omitted in rationalistic theory than in developing theories of their own with a priori content…[they] need to develop testable theories… Eventually, we may hope for a synthesis between the rationalistic and reflective approaches – a synthesis that will help us to understand both practices and specific institutions and the relationships between them…[so that] we can intervene more persuasively in the policy process.

Despite the awareness that a sincere synthesis between rationalist and reflectivist approaches—that strengthens the spirit of ‘theoretical pluralism’ and ‘analytical eclecticism’ in IR study—is desirable for reasons related to policy rather than to the growth of knowledge per se (Zambernardi 2016), the policy makers frequently perceive theory as misleading when it does not correspond to practical knowledge of the world and redundant when it does, thereby compelling various IR theorists to chase a certain kind of empirical theory that resists normative self-reflection (Guzzini 2013). While the ‘empirical problem-solving theories’ struggle to fix the imperfect institutions of existing world, the ‘normative critical theories’ aspire to constitute alternative worlds. Still, it is agreed that empirical problem-solving theories and normative critical theories are both engaged with practice in their own ways (Cox 1981). Also, the ultimate test of ‘integrative theoretical pluralism’—which tries to integrate different rationalist and reflectivist approaches as IR’s substantive knowledge—is nothing short of practice (Wight 2019). In sum, the dilemma is not so much about the praxeological intent of different theoretical traditions but about how to translate the complementarities between numerous Western and non-Western actors/worldviews/ philosophies/narratives/discourses into practicable policy-actions. Due to the increased importance attached to ‘cultural diversity’ in contemporary world politics (Reus-Smit 2019), it is readily realized that the West-dominated ‘one world’ exists alongside the non-Westembodied ‘many worlds’6 (Walker 1988). But the West-dominated ‘one

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world’ remains restricted to a modern political culture centred on individual subjects, sovereign states, and an international system of states, thereby excluding those non-Western political cultures that accept a premodern, God-given or natural world7 (Walker 2010). In the showground of policy-making, the indeterminate tendencies of inclusion/ exclusion among different types of modern Western and pre-/postmodern non-Western worlds indicate a deepening uncertainty about the running/reshaping of world order in the near future. Against this backdrop, the likely ‘epistemological co-optation’ of non-Western worlds by the Western modern political culture is forecasted as ‘the regionalization of world order’, wherein the United States, China, Brazil, India, and the EU are expected to play roles as ‘regional hegemons’ (Falk 2014, 186). Often, this regionalization of world order is referred to as the advent of ‘multi-regional world order’ (Hurrell 2007) or ‘multiplex world order’ (Acharya 2017). But, if one notices the signals of ‘epistemological diversion’ of non-Western worlds from the Western modern political culture, one begins to consider possible policy-prescriptions for establishing a novel world order that abandons the Western Kantian enlightenment legacy. Aaron McKeil (2022, 422) apprises: Whether this Enlightenment orientation is too tainted by its Western past, too limited as well as by its secularist confidence in science and technology and its disdain for religion and tradition, to serve us well in the present is a foundational question. It leads naturally to a related issue as to whether…[we] should…disavow this [Kantian] legacy, or at least incorporate non-Western perspectives… (Falk 2014, p. 191). [Revisualizing a world order by involving de-Kantian non-Western perspectives] would require deep methodological redesign, from an enlightenment methodology to a more thoroughly ‘post-Western’ and ‘post-secular’ one. In a context of growing scholarly interest in ‘post-Western’ and ‘Global IR’ today, this modification would likely attract significant interest… In practice…there is growing demand for alternative non-great power-centric [or say, non-centric] global order models, especially [emerging] from the Global South.

The non-centric global order models that steadfastly search for complementarities between Western and non-Western worlds are mandatory not only to comprehend global multipolarity but also to rebuild an empirically-normatively effective Western agency in non-Western worlds and vice versa (Onar and Nicolaïdis 2013). Therefore, the participation of

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the hitherto academically alienated non-West in policy-making procedures becomes a matter of necessity for the West instead of a matter of choice (Ersoy 2022). Yet, when researchers/practitioners make efforts to utilize the non-Western knowledge-forms of the Global IR research programme to facilitate the participation of the non-West in policy-making procedures, they often fall prey to any (or all) of the following ‘rational miscalculations’: first, if a non-Western knowledge-form remains non-theorised by IR scholars, it plays no role in shaping world politics whatsoever; second, if a non-Western knowledge-form is theorised but becomes dormant in its locality/region of origin, it is incapable to inform world politics everywhere; and third, if a non-Western knowledge-form was active but delivered unintended outcomes in the past, it is unable to positively transform world politics in the present or future. Nevertheless, if one carefully looks at the commonplace activities that affect world politics, these rational miscalculations seem to be calling for rectifications. It is crucial to bear in mind that the current world politics at times operates in accordance with some principles that have origins in the non-West, albeit only imperfectly or incompletely. For instance, Feng Zhang (2015, 19) illustrates how the ‘Chinese foreign policy already contains a rarely noted element of ethical relationalism. But that ethical relationalism is in competition with other intellectual currents for policy influence and must be expanded and deepened if Chinese foreign policy is to realize its relational potential more fully.’ Deep K. Datta-Ray (2015, 6) demonstrates how the modern foreign policy gestures of the Indian diplomats remain hugely influenced by the cosmology of dharma (truthful action) contained in a pre-modern Indian text, ‘Mahabharata’, which defies the Eurocentric paradigms of rationality: ‘though avowedly antiwar, the text dwells upon war. It is understood as a moral impasse…the text is intent on providing a lesson on how to act peaceably.’ In a similar vein, Linus Hagström and Niklas Bremberg (2022, 263) explicate how the Japanese principle of aikido provides practitioners with a method for harbouring insecurities and for dealing with attacks that may or may not occur, by empathically caring for actual and potential attackers. Although the principle of aikido has not been employed to create a full-fledged IR

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theory, it still works as a ‘practice theory’ that ‘could serve as a method of fundamental transformation if widely applied in world politics’. Furthermore, even if some of the non-Western principles/ conceptualisations appear dormant or disconnected with the actual world politics as it unfolds in a given region or elsewhere, they should not be immediately invalidated. Karen Smith (2018, 88) advises: While much has been written about [the African principle of ‘collective personhood’ or] ubuntu, particularly with reference to conflict resolution, peacebuilding and human rights, it remains on the fringes of scholarly analysis in IR. Scholars of South Africa’s foreign policy have had to take note of it after the term appeared in the title of the country’s 2011 foreign policy white paper: “Building a better world: the diplomacy of ubuntu”…In light of the apparent disconnect between this concept and much of what is currently occurring on the African continent, it is often dismissed as utopian and not reflective of reality. However, while the principles underlying ubuntu are undoubtedly under tremendous pressure throughout Africa, as a result of urbanisation, conflict, and so forth, this does not invalidate its potential to contribute to our understanding of IR.

As a matter of fact, no IR theory remains continuously connected with actual world politics. At different temporal-spatial junctures, even mainstream Western-centric IR theories (including realism, liberalism and constructivism) stood stumped by ‘change’. Jack Snyder (2004, 61) recalls: Realists failed to predict the end of the Cold War...Even after it happened, they tended to assume that the new system would become multipolar (“back to the future”, as the scholar John J. Mearsheimer put it). Likewise, the liberal theory of democratic peace is stronger on what happens after states become democratic than in predicting the timing of democratic transitions, let alone prescribing how to make transitions happen peacefully. Constructivists are good at describing changes in norms and ideas, but they are weak on the material and institutional circumstances necessary to support the emergence of consensus about new values and ideas. With such uncertain guidance from the theoretical realm, it is no wonder that policymakers, activists, and public commentators fall prey to simplistic or wishful thinking about how to effect change.

In spite of these identified past shortcomings, these mainstream Westerncentric IR theories are regularly used as a guide to determine foreign

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policy moves not only in the West but also in the non-West. By the same logic, the Global IR theories—as they remain expansively enriched with a variety of pre-modern, medieval, or modern non-Western knowledgeforms—must be considered applicable to any local or global manifestations of world politics regardless of their deficient past performances. In this context, it is noteworthy how the multiple auxiliary theories of the Global IR research programme not only make candid confessions regarding previous erroneous experimentations with the related nonWestern knowledge-forms but also draw lessons from those erroneous experimentations so as to introduce desirable adjustments while theoretically redesigning or practically reapplying those knowledge-forms. To be sure, the Tianxia theory roughly bears a resemblance to the prototype of the Zhou dynasty (1100–256 BC), not the unified Chinese empire (after 221 BC). Zhao admits that the practice of imperial China deviated from the best practices of the Zhou dynasty, thus distorting the Tianxia ideal.8 But then, Zhao laments that the model of the Zhou dynasty was also not a perfect embodiment of the Tianxia system. Ever since King Li of the West Zhou dynasty ruled, the prowess and morality of the kings declined all over Tianxia and it was metaphysically believed that ‘the great Heaven’ did not show its virtues as it destroyed the feudal kingdoms through famine! In the light of these demerits, Zhao decided against using the Zhou dynasty as a referential point in his Tianxia theory. The objective of Zhao’s theoretical project, therefore, is to revive the concept of Tianxia so that it starts to ‘speak to the world in general and to go beyond any particular population or nation-state’ (Zhao 2021, xiv). In the same way, the Advaita theory admits that the neo-Hindu code of Advaita monism permitted the Indians to proclaim their unified national identity as they conceived it during their struggle against the British colonial rule.9 But then, the Advaita theory straightforwardly states that the appeal of Advaita monism to envisage a one world underlying many worlds is ‘not to be seen as a theoretical-practical scheme meant to search or impose some archaic Hindu source of single absolutist truth’; in fact, the ‘potentiality of the philosophy of Advaita monism in IR does not lay buried in its own past; rather, it is expectant in our tangible present’ (Shahi 2018, 43–45). Likewise, the Japanese theories caution that ‘even the unwilling cooperation of philosophers filled with goodwill [such as, Nishida and Tanabe] could end up appearing to justify the war10 …Nishida’s and Tanabe’s political-philosophical narratives…attempted to bring Buddhist teachings to contemporary world affairs, but they could not get

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away from the concept of the nation-state…what we need to examine in making sense of contemporary world affairs is…how we stop using our exclusivist language, based on the Westphalian system, in a post-Western world (Shimizu 2022, 57–58 and 140). The auxiliary theories of the Global IR research programme aim to resourcefully reinvent the concepts related to Tianxia, Advaita and Japanese philosophies and make them available for all present/future usages so as to publicize a thoughtful renovation of world order, especially in the face of global crisis-situations. The dualism of Kantian theories deems the distinctiveness of human beings living in different worlds as irreconcilable at the level of identity. Because human beings remain irreconcilable at the level of identity, they are more likely to construct ‘us versus them’ sort of disruptive political narratives during global-crisissituations (Boin et al. 2021). The necessary polarity between the identities of ‘self’ and ‘other/s’ ends up providing tactical support to differential sets of rules/norms/governance for so-called major and minor powers, decent and indecent societies, civilized and uncivilized worlds etc. even in the midst of global crisis-situations. As a result, IR becomes nothing but the self’s act of taming the other/s (other rogue/rival nation-states) through diverse (non-)military strategies (e.g., just war, trade war, and so on). By contrast, when the monism of Global IR theories pushes forward the collective political agenda of the one and many worlds, it claims that the political realities are a fusion of phenomena (visible self-other distinction) and noumena (invisible oneness); and that it is humanly possible to reconcile visible self-other distinction with invisible oneness irrespective of the distinctiveness at the level of identity. Since it is humanly possible to reconcile visible self-other distinction with invisible oneness, the divergent political narratives flowing from different worlds need not be essentially disruptive. The Global IR theories, rather, consider a global crisissituation as an opportune moment to recover humanity’s wholeness and refurbish humanity’s overall moral-political condition (Dallmayr 2015; Swinburne 2015; Coar 2017), thereby initiating an intentional renovation of world order. To be precise, when Global IR theories collaborate for an intentional renovation of world order, they call for prioritizing the following political considerations while framing domestic/foreign policy proposals: (i) ‘extra-territorialism’ (surpassing the state-based barriers of territorial boundaries); (ii) ‘post-humanism’ (accommodating the posthuman ambiances of nature, earth’s processes, plant and animal structures, technospheres, forms of viruses etc.); (iii) ‘essential emotionalism’

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(encompassing the heart-based sensations of suffering/healing); (iv) ‘existential ephemeralism’ (acknowledging the fleeting nature of phenomenal existence); and (v) ‘sustainability-for-survival’ (keeping in mind the longterm visions of a sustainable global order while seeking to secure the short-term survival of life-forms on earth). It is imperative to examine how these political considerations constitute a ‘theory-praxis-interface’; and how the Global IR research programme revaluates this theory-praxisinterface by actuating its ‘objective criteria for appraisal’: that is, the more the non-centric invisible oneness (noumena) beneath the geo-centric visible many-ness of lives on earth (phenomena) is taken seriously, the more politically responsible the humankind will be in nurturing a sustainable global world order. As defined earlier (in Chapter 1), the term ‘sustainable global world order’ in vocabulary of the Global IR research programme implies commitments to that notion of globality which starts with the presupposition that the self is merged with the other/s and nature.

