The Routledge Handbook to Rethinking Ethics in International Relations

Birgit Schippers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781317041764
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Éthique et philosophie morale

Discussing cutting-edge debates in the field of international ethics, this key volume builds on existing work in the normative study of international relations. It responds to a substantial appetite for scholarship that challenges established approaches and examines new perspectives on international ethics, and that appraises the ethical implications of problems occupying students and scholars of international relations in the twenty-first century. The contributions, written by a team of international scholars, provide authoritative surveys and interventions into the field of international ethics. Focusing on new and emerging ethical challenges to international relations, and approaching existing challenges through the lens of new theoretical and methodological frameworks, the book is structured around five themes:

• New directions in international ethics

• Ethical actors and practices in international relations

• The ethics of climate change, globalization, and health

• Technology and ethics in international relations

• The ethics of global security

Interdisciplinary in its scope, this book will be an important resource for scholars and students in the fields of politics and international relations, philosophy, law and sociology, and a useful reference for anyone who wishes to acquire 'ethical competence' in the area of international relations.

Part I

New directions in international ethics

1

Complexity thinking and the relational ethics of global life

Emilian Kavalski

Introduction

International Relations (IR) has struggled to foster different ways of seeing and encountering the world that can help it generate meaningful answers to the pressing questions of our times. The dominant models of IR are implicated in the construction of a world that is unravelling socially, fracturing economically and deteriorating ecologically. There is an urgent need for a change in perception, outlook and vision that can help uncover new modes of thinking and doing world affairs that transcend established paradigms and practices. Proponents of Complexity Thinking (CT) have responded to this call by drawing attention to the radical relationality of global life, which contests the Eurocentrism, anthropocentrism and the deterministic logic of control that informs the IR mainstream. In the process, CT makes available much-needed vocabularies and optics for engaging phenomena, practices and dynamics that cut across the turbulent pluriverse of global life.

The point of departure for such ‘complexification’ is the recognition that IR is marked by a poignant lack of ontological pluralism. Regardless of their distinct theoretical commitments, IR scholars tend to subscribe to a ‘Newtonian’ vision of the ‘world out there’ as a closed system populated by states whose interactions are motivated by power-maximization in the pursuit of their own self-interest (Kavalski 2012a). Thus, given the dynamics of linear causality that backstop this metanarrative, what comes to pass in world affairs is positioned as subject to anticipation as a result of reductionist models which postulate that all physical phenomena change in a gradual manner and following foreseeable trajectories. This ‘atomistic ontology’ asserts that all social phenomena are quantifiable and predictable (Kurki 2008, 107). The normative fundamentalism of this stance leads IR to adapt a mindset of continuities that makes it difficult to address chance, change and uncertainty (Whitman 2005, 119; see also Kavalski and Cho 2015). In particular, the framework of instrumental-rational action has become the standard against which alternative claims are judged. Thus, the ‘international’ produced in this manner is an artefact of ontological and historical constructs with significant epistemic and ethical effects.

According to the proponents of CT, the mechanistic (and nearly clockwork) features of this Newtonian imaginary disclose a normalization of oppression evidenced by the control, domination and exploitation of various others—be they human (indigenous, non-Western, gender and other vulnerable communities) or non-human (nature, species and objects). To be sure, some international phenomena—especially when treated in isolation—may appear orderly at times (that is, predictable, rational and linear); however, the point of CT is that, systemically, global politics as a whole is defined by non-linearity, recursivity and unpredictability. Thus, by painting itself in the Newtonian corner, the disciplinary mainstream has, on the one hand, evaded the need to recognize that there are dynamics which are not only unknown but also probably cannot ever be meaningfully rendered comprehensible, and, on the other hand, has stifled endeavours that can engage in thoughtful deliberation of the discontinuities, unpredictability and non-linearity of global life (Kavalski, Hobden and Cudworth 2018).

