Nordin, AHM and Smith, GM orcid.org/0000-0003-2521-0066 (2018) Reintroducing friendship to international relations: relational ontologies from China to the West. International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, 18 (3). pp. 369-396. ISSN 1470-482X
Abstract
Chinese government representatives and scholars have attempted to ameliorate fears about China’s rise by portraying China as a new and friendlier kind of great power. It is claimed that this represents a new way of relating which transcends problematic Western understandings of Self–Other relations and their tendency to slip into domination and enmity. This article takes such claims as a point of departure, and analyses them with focus on the explicit discussions of friendship in international relations theory. Paying attention to current Chinese thinking which emphasizes guanxi relationships, friendship can contribute to the development of genuinely relational international relations thinking and move beyond a focus on ossified forms of friendship and enmity centred on the anxious self. The vantage point of friendship suggests a way out of the dangers of theorizing Self in contrast to Other, and reopens the possibility to conceptualize Self with Other.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | (c) The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press in association with the Japan Association of International Relations. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Friendship; Guanxi; Self and Other; Ontology of things; Ontology of relations |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Politics & International Studies (POLIS) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 17 Apr 2018 13:03 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 21:18 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/irap/lcy011 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:129701 |