Global IR Research Programme: Revaluating the Theory-Praxis Interface The political considerations of extra-territorialism, post-humanism, essential emotionalism, existential ephemeralism, and sustainability-for-survival find varying expressions in not only the theoretical agendas but also the policy proposals of the Global IR research programme. In what follows, an attempt has been made to exemplify how the reinvented concepts related to Tianxia, Advaita and Japanese philosophies make efforts toward the theoretical-praxeological mainstreaming of these political considerations in contemporary world politics. The auxiliary theories of the Global IR research programme unanimously sponsor an ethos of ‘extra-territorialism’ which challenges the territorial borders of state sovereignty serving as the foothold of the Westphalian world order. Discussing the notion of ‘territory without borders’ in the Japanese geopolitical tradition, Atsuko Watanabe (2019, 77–79 and 219–221) writes: In Westphalian Europe, space was territorial…For Japanese geopoliticians, the state was not imagined as a territorially confined space, but a comprehensive entity that had a concentric structure without borders and would expand limitlessly to incorporate any people. This was because they understood their state’s territory qualitatively rather than quantitatively, focusing

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on the concept of Lebensform, rather than Lebensraum …Territory without borders might sound paradoxical given that Japan is an island country surrounded by the ocean. However, with the borders endowed by nature, Japanese people did not need to care about the extent of territory in the European sense …Examining the spatial difference [as] basso ostinato [or recurrent underlying motif’], enables us to see world politics in a fresh way as it makes us think about the difference multidirectionally. It suggests that different geographical communities do not share a territory of knowledge…In [Japan], a putatively realist theory was converted into a theory that argued for the moralistic purpose of state expansion. In absolute contrast to European geopolitics as a theory for the state, Japanese scholars modified geopolitics in their attempt to eradicate boundaries to make the world one… Hence, no doubt geography is not a noun but a verb, a geographing…however, being a verb does not simply imply that it depends on us how we draw boundaries. Rather, Japanese geopolitics tells us that boundaries are indeed the outcome of our action…Japan ‘joined’ the European international society neither because the Japanese were attracted by the West’s prosperity, and became convinced by its universal claim, nor because they were simply forced to do so. They did so as they imagined the world in reference to their own familiar relation of power and space. [From this view], the transformation of Japan’s identity – or its historical wandering between the West and the East – is better considered as a continuation of its particular epistemic tradition, rather than as a radical break from the past.

While the awareness of spatial difference in terms of Basso Ostinato allows Watanabe to disclose the qualitative difference between Japanese imperialism and European imperialism, Zhao (2021, 208–212 and 220) asserts that all practices of imperialism that perceive the world (or a region therein) as a territory to be plundered always come across a ‘point of reversal’: By 1914, the Westerners controlled about 84 percent of the world’s territory…[by] applying organized violence…Yet, as the tianxia theory demonstrates, one might succeed in conquering and occupying a material world, but the truth remains that a spiritual world cannot be usurped. This guarantees that logics of domination will always eventually encounter a point of reversal…It is the basic character of imperialism to view the entire world as so much territory that can be arbitrarily plundered…any region outside of Europe and North America as ‘the rest of the world’… are all tacitly assumed to be common lands that can be exploited. This

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mode of imperialism, with the British Empire as a paradigmatic example, continued until the end of World War II. In this sense, we can take World War II as a point of reversal for the logic of imperialism …First, after World War II, there was a proliferation of postcolonial sovereign states. Next, there was the balance of power that emerged during the Cold War with the proliferation of nuclear weapons – the situation of so-called MAD (mutually assured destruction) …And again, there was the emergence of various forms of terrorism coming from nonstate actors that have prophesized global destruction… It is only when the logic of ‘nothing outside of tianxia’ can be appealed to in producing an integrated world that is internalized without any exteriority, that there can be hope for establishing a universally shared world order.

As the Tianxia theory unearths the extra-territorial political reality of a spiritual world that cannot be usurped, the Advaita theory highlights ‘an undeniable thirst for spirituality’ that unleashes the required ‘epistemic compassion’ for retreating from the divisive politics among territorially trapped sovereign states. L. H. M. Ling (2022, 45–47 and 57) argues: The concept of Advaita ties the perceiver (subject) and the perceived (object) together with a globe marked with ‘single hidden connectedness’ or Brahman…Just as ‘theorist’ and ‘theory’ fuse into an ultimate reality…so, too, [A]dvaitic-monist IR would highlight ‘an unbreakable and irreversible micro-macro linkage or ontological nexus between diverse individuals, nation-states and the world…The intellectual realization of connectedness can make a powerful case for reinterpreting diversities in political identities, thereby creating new ethical space for condemning divisive domestic, international and global politics’…It brings us closer to a world politics beyond Westphalia. Dichotomies like China vs the West begin to dissolve…our analysis of China and the West cannot abide by IR conventions like the three levels of analysis (Waltz, 1954) or structure vs units (Waltz, 1979). We need to consider how all the ‘constituents of the globe’…interrelate and interact. Even if national governments may quarrel, various actors (individuals, classes, communities, cultures, peoples) as well as the context in which they operate (ecology and the world) still have a mediating impact, ‘reveal[ing] the hidden connectedness across diversities’…Yet this intellectual and heuristic agenda, as Shahi and Ascione [2016: 327] underscore, remains an ‘unrealized intellectual quest’. It compels further exploration…so that [we are able to] link the individual with the community, the environment with the cosmo-political, [and realize] humanity’s undeniable thirst for spirituality, not just ethics. Epistemic compassion thus takes place… It is the mix [of the West and the

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Rest] that makes our world-of-worlds. The [R]est…thus no longer serves as a mere afterthought, at best, or a playground for the powerful, at worst. All can participate in their own ways and on their own terms.

When one feels obliged to explore the hitherto theoretically deactivated (but practically active) temporal-spatial indivisibility of the human condition that remains superficially split across state-based territorial borders, one realizes the need for a different kind of ‘political prudence’ that becomes accessible by appreciating ‘post-humanism’ (i.e., political responsibility to harmonize human as well as non-human life-forms on earth) and ‘essential emotionalism’ (i.e., political duty to deal with (non-)humans as emotional beings, not just rational beings). From this perspective, the considerations for post-humanism and emotionalism are to be politically endorsed for both ethical-spiritual and rational-scientific reasons. The Tianxia theory ‘includes nature, the environment, ecological thinking and sustainability. This follows not only from classical Tianxia’s preoccupation with nature but also from the understanding of the world as a collective subject… [that bears an] emotional resonance’ (Yang et al. 2022). In a comparable manner, the Advaita theory advocates a ‘re-humanization in IR’ by means of psychotechnologies and rational-emotional sessions of inner listening that ‘permit a free flow of human consciousness across the mind-based-phenomenal and mindindependent-noumenal corridors: when this uninterrupted phenomenalnoumenal continuum of human consciousness is activated, perfection is found only by moving beyond the socialized self…—widely known as the ego, but also as the lower self, or the mind—thereby encountering a new realm of being (i.e., a new realm of noumenal being wherein the self, other/s, and nature are merged together with invisible oneness)’ (Shahi 2022, 187–188). Also, the Japanese theories refer to the philosophers like Ratzel who express how ‘evolution made people realize [that] all things (including humans and their states) are part of nature’, and R¯ oyama who ‘saw a possibility of a new world order’ in which different peoples—along with their ‘shared value of inner selves’—would live together based on ‘common emotions’ (Watanabe 2019, 174 and 194). The more the rational-emotional ties between diverse human–nonhuman life-forms on earth are brought to the forefront, the more one becomes cognizant of ‘existential ephemeralism’ (i.e., the ever-shifting nature of identities, imaginations, interests, intentions, and interactions that continually change the dynamics of world politics). This, in turn,

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draws one’s attention to the political value of ‘sustainability-for-survival’ (i.e., the irrevocable indications that a sustained survival of the (non-) humans involves a sustained survival of the earth itself). The Tianxia theory is ‘based on a Confucian conception of universal compassion…A general principle of the Confucian world order is that it recognizes the sovereignty and the primacy of one’s own state’s interests, but limits both with humane or benevolent duties. An updated tianxia model…can address the issues of state identity and international relations better than both the nation-state model and the cosmopolitan model can (Bai 2020, 969). In contrast to ‘modern universalisms that emerged from specific conditions in the West have not worked out satisfactorily’, the Chinese imaginations of a Confucian world order consistently concentrates on ‘planetary sustainability’ (Duara 2017, 65). In fact, the Advaita theory contemplates the time, change, and causality to be epistemologically grounded in an ‘absolute dynamic reality’ (i.e., Brahman) (Shani and Behera 2022). Due to the existence of this absolute dynamic reality, the constituents of the world (including the self and the other/s) possess an identity of a momentary self, i.e., the self of a fleeting temporal-spatial moment who does not permanently carry a selfhood, but a monist essence of selflessness (Milne 1997; Paranjpe 2006). Since the Advaita theory holds that the self and the other/s do not own permanent oppositional identities but remain dynamically interconnected through the ‘ultimate unity of existence’, it can launch a ‘project of human emancipation in a more conventional, socio-political sense, as well as for a deep ecological approach to sustainability’ (Long 2022, 31). Also, for Nishida-inspired Japanese theories, ‘the dynamic transformation of the world is a given fact. As we often witness that people change their thoughts, political positions and subjectivities, thinking of a changing and fluid subjectivity is not unnatural… [Because of this fluid subjectivity], the world is in constant change and never stays the same’ (Shimizu 2022, 49). The world is in constant change, and, therefore, ‘the requirement of common identity [is nothing but] …a sense of sameness that could be shared through the earth’ (Watanabe 2019, 203). In fact, similar deliberations on extra-territorialism, post-humanism, essential emotionalism, existential ephemeralism, and sustainability-forsurvival are articulated in several parallel Global IR deliberations. The scope of the Latin American cosmovision of Runa ‘falls short of enclosing all human beings but…extends beyond humans to include non-human

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beings… [Presumably, the human and non-human beings are] relationally constituted and capable of transformation… [As such], individuals and collectivities become like the beings they spend time with …These relations grow the self and one’s imaginative, interactive and empathetic capacities’ (Reddekop 2021, 35–36). The Sufi theory ‘accepts pain as a stepping stone [because] it reconciles the paradoxical intuitions of distance and nearness between the West and the non-West within the emotional consciousness of heart, not the rational consciousness of mind…[The Sufi theory] makes a rational-emotional appeal to know the self through the other/s, and to know the other/s through the self, [thereby revealing the ‘oneness of being’ or wahdat-al-wujud which is] far more promising in terms of its ability to cultivate equality, companionship, cooperation, negotiation, and peace in global politics’ (Shahi 2020, 212 and 216). Furthermore, the African vision of Ubuntu presumes that the self owes its existence to the other/s; as such, whatever happens to the self happens to the others/s, and whatever happens to the other/s happens to the self (Smith 2018). In practice, the Ubuntu method can be instrumental in developing ‘concepts for the re-organization of global responsibilities—including, as a concept to guide the advancement of an intercultural definition of humanism and human dignity, a conflict resolution mechanism, and as a thought system for the reversal of ecological degradation’ (Doma 2021). To be sure, these coherent articulations of Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Latin American, Sufi, and African concepts do not consume the theoretical base of the Global IR research programme in an exhaustive way. In due course, many more hitherto underexplored (non-)Western knowledge-forms can come forward to readjust the West–non-West theory-practice interface. But the actual challenge is about how to translate the interdisciplinary insights springing from these upcoming (non-) Western knowledge-forms (which intend to readjust the West–non-West theory-practice interface) into concrete praxeological plans for the renovation of world order. In the absence of such concrete praxeological plans, it is somewhat suspected that the interdisciplinary insights springing from these upcoming (non-)Western knowledge-forms might fizzle out into a sort of ‘non-disciplinarity’ (Connell 2022) supplying nothing more than ‘unquestioned globalisms’ (Anderl and Witt 2020), which, in turn, reproduce the same IR praxis everywhere: ‘IR remains as state-driven in China and in the emerging powers as in the US…no more globalist in

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the periphery than in the Western core…no more feminist in Scandinavia than in the Middle East, and no more post-colonial in India than in the UK’ (Hamati-Ataya 2021, 296). It is only by appropriate ‘insertion’11 of the auxiliary theories of the Global IR research programme into praxis of world politics that one can pave the way for improvement in the imbalanced patterns of West–non-West intellectual involvements in theory-building/policy-making, and for establishment of a novel world order without standing on the shoulders of American academics. Fabrício Chagas-Bastos (2023) avows: Although concepts such as Advaita, Guanxi, Ubuntu and Tianxia…have gained some attention, they have mostly been confined to regional interpretations of world politics – or related to specific international issues… The million-dollar question thus continues to be how can local knowledge be transformed into legitimate and valued frameworks for analyzing global processes, without being turned into concepts that would be quickly forgotten by the West?...[Here], the idea of ‘insertion’ [is relevant which] has one foot on the critical argument provided by the pursuit of development, and the other on what is politically and economically possible to achieve…[The thought of insertion] in the Dependency [or post-colonial/ de-colonial] literature was a narrow debate on the dependency-autonomy dichotomy…Autonomy was understood as a mere detachment of political and economic influence relative to economies at the capitalist core …[Nevertheless], having autonomy to not be dependent, or to simply be present in global governance agencies, is not enough…It is now time to engage in a less Western-oriented theoretical [and praxeological knowledge] production…Contrary to what Mearsheimer (2016, p. 147) states, a [G]lobal IR discipline does not tell us “that those non-American IR scholars who become leading theorists at some future point will stand on the shoulders of American academics.” This paved the way for Westernled disciplinary advances, but now it is time to start looking at agency by standing on the shoulders of different giants.

