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IR as inter-cosmological relations?

Article  in  International Politics Reviews · July 2021

DOI: 10.1057/s41312-021-00120-2

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International Politics Reviews
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41312-021-00120-2

THE FORUM

IR as inter‑cosmological relations?

Giorgio Shani1

Accepted: 12 July 2021

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2021

Abstract
In my brief contribution, I will critically examine an attempt to pluralize IR by
accommodating geo-cultural difference as represented by ‘global’ IR, before intro-
ducing the concept of cosmologies. Cosmologies, I argue, challenge hegemonic
iterations of geo-cultural difference in IR by interrogating the relationship between
territory, culture and difference; the ‘religious’ and the ‘secular;’ and humans and
the environment. I will conclude by suggesting that ’post-western IR’ should focus
on inter-cosmological relations in a pluriverse.

Keywords  Post-western · International relations · Cosmologies · Difference

Like most of the contributors to this forum, I am deeply skeptical about the possibil-
ity of a ‘geo-culturally pluralist’ International Relations (IR). Attempts to go beyond
the West have reproduced the Westphalian straitjacket that characterizes so much
of International Relations (IR) in the Anglosphere. ‘Non-western’ IR, in its critique
of the Eurocentrism of the discipline (Hobson, 2012), reproduces colonial cartogra-
phies and conceptual maps which privilege the secular state, whether in the guise of
a ‘nation’ or ‘civilization’, as the basic unit of IR (Acharya and Buzan, 2010; Shil-
liam, 2011). Post-western IR, an approach which I find more helpful for understand-
ing contemporary IR, similarly reifies the West as a geo-cultural category which
structures the field of IR, although it seeks, in common with post-colonial accounts
(Seth, 2013), to ‘provincialize’ (Chakrabarty, 2000) the West’s claims to universal-
ism and particularize the epistemology and ontology of Western IR (Shani, 2008).
Finally, decolonial IR seeks to uncover ‘anti-colonial connectivities’ (Shilliam,
2015) which afford a different imaginary which may not be able to be accommo-
dated in IR. Central to all these attempts is a dissatisfaction with the way in which
difference is articulated in IR and its association with territory and culture.
The premises upon which a ‘geo-culturally pluralistic IR’ is based are: first, that
cultural and geographic differences are constitutive per se of alternative imaginaries

* Giorgio Shani
gshani@icu.ac.jp
1
Politics and International Studies, International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan

