Relations internationales

C11(c) - Expanding International Relations Theory

Date: Jun 3 | Heure: 10:15am to 11:45am | Salle:

Chair/Président/Présidente : Xymena Kurowska (Central European University)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Xymena Kurowska (Central European University)

Bad Habits: Emotional Manipulation in Global Politics: Eric Van Rythoven (Carleton University)
Abstract: Emotional manipulation is a recurring theme in debates about global politics, yet the concept has received surprising little attention from International Relations (IR) scholars. Motivated by this absence, I offer a ‘habits’ account of emotional manipulation inspired by pragmatist social theory and tailored for the study of global politics. The contribution is organized around two parts. The first part makes the case for seeing emotional manipulation as a diverse set of habits in which concealment is used to influence the flow of emotional experience. Focusing on different forms of concealment, I construct three ideal-typical habits—impersonation, projection, and appropriation—which can be used to empirically trace the contours of emotional manipulation in global politics. The second part of the argument engages in a normative evaluation of emotional manipulation. Critical of the moral universalism found in the ethics of manipulation literature, this approach offers a pragmatist alternative centered on the identification and reconstruction of ‘bad’ habits of manipulation. Beyond conceptualizing emotional manipulation, a central contribution of the argument is to push IR scholars to engage in the normative analysis of how emotions are used in global politics.

Beyond Citizenship? Traveling Grammars of Belonging and Political Agency: Peter Nyers (McMaster University), Thuva Navaratnam (McMaster University)
Abstract: Across settler-colonial societies, scholars and activists are increasingly questioning the adequacy of citizenship as a framework for belonging and political agency. While historically seen as both a legal and normative marker of inclusion, citizenship today is often experienced as a site of differential exclusion – organized through borders, property regimes, and colonial sovereignty. This paper traces how alternative grammars of belonging – denizen, commoner, neighbor, kin, planetary subject – circulate across movements for migrant justice, Indigenous resurgence, and climate activism. These emergent identities ground belonging not in nationality or legal recognition but in presence, relation, and shared stewardship. They also signal a shift from citizenship as a status conferred by power to belonging as a practice enacted through care, reciprocity, and struggle. However, these new forms of political subjectivity are not without their power dynamics. Drawing on Edward Said’s concept of “traveling theory,” we consider how these ideas migrate between contexts, sometimes losing their original political potency or, conversely, acquiring renewed vitality and relevance in new struggles. We argue that in settler-colonial settings, the travels of such concepts are particularly fraught: while they can open imaginative space beyond state-centered citizenship, they also risk reinscribing colonial logics when imposed on Indigenous peoples whose political projects are grounded in sovereignty, treaty relations, and responsibilities to land. By attending to both the generative and the problematic dimensions of these traveling grammars, the paper argues for a critical, relational approach to post-citizenship politics – one that recognizes the uneven geographies of colonial power while remaining attuned to the creative ways people enact belonging, care, and resistance in common.