Of late, Global IR deliberations have been sporadically utilized as a ‘theory-praxis interface’: that is to say, these deliberations have not only attempted to theoretically explain/describe the particularist features of world politics but also endeavoured to praxeologically propose/prompt a universalist upliftment of world politics. The limited space of a chapter cannot capture the specifics of all those research undertakings wherein the Global IR theory-praxis interface strives to develop an understanding or advocate an advancement of the human condition in contemporary

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world. But a few sample substantiations can most certainly indicate how a combination of the components of extra-territorialism, post-humanism, essential emotionalism, existential ephemeralism, and sustainability-forsurvival can negatively or positively appraise the competence of various policy-initiatives made somewhere/anywhere. This, in turn, can assist in revaluating whether those policy-initiatives satisfy the ‘objective criteria’ about seriously taking the non-centric invisible oneness beneath the geocentric visible many-ness of lives on earth so as to furnish a sustainable global world order. In the arena of policy-making, these objective criteria indicate a ‘strategic chain of action’ wherein the harms and healings of different individual/institutional political actors are reciprocally tangled in such a way that the self’s act of harming the other/s can in effect be an act of harming the self, and the self’s act of healing the other/s can in effect be an act of healing the self. Engaging with the Tianxia theory for revaluating China’s policy-initiatives during the crisis-situation created by the pandemic, Luís Filipe Pestana and Nancy Elena Ferreira Gomes (2023, 125 and 133–135) state: The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has brought humanity a double challenge: to immediately control the virus and, in the long run, to reduce inequalities within and between states, appealing to solidarity among them. However, the health crisis has also exposed two assumptions that have been part of collective imagination for some time: first, that PRC [People’s Republic of China] is now the main adversary of the West in the economic field, and increasingly in other fields, and that it will be necessary for the latter to cooperate with the Asian giant to achieve global stability… Wong (2020) says the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic was the catalyst for most of Western criticisms directed at the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] and the lack of transparency surrounding the pandemic crisis. The Chinese government’s response has been to consider this criticism as a form of interference in China’s internal affairs, which fuels the government’s own rhetoric…[But], some believe that this exacerbated nationalism has more negative than positive consequences for Chinese foreign policy12 … Criticism from abroad around Xinjiang, Hong Kong and the Covid-19 pandemic is seen, in general, as an external aggression that seek to tarnish China’s image internationally… Recently, there has been an attempt to mitigate some rhetoric given the fear of leading to an isolation of China on the international scene…tianxia is not sinocentric and can be replicated by any [state and extra-state] power capable of leading the lands beneath heaven. This is a valid argument, as it is not known for sure whether PRC is respecting the basic presuppositions of this millenary concept. If it is

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true that it seeks to deal with its partners equally and without ostracizing those who follow political regimes other than their own, the present form of tianxia followed by Beijing seems more based on nationalism than on universal ideals that can be followed by humanity.

Markedly, the Tianxia theory is invoked not only to problematize the ‘exacerbated nationalism’ of China’s foreign policy but also to disengage this worldview from any ‘sinocentric traps’, thereby underlining the rational worth of extra-territorialism. In fact, the ‘Chinese IR scholars’ theoretical works and policy advices for the rising China do intend to counter exceptionalism by creating a more elastic outlook on selfother relations, thereby leaving more room for critical self-reflection, and broadening Beijing’s policy horizons’ (Li 2021, 10). Employing the Advaita theory for revaluating India’s policy-responses to the ongoing crisis-situations in contemporary South Asian geo-political scenario, Deepshikha Shahi (2023) narrates: The Advaita theory views the constituents of the world (i.e., state and nonstate actors) as miscellaneous time-space categories pertaining to the same global connectedness… In the wake of a crisis-situation (which threatens to impair global connectedness), different state/non-state actors publicize varied observations/perceptions/(re)actions [which]…can move in ‘bottom-up direction’ (from local to global) or ‘top-down direction’ (from global to local), thereby contributing to aggravate or ameliorate the crisissituation…The Advaita…theory maintains that the state actors can resolve a crisis-situation only if their crisis-management-measures echoes with the hopes of local-global non-state actors…While China has developed a ‘new model of state-civil society relations’ that combines the pluralistic aspect of democratic governance with the state control mechanisms (Teets 2014) …India considers the reviving of Pakistan’s weak civil society as a ‘sensible course’ that can empower Pakistan to dodge the perilous strategic choice between radical Islamists and US-sponsored military generals who still call the shots on its foreign policy (Chellaney 2010). Nevertheless, India itself appears to be wavering between a pro-government ‘conservative civil society’ (Mj 2018) and an anti-government ‘moderate civil society’ (Feyyaz 2019) when it comes to policy-designing on diverse issues related to trade war or inter-state war13 …In general, a proactive synchronizing of state and non-state actions is desirable in South Asia where the ‘pluralistic civil society’ (as non-state actor) includes both civil and uncivil elements which may positively or negatively contribute to the crisis-management-measures (Sahoo 2021)…As long as Kashmir remains volatile and life on any side

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of the borders remains vulnerable (as exemplified in Doklam, Pulwama, and Ladakh), India’s competences to preserve the ideal of a perpetually connected world (one world) will remain challenged, regardless of its morally high-sounding ‘extended neighbourhood’ or ‘neighbourhood first’ diplomatic outreach policies.

By allocating equal weightage to state and non-state actors and accentuating the urge to eradicate painful conditions of a volatile life on ‘any side of the borders’, the Advaita theory centralizes the concerns for not only extra-territorialism but also essential emotionalism. Applying the Buddhism-inspired Japanese theories for revaluating Japan’s policyinitiatives toward resolving the Okinawa-base crisis-situation, Kosuke Shimizu (2022, 148–150) clarifies: The US military base in Japan is in Okinawa in the name of East Asian security. This fact is usually narrated in the context of the territorial dispute over the Senkaku-Diaoyu Islands (Ikenberry and Mastanduno 2003) or the confrontation between the US and China for regional hegemony. However, it is often overlooked that the Okinawan people have continuously made clear, through democratic procedures, their disagreement with the stationing of US troops in their islands…The former Emperor Akihito…in his first visit to Okinawa…was attacked by extreme left-wing activists for his father’s wrongdoings during World War II… Akihito’s visit was not welcomed at first, although it was gradually accepted when the locals found that the former emperor was determined to sit with and listen to them. Years after his visit to Okinawa, he became one of the most accepted mainland Japanese figures there (Yabe 2016) …Some argue that his visit only diverted the attention of the…locals from the pressing political issues of the time (Saito 2015), whereas others argue that it eased the locals’ pain and re-established a good relationship between Okinawa and Japan. In any case, his action of sitting close and listening to those suffering or, in other words, sharing the moment together, is a typical Mah¯ay¯ana Buddhist action to liberate people from suffering14 …One recent intriguing development in the case of the Okinawa base issue is that local Diets on the main island of Japan began passing resolutions to demand that the central government reconsider the construction of a new US base in Henoko… the local Diets in Japan and the main island received the Okinawan NGO’s request letters to pass resolutions to respect democracy in Okinawa…This phenomenon gained momentum after the massive victory of the antibase movement in the referendum in the Okinawa prefecture in early 2019. This phenomenon in the main island of Japan can be explained

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by the unexpected engi relationality between ordinary Japanese citizens, and not the central government and the Okinawan population, which certainly disrupted the fixed relationality of the given hierarchy of Japan and Okinawa.

In this illustration of policy-initiatives made by the Japanese government and Okinawan NGO, a tangible conflict-transformation between Japan’s main island and Okinawa became possible by admitting the emotional sufferings of peoples, the emotional sufferings that inspired peoples and other political stakeholders to revive their relationality in terms of dynamic identities. Thus, these policy-initiatives entail the psychic integrities of existential ephemeralism along with extra-territorialism and emotional essentialism. Though the local applications of the Tianxia, Advaita and Japanese foreign policy-prescriptions may leave false impressions about their particularist (or non-universalist) orientations,15 some supplementary surveys verify the vital roles that these non-Western knowledge-forms can play in strategic mainstreaming of the comparatively more universally applicable components of post-humanism and sustainability-for-survival. For instance, Chih-yu Shih (2020) informs how the Tianxia thesis resonates with the ‘post-human relational concern for the earth’s ecology’ (Kavalski 2020; Brasovan 2017; Cudworth and Hobden 2013). Likewise, Rajat Sharma and Mithileshwar Jha (2021) examine how a deeper understanding of the philosophy of Advaita propositions strategic solutions to the global ecological crisis-situations. Additionally, Yasuko Kameyama and Keishi Ono (2021) show how the Japanese notion of sogo anzen hosho (comprehensive security) determines Japan’s official acknowledgement of the importance of tackling global climate change. In this context, one may refer to several other policy-choices, such as the Amazonian rituals that have acquired a diplomatic function in countering different categories of threats arising from colonisation (Vienne and Nahum-Claudel 2020); the Sufi campaigning policy launched to reclaim the ‘Syrian spiritual identity’ in the aftermath of the uprising of the 1980s–1990s (Imady 2020); as well as the Ubuntu diplomacy that administers South Africa’s humanist foreign policy, thereby broadening the implications of soft power in the African subcontinent (Madise and Isike 2020). While some research projects positively assess the truth-content of Global IR theories/concepts in impacting effective policy-decisions, other studies identify the political obstacles that hamper the praxeological

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integration of the values of extra-territorialism, post-humanism, essential emotionalism, existential ephemeralism, and sustainability-for-survival, thereby leading to negative appraisals of specific policy-preparation or policy-execution techniques. Notwithstanding Bruno Salvatore’s (2021) explanations about how the Chinese approaches to global environmental protection affect, and are affected by, the changes in its identity originating from the advent of the Chinese Dream tied ideologically with the Tianxia doctrine, Yao Dali (2016) raises alarms that the recent policy proposals following the Tianxia logic for global governance or multiethnic governance must not victimize China’s ethnic minorities. Although Asha Jadeja (2022) praises the mantra of Advaita, the idea of the unity of all life, which guides India’s G-20 presidency as it struggles to find solutions to global challenges, Parveen Talha (2023) issues warnings that, before hoping to bring together the world in harmony while respecting its diversity, India must take stringent steps to bring a halt to the unconstitutional propagation of caste- and religion-based divides within the country. Even if Mary McCarthy (2023) maintains that Japan’s philosophical perceptions determine the ‘apparent puzzles’ of its foreign policy expressed in the forms of pacifism, antimilitarism, and nuclear allergy, Atsuko Watanabe and Felix Rösch (2018) predict that at times these philosophical perceptions may be distorted by the US interventions: for instance, the Japanese concept of amae (or ‘emotional interdependence’) had enthused the Democratic Party of Japan’s working group on energy and environment to make policy-recommendations to phase out nuclear power by the early 2050s; however, these policy-recommendations eventually became a source of contention with the US. Categorically, these types of critical scholarships that detect the political obstacles in the projected progression of the Global IR research programme are absolutely essential for regularly revaluating the truthcontent of this research programme’s theory-praxis-interface and for rationally reconstructing its road ahead. Nevertheless, these political obstacles (or say, ‘counter-evidences’, ‘refutations’ or ‘ocean of anomalies’) do not indicate a dead-end for the future progressions of this research programme. As Lakatos (1980, 50) pronounces: Few theoretical scientists engaged in a research programme pay undue attention to refutations. They have a long-term research policy which anticipates these ‘refutations’. The negative heuristic specifies the ‘hard core’ of the programme which is ‘irrefutable’ by the methodological decision of

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its proponents. The positive heuristic consists of a partially articulated set of suggestions or hints on how to change, develop the ‘refutable variants’ of the research-programme, how to modify, sophisticate, the ‘refutable’ protective belt.

In line with these Lakatosian guidelines, the hard-core of the Global IR research programme—emphasizing the requirement to reconcile the West–non-West binaries and to foreground the West–non-West complementarities—remains irrefutable by the methodological decision of its proponents. In the meantime, the heuristic techniques of the Global IR research programme—suggesting methodological continuity between science and metaphysics, recommending reconciliation of dualism with monism (rather than treating them as polar opposites), and mobilizing the ‘Global’ spirit unleashed by this dualism-monism reconciliation to determine practicable parameters for policy designing and implementation—provide hints on how to modify, sophisticate, the ‘refutable’ protective belt composed of its auxiliary theories/concepts.