Vol.:(0123456789)
 International Politics Reviews

of the ‘international’ and, second, that these plural imaginaries can be accommo-
dated within a discipline whose locus of enunciation has always been the West and,
in particular, the Anglosphere. In my brief contribution, I will critically examine an
attempt to pluralize IR by accommodating geo-cultural difference as represented by
‘global’ IR, before introducing the concept of cosmologies. Cosmologies, I argue,
challenge hegemonic iterations of geo-cultural difference in IR by interrogating the
relationship between territory, culture and difference; the ‘religious’ and the ‘secu-
lar’; and humans and the environment. I will conclude by suggesting that reconcep-
tualizing difference in cosmological rather than geo-cultural terms necessitates an
engagement with the everyday which is rendered difficult by the territorial borders
erected and policed by Westphalian IR.
At the dawn of the birth of the ‘discipline’, IR had as its object of study a spe-
cific type of relations, relations between formal or informal empires masquerading
as independent states. The ‘myth of 1648’, (Teschke, 2003) which afforded the dis-
cipline a structure, granted formal recognition to these mainly European empires as
‘nation-states’ in an ‘anarchical society’ (Bull, 1977) governed by the norms, values
and institutions of the European states system. Relations within empires, between
centre and periphery, were excluded from the remit of the young discipline, best left
to domestic politics and colonial policy which concerned itself with the management
of ethnic, religious and cultural diversity. Consequently, from its very inception, IR
institutionalized a particular conception of difference, one based on an uncoupling
(and prioritization) of territory from (and over) culture. Thus, to speak of a ‘geo-
culturally pluralistic’ IR necessitates a prior process of ‘provincializing’ the Anglo-
sphere and in particular the way in which difference has been articulated in IR.
The Anglosphere has been central to the field of International Relations (IR)
since its very inception. It refers to the ‘English-speaking peoples’ who have domi-
nated international politics for the past two hundred years (Vucetic, 2011, p. 3). The
Anglosphere is considered (or rather considers itself) carriers of the ‘liberal project’
of modernity. ‘Freedom and the rights of man’, Churchill argued, ‘were the “joint-
inheritance” of the English-speaking world’ (Churchill in Vucetic, 2011, p. 2). Fur-
thermore, the Anglosphere has acted as the primary reference point for IR since the
world was ordered into (mainly European) independent, sovereign political units on
the one hand and (non-European) mandated or colonial territories on the other by
President Woodrow in the aftermath of World War I. Thus, the Anglosphere has
always had a racial dimension (Vucetic, 2011). A more ‘geo-culturally pluralistic’
IR would, therefore, imply examining the possibility of a less ‘racist’ IR. However,
race is still central to the way in which IR is imagined outside the Anglosphere: its
locus of enunciation remains white.
The challenge to the dominance of the Anglosphere in IR has come from within
the West as well as, more significantly for the discipline, outside it. The project of
European integration sought not only to challenge the dominance of the Anglo-
sphere within the West but also to articulate the relationship between territory and
culture differently, by blurring the territorial borders between nation-states within
and strengthening the cultural boundaries between Europe and the rest of the world.
The cultural borders between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ Europe have, more recently, been
challenged by post-colonial migration which has not only altered the demographic
International Politics Reviews

map of Europe but constituted a powerful challenge to the imaginary cultural unity
upon which European integration is based. Muslims in particular have become, post-
9/11, a racialized minority: the ‘constitutive outside’ which permits the European
‘secular’ self to exist.
The expansion of IR beyond the West has reproduced not only colonial racial
hierarchies but also the dominant conception of geo-cultural difference: geographic
particularity and cultural unity. Non-western states could be admitted into interna-
tional society only once they met the ‘standards of civilization’ necessary for inclu-
sion, standards which included, before the first world war, the possession of colonial
territories as in the case of Ottoman Turkey, Tsarist Russia and Imperial Japan. The
‘revolt against the West’, which accompanied decolonization, led first to the con-
testation, through the formation of the Non-Aligned movement after Bandung, and
then to the reluctant acceptance of the norms, institutions and values of a Eurocen-
tric ‘International Society’. Whereas colonialism, genocide and, eventually, institu-
tionalized racism were repudiated as norms of international society, colonial car-
tographies were reproduced and the conceptual map of Europe internalized. What
resulted was a ‘global international society’ based on ‘such basic elements of Euro-
pean international society as the sovereign state, the rules of international law, the
procedures and conventions of diplomacy and IR’ (Bull and Watson, 1984, p. 433).
More recently, Acharya and Buzan have revived the idea of a universal Global
International Society (GIS) comprising of different regions, cultures and values.
They characterize this GIS as ‘post-Western’ since the West will become ‘just one
among several centres of wealth, power and cultural authority’ (Acharya and Buzan,
2019, p. 264). The emerging ‘post-western’ order will be characterized by a ‘deep
pluralism’ which they define as ‘a diffuse distribution of power, wealth and cultural
authority, set within a strongly integrated and interdependent system, in which there
is a significant move towards a GIS in which both states and non-state actors play
substantial roles’ (Acharya and Buzan, 2019, p. 265). GIS, in short, rests upon a plu-
ralistic universalism which ‘allows us to view the world of IR as a large, overarching
canopy with multiple foundations’ (Acharya, 2014, pp. 649–50).
While this commitment to greater geo-cultural pluralism does indeed help to
decentre the Anglosphere from the centre-stage of the drama of IR, a ‘post-Western’
IR would interrogate the very principle of universality upon which GIS is based.
Instead of a ‘pluralistic universalism’ which accommodates the values, norms and
institutions of the rest of the world to Western IR, I argue that the starting point of a
post-western IR should be an acknowledgment of the existence of different concep-
tions of universality and particularity which cannot be subsumed within the vacuous
expanse of the ‘global’. We live in a world of many worlds, each with their own
understanding of universality and particularity. These worlds are not separate but
enmeshed, they intersect and influence one another, and collectively form a pluriv-
erse (Escobar, 2020) of different ‘cosmologies’ rather than a single globe. The globe
is ‘a modern social imaginary’ (Taylor, 2003) and not only a territorial container; it
is a cultural as well as geographic expression since it refers to how people ‘imagine’
the world(s) in which they live. The globe, in other words, is not universal but par-
ticular to a certain cosmological understanding of the universe. Whereas some cos-
mologies are premised on the existence of a singular, supreme deity that can provide
 International Politics Reviews

