Highlights
- This article explores radical relationalism as a critical approach to world politics, foregrounding interdependence, co-constitution and entanglement.
- It brings relational sociology, decolonial theory and international relations into dialogue to examine the ethico-political dimensions of power and knowledge.
- The authors propose a decolonial methodology that centres marginalised voices, resists epistemic extraction and embraces plurality and complexity.
Abstract
This collective discussion piece explores the potential of radical relationalism as a critical tool for addressing world politics. Drawing from relational sociology, decolonial theory and international relations scholarship, the authors engage in a dialogical, cross-continental conversation on WhatsApp to examine how power, ethics and knowledge are constituted through relations. They critique the substantialist and universalist underpinnings of dominant Western epistemologies and call for a turn towards relational ontologies that foreground interdependence, co-constitution and entanglement. The conversation walks us through the biographical engagement of the authors with relationalism, the need to emphasise the ethico-political dimensions of relational thinking, methodological musings and radical relationalism’s potential for decolonising academia. In their conversation, the authors argue for a methodology that centres marginalised voices, resists epistemic extraction and embraces plurality and complexity. They hope to offer a radically relational approach to knowledge production that aims to support co-struggles for more just, decolonial and loving worlds.
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Bristol University Press, September 2026
https://doi.org/10.1332/29782066Y2026D000000007