Concluding Remarks The theoretical and praxeological dimensions of the Global IR research programme are continuously receiving ground-breaking inputs from the hitherto denigrated knowledge-forms coming from various parts of the globe. The reinvented concepts associated with these knowledge-forms— such as the Tianxia, Advaita and Japanese philosophies—try to show that the global and local narratives of the ‘one world’ (dominated by the West) and ‘many worlds’ (embodied by the non-West) are compulsorily intertwined and correspondingly informative. As such, the knowledgeforms springing from the Western or non-Western parts of the globe can potentially impact theory-building and policy-making in the remaining parts. When it comes to theory-building, the Tianxia-, Advaita- and Nishida-inspired auxiliary theories of the Global IR research programme lay down an innovative model: they begin with activating ‘epistemological monism/anti-scepticism’ which acknowledges the realities pertaining to a perennially interconnected world as pregiven objectified truths. In the light of these pregiven objectified truths, these auxiliary theories commence a sort of ‘ontological overhaul’ whereby the conventionally taken-for-granted subject-object, self-other, and West-non-West binaries are re-explained as interdependent non-binary categories. Finally,

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the workings of these interdependent non-binary categories are analysed through ‘methodological eclecticism’ which combines scientific principles and metaphysical opinions to cast light on the complementarities between the Western and non-Western actors/worldviews/ philosophies/narratives/discourses. The characteristics of epistemological monism/anti-scepticism, ontological overhaul and methodological eclecticism allow the auxiliary theories of the Global IR research programme to promote the political considerations of extra-territorialism, posthumanism, essential emotionalism, existential ephemeralism, and sustainability-for-survival. In practice, these political considerations operate as a ‘theory-praxis interface’ which approves only those domestic/foreign policies that stand true to the following ‘objective criteria for appraisal’: the more the non-centric invisible oneness (noumena) beneath the geo-centric visible many-ness of lives on earth (phenomena) is taken seriously, the more politically responsible the humankind will be in nurturing a sustainable global world order. As the hard-core of the Global IR research programme (comprehended in terms of the requirement to reconcile the West–nonWest binaries and to foreground the West–non-West complementarities) remains irrefutable by the methodological decision of its protagonists, its objective criteria of appraisal constantly communicate with its refutable (or say, modifiable) theory-practice interface, thereby paving the way for recurrent readjustment and reconstruction of the ever-evolving Global IR research programme.

Notes 1. For an analytical essay on the nature of epistemological scepticism in Kant’s philosophy, see Brueckner (1991). For a comprehensive coverage of the positivist–post-positivist debate on the (neo-)Kantian questions of epistemology in IR, see Smith (1997). For a general understanding of the pros and cons of ‘scepticism’ as an epistemological foundation, see Floridi (1996); and for a chronological commentary on different kinds of epistemological ‘anti-scepticism’, see García-Valdecasas et al. (2023). 2. Kant portrays human beings as animal rationabile: in other words, Kant irrefutably believes that the ‘reason’ as an essential faculty of human mind is conscious of its separation from nature through its direct apprehension of its own freedom; furthermore, this hypothesis of autonomous human freedom implies that the study of human beings has to use guidelines other than the study of nature that merely obeys the law of necessity.

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According to Jan Faye (2012, 3), ‘to a great extent this view has— until recently—established the ideological framework of humanities…It has been so pervasive that even later German thinkers have found it difficult to escape the idealist vision of humanities [and social sciences] in order to see things differently.’ 3. Damien Popolo (2016, 28–29) argues: ‘Not only is the latest wave of ‘scientific’ (Waltz) and ‘social’ (Wendt) IR theory purely Kantian, but so is our perception…All the Kantian possibilities of knowledge are grounded on an analytic of human finitude, this being the reason why Kant can be legitimately defined by Foucault as the turning point of modernity… Kant denies that we can ever think in terms of duration, for that would imply thinking beyond the human conditions, and that is not possible because…we are finite beings. Foucault has also identified this finitude as the very source of historical linearity, that is the contingency that makes finitude possible…Only thinking beyond the [Kantian limits to] human condition can allow us to fully appreciate history as becoming, as the non-linear process which fully reflects the nature of the vortex of time.’ Apparently, the Kantian linearity in positivist theories emphasizes the static reality of ‘geographical-territorial space of state’, whereas the neo-Kantian non-linearity in post-positivist theories highlight the dynamic reality of ‘discursive non-geographical-territorial non-state’ (Agathangelou and Killian 2016). But then, both kinds of (neo-)Kantian theories in Western-centric IR choose to ignore the noumenal world-in-itself. Nevertheless, the noumenal world-in-itself—consisting of an array of abstract relations that differ from the empirical world of international relations— can provide important insights into the empirical world of international relations (Lebow 2014). 4. Robert H. Jackson (2007, 218–219) comments: ‘According to Martin Wight, the dual aspect of the state-system was conceived originally, if tentatively, by Grotius [who noticed that] there was an outer circle that embraces all mankind, under natural law, and an inner circle, the corpus Christianorum, bound by the law of Christ. Dualism in different forms has persisted in international relations ever since. It is a very big subject, of course, and as yet there exists no comprehensive account of which I am aware.’ Although there is no comprehensive account of the show of dualism in mainstream IR theories, the dominance of dualist European values in the conduct of world politics remains a recognized actuality. Vilho Harle (2016, 2) remarks: ‘Dualism appears in other cultures too, but in the European cultural heritage and in the European mind it seems to have a surprisingly central role…the need to experience through polarities seems to have profoundly dominated the mental style of Western man. Polarities appear indispensable, however imprecise, unscientific, evasive

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and distorting they are. It seems natural to confront radical with reactionary, past with present, private with public, true with false, us with them, friends with enemies, [and] good with bad.’ The theme statement of the 2007 annual meeting of the International Studies Association (ISA) challenged scholars to reflect on their responsibility to the policy world and the wider policy community. It asked whether those in the academy had a responsibility to materialize sociopolitical change by working for national governments and international organizations, or whether such works led to unacceptable compromises with their respective political principles. For learning more about the forum discussion on the theme of ‘risks and opportunities of crossing the academy/policy divide’, see Tickner et al. (2008). Elif Kalaycioglu (2020) points out: ‘The end of the Cold War, the emergence of non-Western states as influential actors in global politics, and waves of Western nativism in the United States and Europe have placed questions of cultural diversity centrally in global politics. Although the mainstream paradigms…namely, realism and liberalism, have remained focused on material power and mutual gains via institutions as the cruxes of global politics, starting with the mid-1990s, an increasing number of IR scholars have attended to the question of cultural diversity…This scholarship has approached culture, alternatively, as a set of shared meanings stable over time, meanings that are institutionally stabilized, or a field of multiple and competing representations [i.e., the vision of ‘many worlds’]. Accordingly, some (the English school, conventional constructivism) posit culture as internally coherent and externally diverse, associating shared culture with accord and cultural diversity with discord. Others (critical constructivism, postcolonial IR) focus on the power-laden processes through which cultural diversity comes to be associated with Otherness and discord…Most of the relevant scholarship, however, defies paradigmatic categorization.’ For an in-depth discussion on whether the pre-modern interstate relations in Asia challenge Eurocentric IR theories, see Tin-bor Hui (2021). For a critical commentary on how the tradition of implicit theoretical thinking in pre-modern South Asia can potentially generate fresh ideas about theory creation, theory testing and theory revision in IR, see Mallavarapu (2009). And for a holistic understanding on how the ideas of several pre-modern non-Western thinkers sometimes relate to the post-modern theories of Western IR, see Shih and Yu (2015). Several IR scholars find faults in the Tianxia concept by recalling its past performances. While some Western IR scholars anticipate the imperialist implications of the Tianxia concept (Callahan 2008; Nordin 2012; Zhang and Hu 2017), a few Chinese historians regard Tianxia with much wariness, noting that the concept was used to camouflage the dichotomy

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9.

10.

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between the ‘civilized’ core (China) and the ‘barbarian’ periphery (other states), as well as the contentious core-periphery interactions throughout China’s long history (Ge 2015; Yu 2016). During the colonial period, it is important to note that the neo-Hinduism of post-Shankara Advaita was purposefully assigned European accents in order to serve some strategic interests. Sharad Deshpande (2015,120) explains: ‘(a) To assert that scientific knowledge of phenomena (apara vidya) needs to be complimented by a synoptic vision of reality (para vidya); (b) to register the national identity as a form of self-assertion; and (c) to negotiate with the Western philosophers and their philosophies, the Advaita [monism] seemed to be more promising than any other doctrine…In order to achieve these objectives, the reformulation of classical Advaita seems to have become a major preoccupation of academic and non-academic [Indian] philosophers in the colonial period…[A variety of new] nomenclatures as neo-Vedanta or practical-Vedanta [were voiced in order to] expressly stress the new or modern orientation that the classical Advaita and Hinduism gained by coming into contact with the West.’ Sadami Suzuki (1997, 87) observes: ‘Nishida’s statement on the Japanese Imperial Way… showed bravery and an anti-war attitude during the wartime… However, Nishida idealized the Imperial Way by forging its history, and gave it a theoretical base with his idealist vitalist philosophy. Nishida’s peaceful and universal image of the Imperial Way was, indeed, produced by modern and contemporary Japanese history. Using Nishida’s philosophy, the scholars of the Kyoto School…insisted that the Japanese mission was to overcome modern European civilization and system of thought. Moreover, they justified and glorified the Japanese “Imperial War”, in spite of Nishida’s anti-war attitude.’ For a deeper discussion on how the infiltration of liberal-imperialist narratives based on modern nation-state system into Nishida’s philosophy led to a lack of self-reflective insight, see Shimizu (2011). Fabrício Chagas-Bastos (2023) explains: ‘The study of international insertion…aligns itself not only with the growing interest on the expansion of IR scholarship around the world, but also creates space to rediscover ‘the colonized’s own internal capabilities and opportunities’ …It allows us to recast the rationale and operation of center-periphery intellectual relations, particularly the investigation of how agency is created by those who need it to place themselves within global hierarchies. Furthermore, material, sociopolitical, and geopolitical dynamics affect the conditions for intellectual innovation and knowledge production—more importantly, when applied to IR, they affect geopolitics and state behavior (e.g., foreign policy opportunities and constraints).’ For understanding the surge of nationalist sentiment among the Chinese youth during the Covid-19 outbreak, see Ho (2022). For deciphering the

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‘globalism versus nationalism paradox’ in the Chinese official discourse in the context of the pandemic, see Yang and Chen (2021). For a critical commentary on China’s ‘new nationalism problem’, see Forrest (2021). 13. The rift between India’s pro-government ‘conservative civil society’ and anti-government ‘moderate civil society’ became apparent in the postDoklam Sino-India trade war. As per Maira Qaddos (2018, 67), the moderate civil society thought that the ‘boycott of Chinese goods [by conservative civil society] could help India less but harm more in the course of resolution of Doklam issue. It was a mistaken belief that by boycotting Chinese products, India would be able to pressurize China. Boycott may harm China but its magnitude was overrated by those who were demanding it. It would not be of that much help to India because India is in dire need of those products especially pharma items, smart phones and information technology apparatus. India cannot afford to get these products from other countries with its weaker economy because in that case it will have to make a compromise on low quality products at higher rates. So, India would think twice before putting a ban on Chinese products and vice versa.’ 14. For an in-depth discussion on the Buddhist approach to conflict transformation, see Tanabe (2013); and for understanding how Buddhistmeditated implementation of international law works toward reducing suffering during conflict situations, see Bartles-Smith et al. (2020). 15. Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan (2007, 297) opine that the ‘universal theory, is [usually understood as] a kind of luxury that [the non-Western] societies struggling with the immediate and pressing problems of development simply cannot afford to indulge…[It is presumed that] the focus [of the non-Western societies] would all be on short-term local problem solving (perhaps typically foreign policy analysis for the state concerned, or at most regional level), and not on more grandiose efforts to understand larger systems.’ Yet, Acharya and Buzan (2019, 96) explain how ‘the interwar period saw the emergence of a number of key ideas outside the West that would shape not only the foreign policy of non-Western countries after the Second World War, but would also have a major impact on world politics as a whole.’ In this context, one may mention the ‘Third World foreign policy approaches’, most notably the non-alignment movement, though they received little attention in Western-centric IR’s theoretical debates (Behera 2009,143). For an analysis of the applicability of the concept of ‘active non-alignment’ for resolving the crisis-situations in today’s world politics, especially for restoring peace in the context of the contemporary Russia-Ukraine crisis, see Heine (2023). And for evaluating the risks of ‘neutral non-alignment’ for attaining short-term tactical

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benefits in the context of the continuing Russia-Ukraine war, see Ahmad (2023).

