International Rela_[404 Not Found]: Politics for a Broken World
Since the EISA community’s first discussion of ‘multiple crises’ at the 2013 PEC in Warsaw, talking about ‘crisis’ has become omnipresent. Yet, the term ‘crisis,’ no matter of the prefix (multiple, poly, hyper), fails to capture the full extent of the challenges facing our planet. The idea of being in a crisis gives the impression that we are in an exceptional situation, one we can overcome and leave behind. As the planetary changes become increasingly evident, and the erosion of the so-called international liberal order accelerates, the consequences of climate change, wars, and economic marginalization become more and more widespread. Something in world politics is fundamentally broken.
Where does this leave International Relations? How did we reach the point where we seemingly have learned to live with failure, destruction, atrocities and injustices? Is this due to denial or have we simply learned to ignore them, despite the constant exposure provided by modern media? For PEC 2025, we invite contributors to reflect on the possibilities of politics for a broken world. The acceptance that there is no return to previous orders, that something is irreversibly lost and fundamentally broken, opens new possibilities for political action. This call is less about a vision for the future of the discipline and more about taking stock. Instead of looking forward, a questionable endeavor in times of extreme uncertainty, we ask participants to look backward, sideways, downwards, upwards, inwards and outwards, engaging with a multiplicity and plurality of both established and alternative epistemologies in IR and beyond. In what spaces can we find opportunities for cooperation amidst rising tensions, patches of peace in the face of war, relationships of care, practices of repair, or new political collectivities and actions?
Let us use PEC 2025 to gather these fragmented and scattered patches of hope and let’s together do the patch-work of uniting them into new political configurations. While we would like to offer three possible avenues for exploration here, we are also open to other possibilities:
1. A Politics of witnessing
Witnessing violence, destruction and decay can have a paralyzing and depoliticizing effect. Media reports of war, climate change or humanitarian crises can trigger affective reactions like suppression or denial. Furthermore, the active production of ignorance and non-knowledge, for example on migration or climate change, challenges effective political contestation. Against this background, we invite participants of PEC 2025 to reconceptualize witnessing as a form of political action, as well as reflect upon methodologies that would allow us to bear witness. How can we create new ‘sense-abilities’ to make forms of (slow) violence visible that would otherwise remain hidden? How can witnessing enable new forms of care and solidarity? What forms of political mobilization and organization can emerge around assemblages and practices of witnessing?
2. A politics of repair
A politics of repair involves practices and projects that – while acknowledging that there is no panacea for existing global challenges – seek to reform, rework, or reorder international politics and governance in the wake of the current disorder. Reparative accounts of international relations must account for the physical damage and loss brought about by crises but also for affects, trauma and identity loss. Repair, in this sense, means establishing and maintaining relations that address the fragility of our and others’ worlds. How can we reinvent and reappropriate the toolbox of traditional IR approaches, such as (neo-)realism, constructivism and institutionalism, for a politics of repair? How can we decolonize and provincialize international relations through relational Indigenous ontologies? Or how can we mobilize feminist theories to provide a new normative foundation for the international order? What forms of repair can be observed empirically from local grassroot movements to international attempts at reforming the UN?
3. A politics of crafting and making
Another path toward a new politics for a broken world stresses the critical potential of crafting, making and designing by bringing the literature on critical making in IR and beyond into dialogue with work on policy design and the design of political institutions. Such contributions could range from proposals for designing new institutions and governance structures to cope with planetary change to tinkering with new forms of political organization, digital technologies, or new economic models beyond growth-based capitalism. Methodological contributions are also welcome, for example, participatory approaches that mobilize art and craft for transformative change in post-conflict contexts. How can a focus on making and crafting help overcome the inertia of the moment, move beyond mere adaptation to a planet out of control, and remake IR for a broken world?
