Reclaiming the social: relationalism in anglophone international studies

Abstract

Even in the North American and European context, relationalism comes in many flavours. We identify the common features of relational approaches, including varieties of practice theory, pragmatism and network analysis. We also identify key disagreements within relationalism, such as the relative explanatory importance of positional and process-oriented analysis. Our discussion reveals the problems that come from associating relationalism solely with other clusters of international-relations theory, such as constructivism. It also allows us to construct a typology of major relational frameworks in the field, and provides a better foundation for comparing and contrasting Chinese and Western relationalisms.