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Epilogue: A Passage Across the Three Worlds

One cannot understand the history of science without taking into account the interaction of the three worlds – the material world…the world of consciousness…the world of propositions, truth, standards: the world of objective knowledge (Lakatos 1980, 92–93).1 The history of science in the academic discipline of IR has come a long way in the process of comprehending the ‘material gaps’ (political and economic disparities) and ‘knowledge gaps’ (cultural and ideational discrepancies) between the numerous worlds geographically centred in the West and the non-West. While IR’s ‘positivist science’ remains overdetermined by the West–non-West material gaps, IR’s ‘post-positivist anti-science’ remains overdetermined by the West–non-West knowledge gaps. Yet, one cannot understand the interrelatedness between the material/knowledge maneuvers of the Western and non-Western worlds without taking into account their interaction within the ‘world of consciousness’. As Western-centric IR theories rest on Kantian consciousness, they focus on time-space bounded identities of human beings living in visibly divided phenomenal worlds. According to Kantian scientific principles, one needs to temporally-spatially separate the subject/s and object/s of a knowledge-situation, thereby freezing the gaps between various subjective-experience of the West or the nonWest (as theorist) and objective-reality of world politics (as theorised). Against this backdrop, it is the de-Kantian consciousness of the Global © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Shahi, Global IR Research Programme, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39121-7_5

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IR research programme that recovers the temporally-spatially indivisible phenomenal-noumenal flow of human life, thereby restoring an inevitable interrelatedness between the visibly divided phenomenal worlds that remain perpetually grounded in an invisibly united noumenal world. The de-Kantian consciousness of the Global IR research programme, as this study has tried to demonstrate, destabilizes some deep-rooted customs of Western-centric IR: e.g., the obligation to start with an investigation of phenomena (not noumena) by way of applying the principles of science (not metaphysics) which remain sceptical toward subjectified facts (not anti-sceptical toward objectified truths). In fact, the Global IR research programme proposes an innovative model of theory-building and policy-making that goes beyond the geo-centric limitations of knowledgeproduction and knowledge-application. This epilogue summarizes how this Global IR research programme (with its model of theory-building and policy-making) opens up a three-dimensional passage that travels across the world of consciousness to facilitate back-and-forth movement between the West-dominated ‘one world’ and the non-West-embodied ‘many worlds’. Curiously, this back-and-forth movement offers opportunities to conceive of and found a new world order that summons up the temporally-spatially indivisible human condition on earth. In what follows, an attempt has been made to recapitulate the findings of this entire course of study by delineating a set of interrelated guiding principles. These guiding principles establish the futuristic foundation of the Global IR research programme, thereby suggesting a range of schemas for further research. 1. Knowledge (scientific/spiritual) is not only a ‘provincial powermaximizing exercise’ but also a ‘de-provincial truth-maximizing exercise’. The intellectual journey of the discipline of IR conveys an impression of theory-building as a ‘power-maximizing exercise’. Apparently, the empowerment of the West lied in its power to generate theoretical knowledge, and the disempowerment of the non-West remained rooted in its alleged lack of power to form theories/concepts. If one looks at the chronological evolution of IR theory-building, one instantly identifies the powerful influence of ‘Western-centrism’ that compelled this discipline to revolve around the major incidents of Western history,

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thereby strategically sidelining not only non-Western history but also nonWestern knowledge-forms. In line with Western-centrism, the incidents that occurred in the West were projected as the ‘big bangs of IR’. The signing of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 was hailed as the birth of modern anarchic-sovereign-states-system. Also, the formation of a separate IR department at the University of Aberystwyth in the UK after the first world war in 1919 was glorified as a landmark incidence that formalized the study of world politics as a series of proceedings occurring within the confines of modern anarchic-sovereign-states-system. In sum, it was maintained that the discipline of IR was conceived on the blood-stained battlefields of Europe so that it could accomplish its noble mission, specifically the eradication of war and poverty, by growing through a sequence of now infamous ‘great debates’. The first great debate (idealist-realist debate) predetermined IR theory as a codification of political practice. At this point, the thoughts on human nature, as articulated in the writings of the British and German scholars like Hobbes and E. H. Carr, were evoked to explain the political practices of war and peace in world politics; evidently, no attention was paid to the ideas of good or evil human nature in the Chinese, Indian or Japanese philosophies inspired by Xunxi, Kautilya, Shint¯oism etc. Throughout the second great debate (history-science debate), IR theory was revamped as a scientific method with high precision. This debate too had an Anglosaxon tilting as it followed Hedley Bull and Marxist historical-philosophical-legal line. Even the US-based Rockefeller Foundation took keen interest in this debate because the classical stance of European-taught-emigres contradicted the US-type empiricist social science. During the third great debate (inter-paradigmatic debate), IR theory became a meta-theory or theorisation about theory and the USbased scholars began to grab the discipline’s spotlight. Kenneth Waltz tried to beat Hans J. Morgenthau’s ‘unscientific’ classical realism and design a more ‘scientific’ neorealism. Nevertheless, the rival paradigms of this third debate—that is, (neo)realism, pluralism and structuralism— endorsed a common positivist scientific outlook; hence, this debate came to be seen as a debate not to be won, but a pluralism to live with. But then again, the principles of pluralism in the Chinese, Indian or Japanese scholarly traditions were omitted while the British and American scholars competed to decide the dominant method of science in IR. Lastly, the fourth great debate (positivist–post-positivist debate) came forward to reconfigure IR theory as a meta-narrative. Countering the positivist

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presumption that the theorist’s ‘subjective values’ were neutral to the theorised ‘objective facts’, the post-positivist discourses held that the theorist’s subjective values (e.g., cultural setting or ideological identity) affected the factual credentials of a theory: as such, the same social facts could be differently narrated from the standpoints of different Western or non-Western subjective values. Though this fourth debate, with its focus on culture and identity, surpassed its initial privileging of Western norms, it continued to ignore issues of race and pre-Westphalian civilizations in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere that might bring new acuities in IR study. While Western-centrism dominated the cold war and post-cold war phases of world politics, the decline in the US hegemony after the 2007 financial crisis created a vacuum which, in turn, obliged scholars to look for intellectual stimulus in the academic Terra Incognita: that is, the non-West/Global South. On the one hand, the critical traditions within Western-centric IR problematized the claims that the Peace of Westphalia gave birth to modern sovereign-states, or the discipline of IR was born out of the ruins of the first world war, or the discipline of IR had the mission to avert war and poverty everywhere and not just in Europe. On the other hand, the critical traditions within the non-Western IR provoked a politics of knowledge production that ended up manufacturing two kinds of IR discourses: (i) derivative; and (ii) exceptionalist. Some IR scholars tried to bring in the non-Western perspectives on local political realities but expressed these perspectives in the positivist or post-positivist modes of Western-centric IR. In these instances, the West–non-West participation in scholarly power-maximization exercise produced ‘derivative discourses’ of Western-centric IR. By contrast, other IR scholars revealed the limits of Western analytical categories in the post/de-colonial living conditions and, therefore, sought to insert indigenous knowledge-forms having a non-assimilative attitude toward Westerncentric IR, thereby engineering ‘exceptionalist discourses’ that contained penchants for cultural essentialism or regional inwardness. Nonetheless, both kinds of derivative and exceptionalist discourses emerging from the non-West inadvertently imitated the Kant-inspired dualist knowledgesituation of Western IR: just like Western IR preserved the temporalspatial separation between the West (as subject/self) and the non-West

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(as object/other), the post-colonial and de-colonial articulations of nonWestern IR overturned this Kant-inspired dualist knowledge-situation and retained the temporal-spatial separation between the non-West (as subject/self) and the West (as object/other). Practically, the derivative and exceptionalist non-Western discourses remained fraught with ‘Eurofetishism’: by fetishising the West and denying a de-Kantian theoretical-practical agency to the non-West, the derivative and exceptionalist non-Western discourses not only tended to eternalise and naturalise Western imperial domination but also became vulnerable to misuse by those non-Western states that oppressed their own populations but suspiciously accused the imperial West for all human wrongs. Most certainly, the academic discipline of IR required a deKantian antidote to challenge the falsehoods of both, ‘Western-centric imperialism’ and ‘non-Western-centric Eurofetishism’. Attentively, the Global IR research programme bit by bit cropped up as that de-Kantian antidote which struggled to consolidate the hitherto overlooked ‘coconstitutive West–non-West relations’ by moving backward and forward across the Western-centric frontier, thereby censuring the provincially characterized knowledge-forms of both the West and the non-West. The theories/concepts of the Global IR research programme awakened a de-Kantian consciousness to unlock those ‘post-Western time-space spectacles’ that did not assume an essential subject-object, self-other, or West-non-West separation. These Global IR theories/concepts redefined time-space so that the Kantian phenomena-noumena divide could be removed and human beings could use of their scientific-metaphysical skills to reclaim their unified ‘phenomenal-provincial-self’ and ‘noumenalde-provincial-self’, thereby releasing non-derivative discourses of Westerncentric IR. At present, a growing number of (non-)Western scholars are engaged with the tasks of territorially de-centering IR knowledge and rationally reconciling the West–non-West binaries. These tasks are indicative of a broader ‘truth-maximizing exercise’ that transcends the scholarly power-maximizing exercise aimed at boosting either West or non-West at the expense of the other. This truth-maximizing exercise underprops the theoretical-praxeological agendas of the Global IR research programme.

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2. Knowledge (theoretical/praxeological) is not always ‘territorially trapped’; it may be ‘territorially transient’; thus, all knowledgeforms originating from the non-West or Global South need not be post-colonial or de-colonial. Different strands of territorially trapped Western and non-Western knowledge-forms function as two seemingly irreconcilable cognitive prisons: ‘one world’ with homogenizing propensities (dominated by the West) and ‘many worlds’ with heterogenizing predispositions (embodied by the non-West). A few scholars argue that we live in the ‘one world’ of globalizing capitalism that is centered on a single hegemonic power. In fact, the homogenizing propensities of this one world can be explained through liberal, realist and constructivist theories; usually, these theories inform policy debates. However, other scholars call for an openness to ‘many worlds’ that incorporate the heterogenizing voices of indigenous people often relegated to the domain of myths/beliefs. Though these voices are sometimes heard to stop strategists from the temptation of rushed closure in policy-framing, they scarcely shape tangible policychoices. While the one and many worlds are explained via rival theories, they create a problem of ‘epistemological relativism’: though the idea of theoretical pluralism that borrows from diverse Western and non-Western epistemological resources is desirable, it also runs the risk of rigidifying the West–non-West cognitive prisons, thereby creating obstacles in implementing effective global partnerships that are required for tackling global crisis-situations, e.g., the likelihoods of world war, financial crisis, climate change, pandemic, and the like. In its effort to reconcile the West and the non-West, the Global IR research programme finds rational support from multiple auxiliary theories that derive stimulus from hitherto vilified knowledge-forms thriving in different corners of the world. These auxiliary theories, with shared hard-core assumptions about the need to reconcile the West–non-West binaries and foreground the West–non-West complementarities, work as a Lakatosian research programme (where multiple theories cooperatively corroborate their findings of truth to cultivate strategic agreements between the one and many worlds), not a Kuhnian paradigm (where one theory claims superiority over the competing truths released by rival theories, thereby aggravating strategic disagreements between the one and many worlds). However, the conditioned reflexes of several scholars compel

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them to receive the emergent knowledge-forms by constrictively correlating their ‘source’ and ‘scope’: while the knowledge-forms having their source in the West are granted a global scope, the knowledge-forms having their source in the non-West are given a local scope. Since the Global IR research programme remains enriched with diverse knowledgeforms having their source in the territorial non-West, it is suspected that these local non-Western knowledge-forms cannot grasp the larger global scenario. Needless to say, these conditioned reflexes hinder the progress of the Global IR research programme. The narratives of/from ‘many worlds’ (embodied by the non-West) are listed as local-pictures of somewhere/s, whereas the records of/from ‘one world’ (dominated by the West) are applied to global-pictures of anywhere/s. Actually, these cognitive prisons of ‘one world versus many worlds’ or ‘somewhere versus anywhere’ spring from a Kantian dualist knowledge-situation that forms the rigid disconnected opposites of phenomena-noumena, sciencemetaphysics, subject-object, self-other, West–non-West, etc. Exceeding an orthodox Kantian dualist knowledge-situation, the Global IR research programme—driven by the Chinese, Indian, and Japanese theories— reconnect these disconnected opposites, thereby trying to demolish the cognitive prisons of ‘one world versus many worlds’ imposed by Western IR or post-/de-colonial non-Western IR. Markedly, the IR scholars of the West sustained the imaginings of a single/homogenous world by explaining how the weakening of nationstate’s territorial trap since the late 1980s made more room for a global culture: the arrival of a global culture became possible with the help of a technologically mediated compression of time-space that enfeebled the divide between the national/hierarchic and international/anarchic arenas, thereby easing the interactions between different parts of the world (West and non-West, or global North and global South). Contrary to these imaginings, the IR scholars of the non-West pushed for a plural/ heterogenous world by arguing how the nation-state was a realized entity in the global North but an ongoing project in the global South needing to stabilize its territorial base: the need to remove all the threats to nationstate’s authority in the global South was reflected in multiple non-Western IR theories, including the dependency, world-systems, and post-/decolonial theories; in these theories, hierarchy and not anarchy seemed to be the defining organizing principle of IR. But then, in both types of Western-centric or non-Western-centric perspectives, the ideas of a Global world remained territorially trapped: even if a nation-state’s territory was