CT challenges the atomistic metanarrative of IR by proposing a relational ontology in which global life resonates with and through complex and interpenetrating presences whose sociability is infused with the contingent opportunities inherent in the encounter with the other. The very claim that the world is populated by and emerges through the continuous interactions between plentiful varieties of life and matter calls for the positing of alternative ontologies that exceed what is possible (and imaginable) under the Newtonian metanarrative of IR. By moving away from the atomistic universe of IR, CT inaugurates relational ethics and politics claiming ‘a more just coexistence of worlds’ (Rojas 2016, 370; see also Kavalski and Zolkos 2008). CT’s irruptive translation of such coexistence brings in dialogue the form and the substance of the languages and experiences of the diverse and infinitely complex worlds cohabiting in global life. Such relationality becomes coextensive of and standing together with the interpolating spontaneity of surrounding events and things.

Before detailing the relational ethics of this endeavour, the following section briefly outlines the key characteristics of CT and its implications for the complexification of IR. The suggestion is that an underlying aim of CT—both in general, and in IR in particular—is to aid the ability to engage in an ever-changing world. The ethical point is then to account for the possibilities attendant in the living in an abundant, yet profoundly entangled world. The point here is that the way we imagine the ‘international’ has profound effects on future patterns and practices of world affairs. At the same time, the proposition is that by removing the veil of the atomistic ontology of IR, the endeavours of CT reveal the impossibility to consider issues of ethics, ontology, epistemology and politics in separation and as if they are not mutually implicated in one another (Kavalski, Hobden and Cudworth 2018). Glossed as ‘global life’, complexity discloses an ever-changing and polyphonous world. The concluding section evokes these registers of worlding mutuality by elaborating the ways in which CT embraces the ethical and political promise of transcending the expected by engaging creatively with the contradictions, challenges and opportunities of an entangled and unpredictable global life.

Complexity Thinking and global life

To speak of world affairs as ‘complex’ might appear to be no more than an unnecessary truism. Most IR scholars would have no problem agreeing that the world of their investigations is complex; in fact, it has become expected of policy-makers, pundits and scholars to refer to a whole raft of global issues as complex. Yet, the reference to complexity is more than a convenient metaphor for the intricate nature of international affairs. It acts as a corrective to the IR metanarrative presenting world affairs as complicated but in the final analysis, predictable, rational and linear-hierarchical (Kavalski 2011). The recognition of such complexity has important scholarly and policy consequences; it also has important (and oftentimes overlooked) ethical implications—namely, by ‘detaching normative discourse from concrete realities’ the assumed universalism of the atomistic ontology of IR renders ‘normative discourse monological and potentially violent by ignoring or excluding ethico-political concerns of different others’ (Patomäki 2002, 158; see also Kavalski 2017).

The ethics and ontology of such complexity invokes the ‘international’ not merely as the domain of world affairs but also as global life. In contrast to international politics, the concept of global life is brimming with the coexistence of multiple ‘worlds’, ‘domains’, ‘projects’ and ‘texts’ of ongoing and overlapping interconnections (Rosenau 1988). The reference to global life reflects a relational entanglement with the ‘around’ excluded from IR’s Newtonian dispositif about what happens ‘inside/outside’ the state. This should not be misunderstood as an either/or proposition; instead, the claim is that the ‘inside/outside’ and the ‘around’ aspects are codependent, mobile, and mutually interpenetrating, and both of them coproduce the dynamic patterns of global life. In the context of such ongoing and contingent coconstitution, any occurrence does not exist merely in isolation (as a standalone event) but also reflects a nexus of innumerable interactions which interpenetrate one another in the shifting tapestry of social relations. Hence, the attentiveness to relationality makes a powerful case both for envisioning the fluid iterations of social transactions that percolate and gain salience in the context of ongoing interactions and for creating ethical openings to reimagine the complex webs of entanglements and encounters with others beyond the divisiveness and violence suffusing current domestic, national, and world politics (Kavalski and Zolkos 2016). Prior to engaging with the normative dimensions of this endeavour, the following sections offer a brief outline of CT and the current state of the art on the complexification of IR.

What is Complexity Thinking?