order in the universe making the concept of a globe intelligible, others deny the very
existence of a supreme authority and see the divine as residing in the souls of every
sentient being or animate object making it difficult to conceive of the world as a sin-
gle bounded entity. Viewed in such a way, is the globe an adequate container for the
network of different relations which make up the cosmos? At best, the global is an
empty signifier, an immanent category stripped of its sacred dimension, which reso-
nates uneasily—if at all—with vast sections of humanity. At worst, it erases memo-
ries of colonization and genocide. If we live, as has been argued, in different worlds,
then they cannot be subsumed into a single conception of the ‘globe’.
Cosmologies refer to sets of ontological and epistemological propositions
about the origins and the evolution of the cosmos and our position in it (Blaney
and Tickner, 2017, p. 5). The cosmos subsumes and provincializes the globe
which refers to only one planet in one galaxy in an ever expanding multiverse.
The concept of cosmology challenges the dominant iteration of geo-cultural dif-
ference in (Western) IR in multiple ways. In the first place, difference is no longer
tied to the geographical container of the nation-state or region and consequently
to territory. Citizens and subjects of different states may share the same cultural
universe in the same way that citizens and subjects of the same state may inhabit
separate, interlocking universes. In some cosmologies, territory is sacred. It is
land which gives and sustains life and the ancestral homeland which gives people
collective identities. Unlike in Western IR, this homeland can be shared by mem-
bers of different nations, states and universes; sovereignty is not asserted over
territory but in relation to land. This opens up the possibility of conceiving of
sovereignty as plural and overlapping (Inayatullah and Blaney, 2004). It can be
shared or contested by different groups, not exclusively by humans but also non-
humans, spirits, deities and demons.
Second, difference can no longer be reduced to questions of culture and/or reli-
gion. In Western IR, cultural or religious thickness is a marker of difference. Under-
development and backwardness are attributed not to the machinations of a world
capitalist economy with its origins in colonialism and the slave trade but to the
‘political culture’ of fragile states in the ‘developing’ world. The imperviousness of
those areas of the non-West which have matched the material achievements of the
West to ‘modern’ Western values such as democracy, human rights or gender equal-
ity is explained with reference to cultural proclivities for authoritarian rule, patriar-
chy or religious fanaticism. This separation between the ‘cultural’ and ‘religious’
domains, however, is particular to specific cosmologies. Indeed, the concept of cos-
mology interrogates the separation between the domains of the ‘religious’ and the
‘secular’ since it encompasses within it a notion of the ‘sacred’ which is intertwined
with the profane in lived experience. Consequently, a distinction cannot be made
between ‘scientific’ (Allan, 2018; Kurki, 2020) and ‘religious’ cosmologies, since
this distinction is itself specific to a particular cosmology: the ‘geo-cultural’ episte-
mology (Tickner and Blaney, 2013) of the modern, ‘secular’ West.
Cosmologies also bring into question the very concept of culture as the reified
property of a particular ‘people’. Western IR attributes cultures to specific peo-
ples and considers culture a ‘variable’ which can explain state behaviour. This is
accomplished by excavating cosmologies of their sacred dimension, so they become
International Politics Reviews