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not taken as a political ideal, the subsequent trap of understanding territory largely as the ‘physical substratum’ of the sovereign nation-state persisted. Thus, a sort of re-territorialization seemed to unfold, whereby the cultures, civilizations, societies, economies, nation-states etc. of the West and the non-West continued to function as the Kantian time-space bounded categories defined in terms of their distances from other places located outside their borders. The Kantian consciousness of Western IR and non-Western IR continues to reinforce the cognitive prisons of ‘one world versus many worlds’, whereas the de-Kantian consciousness of the Global IR theories/ concepts strives to find a way out of these cognitive prisons. To overcome the deficits of Kantian consciousness, these Global IR theories/concepts try to reunite the polarities of phenomena-noumena, science-metaphysics, subject-object, and so on. Kant chose to cut off the noumenal world (‘moral reasons’) from the phenomenal world (‘causal chains of coincidences’) for the purpose of institutionalising perpetual peace in world. But the Tianxia theory pinpoints that the Kantian vision represents the subjectified facts relating to Western and non-Western experiences in terms of binary opposites, which, in turn, normalizes and moralizes divisive politics: to clearly demarcate oneself from another, the self turns the original state of noumenal non-opposition into one of phenomenal opposition with the other/s. When this divisive politics faces difficulties based on oppositional conflicts, the only response the Kantian vision can suggest is the peaceable solutions in the form of international assemblies. Still, all the actors involved in oppositional conflicts cannot be made part of these assemblies. In the absence of an image of the world as ‘shared co-existence’, the Kantian vision, with certain a priori presumptions about the externality of otherness, is unable to dispel intersubjective conflicts in world politics. Furthermore, the Advaita theory argues that the divisive politics driven by the logic of externality of otherness becomes blind not only to diverse forms of behaviour, dynamics and actors in world politics but also to its own narrow (anti-)scientific perspectives: historically speaking, the subject/self can and does outdo the divisible temporal-spatial logic of phenomenal many-ness and act according to the indivisible noumenal oneness, thereby being an ‘unbiased spectator’ of the phenomenal world who remains unaffected by the impulses of the worldly temporal-spatial settings. Also, the Japanese theories assert that the scientific-metaphysical penetration into the subject’s/

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self’s mind can lead to a point where subjectivity dissolves into nothingness and enters into a zone of universal ‘pure experience’. These territorially transient universal accounts of de-Kantian consciousness serve as the theoretical-praxeological groundworks of the Global IR research programme. 3. Knowledge (e.g., theoretical agendas) may be always for someone and some purpose, but there is always a possibility for readjustments in that someone and that purpose. The compulsion to reconnect the polarities of science and metaphysics (and, by extension, the polarities of phenomena and noumena, subject and object etc.) in Global IR theories/concepts follows the approach of a Lakatosian research programme that remains open to readjustments. A Lakatosian research programme encourages the employment of metaphysical insights for rational reconstruction of science; in so doing, it prepares a coherent conceptual framework that sets up its own methodological rules. Accordingly, the Global IR auxiliary theories stimulated by the Tianxia, Advaita and Japanese worldviews engage with metaphysical insights for rational reconstruction of Kantian science. They also put forward a ground-breaking conceptual framework (‘hard-core’) with its own methodological rules (‘heuristic techniques’). When these heuristic techniques are activated by the Global IR auxiliary theories to safeguard their hard-core assumptions, they do not reject the prospects of intertheoretical readjustments. In fact, these readjustments (or ‘progressive or degenerative problemshifts’) can be monitored via well-defined ‘objective criteria for appraisal’. Differing from the Kant-inspired Western and non-Western IR theories, the Global IR theories support the ‘hard-core’ assumptions that the realm of ‘the international’ is a fusion of phenomena (world-in-appearance with subjective many-ness) and noumena (world-in-itself with objective oneness); and that it is humanly possible to reconcile the visible many-ness of phenomenal world with the invisible oneness of noumenal world. The Tianxia theory based on the Chinese relatedness of Tian (heaven) and xia (under) claims that the oneness of the world, implied as all-under-heaven, expresses itself in all its diversity. In this all-under-heaven condition, the self-existence cannot be secured at the expense of other-existence; instead, the self-other or West–non-West existence are inter-reliant. The Advaita

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IR theory arising from the Indian philosophy of non-duality asserts that the subjective many-ness of phenomena and the objective oneness of noumena are essentially two continual cognitive zones of the same timespace-indivisibility that underpins global connectedness. In this situation of global or West–non-West connectedness, the self/other positioned at a fleeting moment does not bear permanent selfhood/otherhood. Rather, the phenomenal self and other/s are varyingly yet continually subsumed in each other through a third dimension, i.e., noumenal invisible oneness; hence, the self-other pluralities must be seen as non-binary interlinked categories. Likewise, the Japanese IR theories instruct that there are various ways of explaining the self-other or West–non-West relations. These binary relations become political only when studied in a definite time-space intersection; it is only by confessing the invisible amorphousness of these binary relations and subtlety of our differences that we can make borders that separate us less salient and ensure that we are different and simultaneously the same. Noticeably, the conceptual framework arising from these Global IR auxiliary theories revisualizes a world which is concurrently ‘one and many’: that is to say, the noumenal unity of a single world lies underneath the phenomenal diversity of plural worlds. In Global IR theories, the metaphysical reality of noumenal unity retains the scientific reality of phenomenal diversity. As such, the metaphysical insights shaping the conceptual framework of Global IR theories—which affirm compulsory coexistence of the one and many worlds— are not hostile to science; they, rather, seek to reconfigure the Kantian science by proposing integrated scientific-metaphysical research. As this integrated scientific-metaphysical research is mobilized to make sense of the complexities of contemporary world affairs, it is likely to encounter some ‘unjustifiable claims’. First, one may detect a ‘methodological discontinuity’ between Western science and non-Western metaphysics that the Global IR research programme tends to ignore. Second, one may opine that the Global IR research programme aspires to ‘reproduce binaries’ by accentuating the contrasts between Western metaphysics (dualism) and non-Western metaphysics (monism); and third, one may raise objections that the Global IR research programme appears more abstract (metaphysical) and less factual (scientific) and, therefore, it displays a predisposition toward ‘policy-irrelevance’. To defuse these unjustifiable claims, the Global IR research programme must operationalize some ‘heuristic techniques’: these heuristic techniques

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fine-tune the auxiliary theories of the Global IR research programme so that they become equipped to unveil the monist continuum interlinking the phenomena-noumena, science-metaphysics and subject-object. When it is alleged that the Global IR research programme ignores the methodological discontinuity between Western science (which concentrates on phenomena) and non-Western metaphysics (which focuses on noumena), one must emphasize how all miscellanies of science (including Kantinspired Western science) rest upon some metaphysical preconditions. In fact, the ‘science of metaphysics’ is logically prior to the ‘particular sciences’ (Western/non-Western). Rather than passing value-judgements on the relative merits of science and metaphysics, the Global IR research programme must pronounce how the science-metaphysics-dichotomy has formed false records of rational disparities between the West and the non-West. Furthermore, when it is suspected that the Global IR research programme reproduces binaries between Western metaphysics (dualism) and non-Western metaphysics (monism), one must make clear that the foremost objective of this research programme is to facilitate a reconciliation of dualism with monism (or ‘one world’ with ‘many worlds’) so as to leverage a ‘Global’ spirit in theory and practice of world politics. In addition, when it is apprehended that the abstract meta-theoretical gesture of the Global IR research programme may thwart its policyrelevance, one must mention that the policy-responsibility undertaken by this research programme can acquire new forms with the passage of time; at the moment, this research programme backs those policies that make efforts to ‘avoid the negative consequences of the exteriority of otherness’ (in case of Tianxia theory), ‘dodge the regular approach of defining selfidentity in terms of non-identity with others’ (in case of Advaita theory), and ‘reconsider the conventionally divided identities of the West and the East’ (in case of Japanese theories). Tactically, this research programme tries to foster a sustainable global world order that presupposes an interdependency between the potential harms and healings of the self and the other/s. It is this self-other interdependency that becomes grounds for condemning the policies that push/justify the notions of temporally-spatially separated ‘being’, ‘identity’, ‘interaction’, ‘action’, ‘mentality’, ‘emotion’ and so on. The Global IR research programme supports only those policy-initiatives that make progressive problemshifts in accordance with the following ‘objective criteria for appraisal’: the more the non-centric invisible oneness (noumena) beneath the geo-centric visible many-ness of lives on earth (phenomena)

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is taken seriously, the more politically responsible the humankind will be in nurturing a sustainable global world order. Practically, these objective criteria for appraisal ask for an evaluation of the ‘hidden stakes’ in divisive policy-actions and ‘hidden capacities’ in non-divisive policyactions, thereby often requiring readjustments in both, the theory (‘some purpose’) and the theorist (‘someone’). Only an openmindedness toward such readjustments can regularly revive this research programme. 4. Knowledge (e.g., policy proposals) may be systematically theorised but not applied, or proficiently applied but not theorised; in both cases, knowledge remains valid. The systematically theorised Global IR research programme rearranges the conventional ontological-methodological-epistemological sequence of theory-building. For that reason, it chooses epistemology rather than ontology as the starting point for IR theorising. And when it chooses epistemology rather than ontology as the starting point for IR theorising, it commences an autonomous reconstruction of epistemology suited to a de-Kantian consciousness. In effect, a de-Kantian consciousness grants a unique epistemological-ontological-methodological pitch to the Global IR research programme: here, ‘epistemological anti-scepticism’ prioritizes objectified truths over subjectified facts; ‘ontological overhaul’ revisits phenomenal world as an upshot of noumenal world; and ‘methodological eclecticism’ blends scientific principles with metaphysical opinions. In theory, epistemological anti-scepticism accepts several pregiven objectified truths about the perennially interconnected world; ontological overhaul reinterprets the customary West-non-West binaries as interdependent non-binary categories; and methodological eclecticism looks for complementarities among the non-binary categories of Western–non-Western actors/worldviews/philosophies/narratives/discourses. In practice, this epistemological-ontological-methodological pitch sponsors a ‘non-centric global order’: in a non-centric global order, the West–non-West complementarities are considered mandatory not only to grasp global multipolarity but also to rebuild empirically-normatively effective Western agency in non-Western worlds and vice versa. From this positioning, the inclusion of the hitherto omitted non-Western knowledge-forms in policy-making procedures becomes a matter of necessity for the West instead of a matter of choice.

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When the non-Western knowledge-forms of Tianxia, Advaita and Japanese theories are included in drafting domestic/foreign policy proposals, they call for the need to pay attention to several political considerations: (i) ‘extra-territorialism’ (surpassing the state-based barriers of territorial boundaries); (ii) ‘post-humanism’ (accommodating the post-human ambiances of nature, earth’s processes, plant and animal structures, technospheres, forms of viruses etc.); (iii) ‘essential emotionalism’ (encompassing the heart-based sensations of suffering/healing); (iv) ‘existential ephemeralism’ (acknowledging the fleeting nature of phenomenal existence); and (v) ‘sustainability-for-survival’ (keeping in mind the long-term visions of a sustainable global order while seeking to secure the short-term survival of life-forms on earth). Of late, these political considerations were intermittently applied to advocate a universalist upliftment of world politics. For instance, the Tianxia theory was applied not only to problematize the ‘exacerbated nationalism’ in China’s policy responses to Covid-19 but also to disengage this worldview from ‘sinocentric traps’, thereby stressing the value of extra-territorialism. The Advaita theory was applied to make appeals for allotting equal weightage to state and non-state actors in the process of ‘removing painful conditions of a volatile life on all sides of borders’, thereby centralizing the needs for extra-territorialism and emotionalism. The Japanese theories were applied to explain a successful conflict-transformation between Japan’s main island and Okinawa which became possible by confessing the emotional sufferings of peoples; these emotional sufferings encouraged all political stakeholders to recuperate their relationality in terms of dynamic identities; for sure, these policy-initiatives involved the intellectual integrities of existential ephemeralism along with extra-territorialism and emotional essentialism. In fact, these auxiliary theories along with several other Global IR conceptualisations call for the strategic mainstreaming of posthumanism, sustainability-for-survival, anti-colonialisation, spiritualising conflict-transformation, humanizing soft power, and so on. While the Tianxia, Advaita and Japanese theories promote a post-human relational concern for earth’s ecology and continue to look for solutions to global ecological crisis-situations, such as climate change, the Amazonian rituals played a diplomatic role in countering colonisation, the Sufi campaigning propelled a spiritual mechanism for conflict-transformation in Syria; and the Ubuntu diplomacy designed a humanist soft power