Complexity Thinking (CT) has become an umbrella term for a number of approaches that emerged initially in the natural sciences (Cudworth and Hobden 2011; Harrison 2006). In the absence of a unifying theory of complexity, some have suggested that—at the basic level of theoretical construction—the glue that binds the somewhat fragmented complexity research agenda seems to be the aphorism that ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’ (Kavalski 2007a, 437). While CT may entail different things for different authors, all of them share a normative commitment to relationality—‘to articulate and organize and thereby recognize and understand the problems of the world, we need a reform in thinking. … This means conceiving new ways to reconnect that which has been torn apart’ (Morin 1999, 1–13; emphasis added). Trickling into IR during the 1990s, the ideas of CT have eroded the ‘faith in a “makeable world”’ (Clemens 2013; Earnest 2015; Harrison 2006; Jervis 1997; Kavalski 2015a; Rosenau 1990; Snyder and Jervis 1993). Rooted in an Enlightenment fantasy that progress can undo the mistakes of the past, such ‘faith’ backstops the conviction in reversibility owing to the allegedly growing human ability to control not only natural space but also future temporalities. The complexification of IR undermines the very conviction in—let alone the possibility—for such full recuperation (and the associated human/Western mastery over the world) by reconsidering the temporal and spatial circularity of contingency. As a result of the complex trajectories of relationality and systemic interactions, alterations occur the outcomes of which are wholly unexpected and nearly impossible to predict.

CT is integral to the project of producing ‘worlds and knowledge otherwise’ by actively seeking to change ‘the terms and not just the content of the conversations’ (Escobar 2007, 181; Kavalski and McCullock 2005; Zolkos 2014). The claim is that the nascent patterns of world politics beckon more fine-grained hypotheses that would present the character of international life as ‘open, complex, partially organized and coupled in complex, conditional ways’ (Snyder and Jervis 1993, 13; see also Kavalski and Zolkos 2016). Overlapping ecological, economic, political and social crises not only suggest that the existing analytical frameworks, institutions and types of international behaviour have become ‘dysfunctional and can no longer deal with the situation in the old ways’ but also that they have actively contributed to the real and epistemic violence against seeing the world otherwise than through the atomistic lens of the mainstream (Cudworth, Hobden and Kavalski 2018, 10; Kavalski, Hobden and Cudworth 2018, 280; Roelvink and Zolkos 2015a, 48; Walton and Kavalski 2017, 210).

The reference to complexity usually implies the properties of complex adaptive systems. Such systems are defined through the connectivity and circulation of the incalculable movements of small units in large numbers, in which minor variations at the individual level can produce large-scale organizational transformation. Usually referred to as the ‘butterfly effect’, such sensitivity to and dependence on initial conditions recounts a relational ontology ‘where every element is in “sympathetic” relation with the rest’ and whose interactive entanglements get amplified to the point where it is impossible to attribute causality (Rojas 2016, 374; see also Kavalski 2013a, 93; Zolkos 2014, 373). In this respect, complexity tends to be identified by its relations rather than by its constituent parts. Such relational ontology provokes a reckoning with ‘the multiple possibilities of becoming and becoming-other’ defining global life (Kavalski 2009, 543, emphasis in original; Cudworth and Hobden 2017; Roelvink and Zolkos 2015b; Zolkos 2011).

Emergence is a key attribute of complexity that underwrites the uncertainty of its properties, which toggle between the old propensities and the sprouting dynamics. It suggests a focus on process rather than on structure (Cederman 1997; Horesh and Kavalski 2014). The emergent properties of complex systems are often surprising and underdetermined because it is difficult to anticipate the full consequences of even simple forms of interaction. The implication is that ‘historical contingency conspires with episodes of randomness to create the actual forms and behaviours that populate the social world’ (Mitchell and Streeck 2009, 4; Kava...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I New directions in international ethics
• PART II Ethical actors and practices in International Relations
• PART III Climate change, globalization and global health: Challenges for international ethics
• PART IV Technology and ethics in International Relations
• PART V The ethics of global security
• Index