Nondualism in International Relations A Methodological Reconstruction Beyond Binaries

Nondualism in International Relations: A Methodological Reconstruction Beyond Binaries examines how International Relations has long been structured by binary thinking—inside/outside, self/other, West/non-West, hierarchy/anarchy, and theory/practice. While recent approaches, including Global IR, have sought to pluralise the field, they often retain a methodological commitment to separability, treating analytical units as pre-given or historically constituted discrete entities.

The book uses Global IR as an entry point, arguing that overcoming binary thinking requires not the addition of new perspectives, but a reorientation at the level of methodology. Advancing nondualism as a basis for the methodological reconstruction of IR, the volume brings together contributions that develop distinct nondualist methodological models across core domains of enquiry, including space, time, meaning, logic, order, ethics, gender, and identity. Each chapter follows a shared analytical sequence: identifying dualist limitations, developing a nondualist methodological model, and demonstrating its practical implications. These approaches are illustrated through engagements with issues such as territoriality, temporal ordering, cross-cultural interpretation, environmental governance, international order, conflict and reconciliation, gendered political processes, migration, and uneven global development. By shifting the focus from epistemic pluralism to methodological reconstruction, the book advances a Lakatosian nondualist IR research programme with implications beyond the discipline, extending to wider debates across the social sciences and humanities. It offers a systematic approach to analysing complex political formations without reducing them to fixed categories or either–or logics.

Nondualism in International Relations will be of interest to scholars and students of International Relations and Global IR, as well as those working in political theory, sociology, anthropology, history, philosophy, and human geography.