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project in the African subcontinent. There exists a growing body of literature that exemplifies the policy experimentations deriving from an array of under-theorised or non-theorised non-Western concepts/worldviews/ cosmovisions: for instance, the cosmology of dharma (truthful action) directing the policy choices of the Indian diplomats; the norm of aikido guiding the Japanese practitioners in the process of harbouring insecurities and handling the attacks while empathically caring for the attackers; the concept of Runa that extends beyond humans to include non-humans in enhancing the imaginative, interactive and empathetic praxeological capacities. For all practical purposes, it is crucial to bear in mind that both theorised (but not applied) and non-theorised (but applied) non-Western knowledge-forms remain valid: thus, the lack of political will to translate theorised non-Western knowledge-forms into practicable policy-actions, or the absence of academic acumen to decode non-Western policy-moves in terms of coherent theoretical frames cannot be mentioned as incidents invalidating the utility of the Global IR research programme. While making efforts to include non-Western knowledge-forms in policy-making procedures, one must avoid some ‘rational miscalculations’. First, even if a non-Western knowledge-form is not theorised by IR scholars, it may still stealthily participate in shaping foreign policies. Second, even if a non-Western knowledge-form is theorised but remains inactive in its locality, it may be capable of influencing policy-making procedures somewhere/anywhere. And third, even if a non-Western knowledge-form was active but brought unintended results in the past, it may be able to positively renovate world politics in the present or future. Of course, the Global IR research programme does not exclusively focus on corroborating various (in)active non-Western knowledge-forms with successful cases of competent policy-experimentations; it also identifies the actual or potential political obstacles that may hinder the execution of such competent policy-experimentations. For instance, this study discussed how the Chinese Dream ideologically tangled with the Tianxia doctrine must not turn a blind eye to the realities of multiethnic governance that demand protection for the Chinese ethnic minorities. In a similar vein, the attempts of Advaita to find workable solutions for various global crisis-situations must not distract India from the political responsibility to bring a halt to unlawful spread of caste- and religion-based divides within the country. Also, the Japanese theoretical preferences for pacifism, antimilitarism or nuclear allergy must not pretend to be oblivious

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to the probable intimidations from the US interventions. Unquestionably, these kinds of critical scholarships that throw light on the actual or potential political obstacles in the prospective progressions of the Global IR research programme are indispensable for not only revaluating the truth-content of this research programme’s theory-praxis-interface but also for rationally reconstructing its future theoretical and praxeological trajectories. 5. Knowledge (e.g., theoretical agenda or policy proposal) is bound to come across anomalies; these anomalies may be instigations for innovations, not signs of setbacks. The theoretical agendas or policy proposals of the Global IR research programme may result in producing some unintended outcomes. These unintended outcomes may come across as the anomalies/counterevidences that threaten to undermine this whole research programme. But these anomalies/counter-evidences must be processed as transitory instigations for innovations, not eternal signs of setbacks. In other words, the anomalies/counter-evidences must instigate diverse Western and non-Western researchers/practitioners to undertake meditativeexperiment about devising substitute theoretical-frameworks and/or policy-initiatives. These researchers/practitioners may uphold varying degree of dissimilarity/similarity in terms of cosmology, worldview, philosophy, ideology, history, demography, economy, resource, regional integration, regime type etc. Whatever the degree of dissimilarity/ similarity may be between the researchers/practitioners trying to deal with specific anomalies/counter-evidences, when they engage themselves with meditative-experiment for the purpose of coming up with innovations that could progressively readjust the future theoretical-praxeological trajectories of the Global IR research programme, they must move along the following three advices: first, taking cognizance of ‘covariance’; second, showing readiness for ‘recontextualisation’ or ‘reconceptualisation’; and third, maintaining appreciation for ‘andragogy’. The analytical apparatus of co-variance discloses that genetically interrelated ideas/practices can emerge at temporally and spatially distant places. Therefore, the researchers/practitioners located at any temporal-spatial point can inspect/implement the freely floating ideas/practices which are provincially neither Western nor non-Western. That is to say, the

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strategic interests of the researchers/practitioners must be titled toward non-provincializing (not provincializing) a given idea/practice. Apart from taking cognizance of covariance, the researchers/practitioners must realize the inventive potential of recontextualisation which implies that the idea/practice that originates at one place can be integrated, adapted and reused at another place. The relocation and reassembly of an idea/practice from its original-form to an adapted-form leaves a discursive gap that invites the researchers/practitioners to use their own views/values/beliefs while engineering their schemes for readjusting the research programme. Therefore, the researchers/practitioners must be ready to use their own ideational inputs in the process of the reconceptualisation of traditional Western or non-Western ideas/practices so as to better acclimatize them to alien politico-economic and socio-cultural settings. Besides showing readiness for recontextualisation or reconceptualisation, the researchers/ practitioners must also acknowledge the importance of andragogy which highlights the need to get out of the intellectual-comfort-zones of established experts and launch collaborative research projects that could learn from the prior experiences and social roles of fresh learners. Presumably, when fresh learners mature, their self-image transforms from a dependent to a self-directed individual; they amass a reservoir of experience as an increasing resource for learning; their eagerness to learn becomes directed toward the developmental tasks of their social roles; and their time perspective changes from one of postponed application to immediate application of knowledge. Keeping in mind these advantages of andragogy, the fresh learners must be regularly invited to improve the Global IR research programme by way of ‘theory-generation’ (ingenious inclusion of unfamiliar ideas), ‘theory-application’ (activation of familiar ideas to conceive revolutionary political practices), and ‘theory-integration’ (cross-fertilization of the ideational and practical fibres of the Western, non-Western, and post-Western IR). Strikingly, the awareness of covariance (i.e., the possible emergence of genetically interrelated ideas/practices at temporally and spatially distant places) makes it clear that the ideas/practices need not historically travel from one geographical site to another before showing up at both the sites. As this study tried to illustrate, the varying theoretical and praxeological rudiments of Global IR appeared in the temporally-spatially distant thoughts of Tianxia (from China), Advaita (from India), and Buddhism (from Japan). Though these thoughts are not absolutely identical, they do share some overlapping components. And the reason behind these

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overlapping components cannot be strictly explained by referring to some historical exchanges between these thoughts or their proponents. Thus, the researchers/practitioners working for the progression of the Global IR research programme must not care much about the draining ‘chronological warfare’ that often erupts among scholars for settling the disputes about who/where/when conceived a particular idea/practice. Rather, the researchers/practitioners must contemplate about how an idea/practice conceived by anyone/anywhere/anytime can be made resourceful for improving the human condition in contemporary times. Obviously, when ideas/practices are applied in differing politico-economic and sociocultural settings, they acquire new shapes. Just like capitalism and communism acquired new shapes when applied in differing politico-economic and socio-cultural settings, the researchers/practitioners seeking to foreground the West–non-West complementarities would need to devote their energies to assess how several familiar ideas/practices could be reconceptualised/acclimatized/readjusted before/after they are applied for tackling crisis-situations in unfamiliar settings. And when they assess how several familiar ideas/practices could be reconceptualised/acclimatized/ readjusted before/after they are applied for resolving crisis-situations in unfamiliar settings, they must look for fresh opportunities for not only ‘theory-generation’ or ‘theory-application’ but also ‘theory-integration’ whereby the selected ideational and practical aspects of pre-existing Western IR or non-Western IR could be combined with the findings of post-Western IR: e.g., a few studies, with an objective to reconcile the West and the non-West, have discussed how the English school or neo-classical realism could find synergies with the Global IR debates. Finally, the researchers/practitioners associated with the Global IR research programme must attempt to engrave pedagogical pathways for reducing the gaps between ‘published IR’ and ‘taught IR’. The innovations made in the domains of ‘theory-generation’, ‘theory-application’, or ‘theory-integration’ may be continually communicated in conventional academic forums or punctually published in leading IR journals, but they can really serve as a zeitgeist capable of bringing the West and the nonWest together in the crisis-ridden circumstantial conditionings of the changing Global world only if they are formally dispersed via public/ private institutions (including the universities operating in different parts of the globe). An academic discipline (including IR) becomes what it is destined to be. A great deal depends on circumstantial conditionings that consistently change, thereby convincing the discipline to speak to

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that change. And an equally influential factor is pedagogical selectivity that inconsistently picks, normalizes and moralizes only a few disciplinary responses to change and not the others. Whenever this pedagogical selectivity is put into service, one needs to keep in mind and in heart that this selectivity is reflective of not only where we come from or whether we can interact irrespective of wherever we come from, but also where we wish to go as future inhabitants of this incredible world which perpetually was and manifestly is more ‘Global’ than perhaps we (as learners of IR) ever projected it to be.

Note 1. Lakatos, Emre. 1980. The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Volume 1: Philosophical Papers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Index

A Acharya, Amitav, 24–26, 28, 32–37, 41, 73–76, 78, 90, 135 Advaita, 12–14, 48, 49, 54, 78, 79, 85–87, 92, 96–100, 103, 105, 126–131, 138–140, 142–144, 146, 148–152, 156, 174, 175, 177, 179, 180, 182 African, 56, 86, 105, 137, 145, 150, 180 Aggressive, 9 aikido, 136, 180 amae, 151 American, 27, 29, 36, 73, 85, 86, 88, 91, 101, 105, 144–146, 169 andragogy, 181, 182 anomalies, 42, 45, 91, 93, 94, 181 anthropology, anthropological, 5, 6, 9, 17, 55, 88 anti-hegemonic, 23 anti-scepticism, 119, 123–125, 128, 131, 132, 152, 153, 178

anti-science, anti-scientific, 2, 27, 43, 44, 167

B Basso Ostinato, 70, 141 Brahman, 97, 126, 142, 144 British, 26, 27, 86, 138, 142, 169 Buddhism, Buddhist, 12, 14, 87, 103, 138, 149, 182 Bull, Hedley, 27, 169

C capitalism, 23, 25, 31, 71, 172, 183 Carr, E.H., 25, 26, 28, 169 Chinese, 2, 3, 12, 14, 16, 24, 26, 37, 47, 48, 52, 54, 56, 70, 74–77, 80, 87, 88, 91, 92, 96, 97, 101, 103, 105, 125, 126, 136, 138, 144, 145, 147, 151, 155–157, 169, 173, 175, 180

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Shahi, Global IR Research Programme, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39121-7

215

216

INDEX

civilized, civilization, civilizational, 1, 9, 12, 13, 16, 17, 28, 82, 84, 89, 95, 104, 139, 156, 170, 174 climate, 93 co-constitutive, 32, 171 cognitive, 1, 2, 11, 17, 48, 69–71, 73, 83, 99, 126, 172–174, 176 colonial, 25, 31, 53, 94, 103, 105, 138, 156 Confucian, 77, 144 consciousness, 3, 12, 13, 16, 49, 50, 79, 92, 104, 123, 127, 128, 143, 145, 167, 168, 174, 175, 178 constructivist, constructivism, 9, 17, 28, 36, 37, 39, 40, 56, 72, 73, 121, 128, 129, 133, 137, 155, 172 cosmopolitan, cosmopolitanism, 10, 72, 83, 88, 144 counter-evidences, 93, 151, 181 covariance, 181, 182 crisis-situations, 11, 15, 38, 40, 49, 69, 71, 80, 93, 118, 132, 139, 147–150, 172, 179, 180, 183 culture, cultural, 1, 5, 9, 12, 14, 15, 17, 28, 30, 33, 36, 44, 48, 54, 55, 78–82, 84, 86, 87, 90, 94–96, 103, 127, 128, 130, 131, 135, 142, 154, 155, 167, 170, 173, 174 D de-center, de-centering, 32, 40, 49, 55 de-Kantian, 2, 11–14, 31, 41, 47, 71, 82, 83, 86, 87, 90, 100, 123, 135, 167, 168, 171, 174, 175, 178 dharma, 136, 180 diversity, 2, 24, 36, 48, 50–53, 72, 74, 92, 94, 97, 100, 151, 155, 175, 176

dualism, dualist, 10, 30, 31, 35, 38–41, 44, 47, 48, 50–52, 82, 83, 85, 88, 93, 96–98, 100, 104, 124–127, 129, 139, 152, 154, 176, 177 E Economic, 29, 39, 54, 55, 84, 94, 128, 131, 132, 146, 147, 167 emotion, emotional, emotionalism, 11, 17–19, 49, 50, 139, 140, 143–145, 147, 149–151, 153, 177, 179 Engi, 70, 150 Enlightenment, 8, 11, 95, 135 epistemology, epistemological, 24, 35, 39–42, 44, 47, 49, 52, 72, 73, 79, 89, 97, 100, 119, 122–126, 128, 131, 132, 135, 152, 153, 172, 178 ethnocentrism, 34, 76–78 Eun, Yong-Soo, 76 Eurofetishism, 31, 171 European, 6, 15, 26, 27, 84, 88, 95, 105, 126, 141, 154, 156, 169 Exceptionalism, 31, 34, 75–78, 123, 148 extra-territorialism, 139, 140, 144, 147–151, 153, 179 F Fanon, Frantz, 54, 75 feeling, 6, 10, 13, 17, 40 financial, 11, 29, 40, 42, 69, 81, 84, 93, 128, 170, 172 Foucauldian, 74–76 G Gandhi, Ramachandra, 75, 78, 86 geography, geographical, 4–6, 44, 57, 69, 71, 75, 76, 80, 82, 83, 87,