‘cultures’ to be studied and ‘museumized’ (Nandy, 2019). Culture, whether local,

national or regional, is thus reduced to a hollow shell housing various strands of
language, custom and tradition. These shells have the advantage of being easily
identifiable to outsiders although they may not make much sense to those who live
within. However, cosmologies don’t belong to peoples but constitute peoples. The
traditions, institutions and values of cosmologies are universal and not particular to
a specific community. Finally, cosmologies interrogate the very anthropocentrism
which underpins IR questioning the separation between the agential human sub-
ject and the environment in which the subject is embedded. They establish relations
between all sentient beings and the cosmos usually narrated through creation myths
and sometimes accounts of the end of the universe.
Collectively, cosmologies provide a far more complex and, in my view, signif-
icant site of geo-cultural difference than the territorialized nation-state, region or
civilization. Cosmologies are fluid, mobile and living, whereas nations, regions and
civilizations are abstractions: bounded units shaped by power relations. A nation
is best understood as an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 1991) that legitimizes
the state’s monopoly of the use of force in a given territory; a region, a collection
of geographically proximate nation-states; and a civilization a culturally distinct
regional bloc. Cosmologies, on the other hand, cannot be subsumed into distinct
geographical, political and cultural units as they are constitutive of those units. The
nation, region and civilization are secularized cosmological categories which frame
Western IR but do not necessarily translate into different vernacular worldviews.
Consequently, differences which arise from encounters between cosmologies cannot
be captured with primary reference to territory or culture but need to be represented
with reference to everyday life.
In South Asia before the onset of colonialism, for example, these differences were
often expressed—and negotiated—by friends, colleagues, neighbours and relatives
who inhabited the same social space in terms of rituals and rules governing birth,
commensality, governance, pollution, marriage and death. These rules and rituals
were subject to interpretation and could be adapted to changing circumstances as
indeed happened with the onset of colonial modernity. During and after Partition,
however, cosmological differences were homogenized and territorialized by the
nation-building and geo-political strategies of the nation-states of India and Paki-
stan. To speak of India or Pakistan is thus to reify cosmological differences that had
been negotiated—however, unsatisfactorily—at a local level for the best part of a
millennium. Pre-colonial South Asia was neither a region nor a civilization but a site
of cosmological difference; at times, these differences were expressed violently and
others negotiated peacefully. The formation of the colonial successor states of India
and Pakistan and their entry into the Westphalian International order ‘nationalised’
these differences and closed the channels for their negotiation and transformation as
effectively as the border at the Wagh sealed the boundaries between the two nation-
states. What is now left is merely the nightly performance of nationalist imaginar-
ies on both sides of the border in the form of the raising and lowering of the flag,
designed to instill a sense of religious-infused patriotism that lends itself to a geo-
culturally pluralist IR based on the congruence of territorial and cultural units.
Finally, I would like to suggest that the reconceptualization of IR around the study of
relations between different cosmologies points the way to a more pluriversal rather than
 International Politics Reviews

‘geo-culturally pluralistic’ IR. Although more inclusive than its Anglophone variant, a
‘geo-culturally pluralistic IR’ cannot be universal as different cosmologies have differ-
ent conceptions of universality which cannot be accommodated into a singular, ‘global’
IR which treats the globe as a fact rather than an imaginary. However, is this ‘geo-
culturally pluralistic IR’ possible given the colonial legacy? I would argue that, despite
the devastation caused by over five centuries of imperialism, fragments from previ-
ous cosmologies can not only be recovered but are constitutive of new cosmologies
which continue to provide meaning, identity and security (Shani, 2017) for most people
throughout the world. For cosmologies are living and interact with other cosmologies
in a pluriverse. They frequently collide, become enmeshed and entangled. Separating
cosmologies from each other is a task best left to Western IR and its underlying ‘geo-
cultural’ epistemology. A post-western IR should instead operate in the nooks, crannies
and crevices where these universes collide.

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