This workshop seeks to bring
together contributions for an experimental handbook project. Written in a
future antérieur style, the project, tentatively
entitled ‘The Handbook of Global Politics in the 22
nd Century’
(HGP22), will produce a number of engaging essays that ‘write the future’ of
global politics on the basis of a wide range of theoretical perspectives and
approaches, as seen from the book’s vantage point 100 years from now, in the
22nd century. Mirroring the format and style of existing handbooks, but doing
so through an exploration of the horizon of possible futures, HGP22 will be a unique
and indispensable guide to opening up the discussion of the trajectories of International
Relations, as it intersects with the recent popular interest in utopian and/or
dystopian visions and imaginaries, in the popular domain as well as in
academia. Through exploring potential pathways, the chapters in HGP22 will
showcase a multiverse of possible developments in world politics. Chapters will
offer plausible analytical accounts that extrapolate from the existing state of
global politics, but also narratives of the ‘not yet’. To this end, the
workshop invites contributions that navigate and challenge the horizon of the
possible, within and beyond the discipline. Specifically, it seeks papers that
have an explicit forward-looking dimension in their method and/or approach, on
the spectrum between scenario-based analysis to storytelling and speculative
academic fiction. Not to be confused with a call for works in the genre of
‘futurism’ (i.e., prescience, or prediction-making), contributors to this
collective experiment are invited instead to investigate their own disciplinary
perspectives to assess possible times ahead. In this sense, the workshop speaks
directly to the overarching theme for the 2019 EWIS in Kraków, i.e. ‘The Next
100 Years of International Relations’.
The following list of themes and topics is offered as a suggestive guide for possible contributions:
- Historical and philosophical dimensions of world politics. Chapters might address the (future) history of International Relations as discipline, or the (Future) Philosophy of Science
- Theoretical Perspectives Chapters might address a range of traditional and new paradigmatic perspectives, Realism, Liberalism, Marxism, Constructivism…
- Structures, actors and processes Chapters might address a number of dynamics and processes germane to IR and IPE scholarship: sovereignty, development, regional integration, globalization, religion, security, race, gender, capital, class, financialization…
- Selected issues in world politics Nuclear proliferation, digital technology, terror, poverty, ecology resistance
- Methodology and public impact: Methods, methodologies, ethics, and international practice
Participants in the workshop will be provided with further details and guidelines for their contributions once the paper selection has been finalized. The WS is the start for the overall book project; additional contributors might be brought on board at a later point.