INDEX

88, 94, 99, 103, 118, 124, 141, 182 geo-history, 1, 15 German, 6, 8, 26, 85, 154, 169 globalism, 157 globality, 24, 26, 50, 82, 87, 140 globalization, globalized, 38, 76, 118 Global North, 31, 48, 81, 82, 173 Global South, 29, 31, 34, 36, 48, 75, 81, 82, 105, 135, 170, 172, 173 God, 1, 5, 11, 14, 43, 83, 92, 132, 135 Gramscian, 74–76 great debates, 25, 26, 28, 53, 102, 169

H happiness, 10, 11, 18 hard-core assumptions, 14, 24, 41, 45, 47, 48, 51–53, 90, 100, 172, 175 harms, 50, 51, 53, 147, 177 healings, 50, 51, 53, 147, 177 heart, 13, 29, 145, 184 hegemonic, 23, 71, 77, 172 heterogenous, heterogenizing, 8, 9, 69, 71, 80–84, 87, 172, 173 heuristic, 14, 45, 47, 51–53, 71, 88, 90, 91, 94, 100, 142, 151, 152, 175, 176 Hindu, 78, 138 Hoffman, Mark, 42 homogenous, homogenizing, 8, 57, 69, 71, 75, 80–84, 87, 172, 173 human condition, 2, 3, 12, 15, 16, 48, 118, 143, 146, 154, 168, 183 humanity(ies), 8, 10, 11, 79, 83, 98, 139, 142, 147, 148 human nature, 9, 26, 54, 169 humans, 8, 9, 143, 144, 180

217

I identity, identities, 9, 16, 17, 28, 37, 39, 48–50, 74, 81, 82, 86–88, 95, 133, 138, 139, 141–144, 150, 151, 156, 167, 170, 177, 179 imperial, 24, 25, 31, 138, 156, 171 Indian, 2, 3, 12, 14, 16, 24, 26, 37, 47, 48, 52, 54–56, 70, 74, 75, 77–80, 83, 86–88, 91, 92, 96, 97, 103, 105, 136, 138, 145, 156, 169, 173, 176, 180 inside, 1–4, 13, 15, 17, 31, 74, 102, 120, 130 internationalism, 57, 71, 80, 83, 87 J Japanese, 2, 3, 6, 12–14, 16, 24, 26–28, 37, 47–49, 52, 54, 56, 71, 74, 76, 77, 79, 80, 83, 87, 88, 91–93, 96–100, 104, 127, 128, 130, 131, 136, 138–141, 143–145, 149–152, 156, 169, 173–177, 179, 180 jivanmukta, 85, 86 K Kant, Immanuel, 1, 3–6, 8, 10, 11, 16–19, 82–85, 87–89, 92, 105, 153, 154, 174 Kashmir, 148 Kautilya, Kautilyan, 26, 37, 55, 169 Keohane, Robert O., 43, 104, 133 Koan, 87 Kobutsu, 79 Kuhn, Kuhnian, 14, 24, 41–46, 172 L Lakatos, Lakatosian, 14, 24, 41, 45–47, 52, 91, 93, 99, 151, 152, 175

218

INDEX

Leibniz, 4 liberal, liberalism, 2, 8, 9, 26, 36–40, 55, 72, 73, 120, 128, 137, 155, 172 Ling, L.H.M., 70, 87, 103, 142 Lockean, 37, 129 lokasamgraha, 99 M mapping, 3, 24, 53, 94, 95 Marxism/neo-Marxist, 27, 43 material, 11, 90, 104, 105, 131, 137, 141, 155, 156, 167 Mearsheimer, John J., 73, 132, 137 mental maps, 5–8, 17 meta-narrative, 28, 169 metaphysics, metaphysical, 11, 12, 30, 41, 57, 85, 89–97, 100, 104, 119, 123, 127, 130–132, 152, 153, 168, 175–178 meta-theory, 27, 169 methodology, methodological, 18, 55–57, 72, 91, 94, 95, 97, 100, 102, 118, 119, 122, 123, 128, 129, 132, 135, 151–153, 175–178 middle-range theories, 33, 34, 73 Mignolo, Walter D., 30 mind, 2–4, 6, 8, 12–14, 17, 19, 35, 51, 78, 91, 96, 120, 136, 140, 145, 153, 154, 175, 179, 182, 184 modern, modernism, modernist, 18, 25, 34, 84, 89, 90, 94, 95, 102, 104, 118, 129, 135, 136, 138, 144, 155, 156, 169, 170 monism, monist, 24, 47, 49, 51–53, 76, 78, 79, 85, 90, 93, 96–98, 100, 105, 124–128, 131, 132, 138, 139, 142, 144, 152, 153, 156, 176, 177 Morgenthau, Hans J., 27, 169

multiplex, multiplexity, 37, 38, 40, 135 multipolarity, 32, 135, 178 mu na basho, 128 N national interest, 36, 38, 39 nationalism, nationalist, 33, 38, 40, 50, 51, 57, 71, 80, 83, 87, 147, 148, 157, 179 nativism, nativist, 75–79, 155 natural, naturalistic, 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 94, 96, 97, 99, 100, 120, 135 Newtonian, 4 Nishida, Kitaro, 12, 14, 49, 79, 86, 92, 93, 97 non-humans, 8, 9, 180 noumena, noumenal, 4, 5, 10–14, 16, 30, 41, 44, 47–49, 51–54, 70, 71, 82–92, 97, 99, 100, 104, 119, 123, 126–128, 130, 131, 139, 143, 154, 168, 171, 173–178 O objective criteria for appraisal, 47, 50, 140, 153, 175, 177, 178 Okinawa, 149, 150, 179 ontology, ontological, 24, 47, 49, 52, 72, 92, 97, 100, 119, 121–125, 128–132, 142, 152, 153, 178 other, 9–12, 26, 48–51, 53, 79, 84, 93, 126, 128–130, 139, 140, 143–145, 147, 174, 176, 177 outside, 3–5, 13, 15, 17, 31, 33, 73, 81, 82, 89, 101, 120, 124, 130, 132, 141, 142, 157, 174 P pandemic, 11, 38–40, 49, 50, 55, 69, 147, 157, 172

INDEX

peace, peaceful, 9, 25, 28, 46, 53, 72, 76, 83, 125, 126, 128, 129, 137, 145, 156, 169, 170, 174 perception, perceptual, 4, 5, 19, 24, 79, 93, 96, 103, 120, 148, 151, 154 perspectival, 24, 32, 35, 36, 40, 42, 121 phenomena, phenomenal, 4, 5, 10–13, 16, 27, 30, 36, 41, 42, 44, 45, 47–49, 52–54, 56, 69, 82–86, 89, 91, 92, 95, 97, 100, 104, 119, 123, 126–128, 130, 139, 140, 156, 167, 168, 174–179 pluralism, 24, 27, 36, 43, 49, 52, 53, 56, 97, 99, 100, 102, 130, 134, 169, 172 pluralization, 36, 40, 73 pluriversal, pluriversality, 31 policy, 36, 40, 44, 46, 50, 55, 72, 86, 98, 100, 104, 118, 132–134, 136–140, 147, 148, 150–152, 155–157, 172, 178–181 political, 5, 9, 12, 13, 15, 18, 26, 28, 29, 31, 33, 37, 43–45, 48, 50, 51, 54, 55, 71, 72, 76, 79, 81–84, 86, 88, 98, 100, 101, 103, 104, 118, 120, 125, 126, 129–131, 135, 139, 140, 142–144, 146–151, 153, 155, 167, 169, 170, 174, 176, 179–182 positivism, positivist, 2, 8, 15, 27–29, 43, 44, 120, 121, 167, 169, 170 post-/de-colonial, 31, 39, 41, 47, 52, 54, 73, 75, 81, 83, 119, 129, 170, 173 post-humanism, 139, 140, 143, 144, 147, 150, 151, 153, 179

219

post-modern, post-modernism, post-modernist, 28, 104, 135, 155 post-positivism, post-positivist, 2, 8, 27–29, 43, 44, 120, 121, 167, 169, 170 praxis, praxeological, 2, 3, 9, 12, 14–16, 117, 134, 140, 145, 146, 150, 152, 171, 172, 175, 180–182 prudence, 143 psychic, psychological, 7, 10, 13, 37, 45, 76, 150 pure experience, 14, 86, 87, 127, 128, 175

R races, racist, racism, 6, 51, 84, 88, 105, 128 rationality, rationalities, 8–10, 18, 51, 120, 136 realism, realist, 2, 8, 9, 15, 26, 27, 36–40, 43–45, 72, 73, 120, 121, 128, 137, 141, 169, 172, 183 realistic, 5, 26 reason, 7, 8, 10, 11, 18, 19, 26, 27, 33, 41, 78, 83, 91, 96, 101, 123, 134, 143, 153, 154, 174, 178, 182 reconceptualisation, 181, 182 recontextualization, 181, 182 regions, 1, 4–6, 12, 13, 33–35, 48, 82, 86 relational, relationality, relationalism, 32, 38, 57, 70, 136, 150, 179 Runa, 70, 144, 180

S Said, Edward, 30 scepticism, 119, 122–125

220

INDEX

self, 4, 9–12, 26, 30, 31, 48–51, 53, 56, 57, 76, 79, 84, 92, 97, 105, 126, 128, 139, 140, 143–145, 147, 170, 171, 174–177 Shahi, Deepshikha, 13, 78, 85, 97, 126, 148 Shimizu, Kosuke, 14, 86, 100, 103, 124, 127, 149 Shint¯ oism, Shint¯ oist, 26, 169 Sinocentric, Sinocentrism, 75, 77, 78, 147, 148, 179 society, societies, social, 1, 8, 9, 12, 16, 18, 24–28, 34, 36, 37, 77, 82, 85, 91, 99, 104, 119–121, 130, 139, 141, 148, 157, 169, 170, 174, 182 sogo anzen hosho, 150 sovereign, 25, 28, 82, 84, 135, 142, 174 spatial, 2, 4, 5, 10, 15, 17, 40, 49, 85, 87, 103, 105, 126, 141, 181 spiritual, 78, 79, 90, 130, 131, 141, 142, 150, 168, 179 subration, 129 Sufi, 57, 86, 145, 150, 179 sustainable, sustainability, 26, 50–52, 140, 143, 144, 147, 150, 151, 153, 177, 179 symptomatological reading, 2, 12 T temporal, 2, 4, 6, 12, 13, 38, 40, 49, 54, 76, 85, 86, 105, 126, 127, 137, 143, 144, 170, 171, 174, 181 territory, territorial, 24, 32, 41, 46, 80–82, 87, 123, 139–143, 149, 154, 173, 174, 179 tian, 48, 92, 175 Tianxia, 12–14, 48, 49, 77, 78, 84, 87, 92, 96–98, 100, 103, 125, 126, 128, 130, 138–144,

146–148, 150–152, 155, 174, 175, 177, 179, 180, 182 truth, 14, 15, 23, 24, 41, 45–47, 57, 118, 132, 138, 141, 151, 168, 171, 181

U Ubuntu, 56, 70, 137, 145, 146, 150, 179 UN, 26 Uncivilized, 9, 17, 100, 139 universalism, 31, 34, 79, 80, 99, 144

V Vedas, 103

W wahdat-al-wujud, 145 Walt, Stephen, 133 Waltz, Kenneth, 27, 169 war, 9, 11, 18, 25, 27–29, 41–43, 53, 54, 69, 76, 81, 92, 101, 129, 136, 138, 139, 148, 157, 169, 170, 172 Watanabe, Atsuko, 48, 76, 79, 96, 131, 140, 141, 143, 144, 151 Wendt, Alexander, 28, 121 Western-centric, Western-centrism, 2, 15, 18, 25, 29–32, 36, 39, 53, 102, 122, 129, 137, 154, 157, 167–171, 173 Westphalia, Westphalian, 25, 28, 139, 140, 142, 169, 170 world-in-appearance, 4, 13, 30, 41, 52, 82, 104, 119, 123, 126 worlding, 72, 94 world-in-itself, 4, 30, 41, 52, 82, 104, 119, 123, 154 world order, 12, 13, 25, 37, 38, 40, 50–52, 76, 80, 83, 99, 125, 130,

INDEX

132, 135, 139, 140, 142–147, 168, 177

worldview, 9, 12, 24, 32, 47, 52, 56, 77, 89, 97, 103, 131, 132, 134, 148, 153, 175, 178–181

221

X xia, 48, 175 Xunxi, 26, 169 Z Zhao, Tingyang, 13, 77, 84, 97, 125 Zhou dynasty, 138