- Rethinking IR and Orientalism
- Rethinking Environmental Security
- Forms of Life
- Temporality and positionality
- Conclusion
Environmental degradation and its part in the climate crisis is a pertinent issue faced today. This is augmented, at least within global politics, by the failure of the field of international relations to meaningfully contend with the crisis, its causes, and its solutions. Herein lies an opportunity to rethink how the discipline may engage more expansively to understand the world as the realm of complex relationships between human and non-human beings, living and non-living.
This begins with a definition and discussion of the key contributions which orientalism offers for this study in light of a critique of conventional IR theory. This is foregrounded with a discussion of the insights into how IR may thus be rethought. This is followed by an exploration of how the environment can be understood in terms of a reimagined relationship with humans. In addition, the expansive relational capabilities of what Grove (2019) calls “forms of life” is appraised. In closing, two important considerations of rethinking temporality and positionality, discussed in terms of their colonial manifestations above, are highlighted to inform the subsequent analysis. Altogether, this develops an understanding of how the human relationship to the environment is shaped by understandings of war and the environment. It furthermore sees how a critique of IR theory accounts for modes of orientalism and coloniality, as well as the considerations of temporality and positionality. An expansive relational approach goes some way in presenting decolonial insights which, unlike universalist abstract theories, encompass a variety of perspectives. These perspectives together hold promise for imagining beyond the bounds of knowledge which maintain colonial relations between beings, and amongst them, humans and the environment.
Rethinking IR and Orientalism
The first step towards rethinking the environment is rethinking IR and knowledge. This requires the complete dismantling of the mythology and centrality of Whiteness, and the developing of a broader, perhaps contrapuntal, understanding of history, ethics, and the world (Sabaratnam 2020, 27-28). This entails challenging the ignorance and immanence setting up the West as a universalist and exceptional source of progress. This is by developing theory built on highlighting the coloniality and hierarchies of IR and its values, the contributions of the non-West to the international system, and the transnational networks which contribute to the interrelated international system (Sabaratnam 2020, 28). Epistemological decolonisation of this form must contend with epistemic coloniality to clear the way for intercultural communication, linking decolonial projects from different spatial sites of coloniality (Africa, South America, Asia) (Quijano 2007, 177; Mignolo 2007b, 159). Importantly, thinking for the Global South must come from it, highlighting racial, ethnic and sexually marginalised voices, and dismantling the zero point of objectivity (Grosfoguel 2007, 212; Mignolo 2007b, 159). Revealing more histories can reflect on the intersections between race, imperialism, patriarchy, and more, as well as how although IR has been a Western-dominated discipline, its origins have a clear non-Western subject (Thakur and Vale 2020, 15). In addition, dismantling how war is seen in IR, especially in relation to the state and with violence often being ignored, could help highlight violence as it has and may target beings outside Whiteness and the environment (Sabaratnam 2020, 29). Importantly, these insights should aid IR’s contention with the presence, not absence, of Blackness not to replace Whiteness but to highlight the hierarchies, relations, rights, and obligations between each (Sabaratnam 2020, 29). This could extend to a contention with other realms – the environment, indigeneity, race, gender. Moreover, this would not displace the value of critical perspectives such as those offered by Marxism on class, but subsume them as equal determinants of complex relations, not universally structuring ones (Mignolo 2007b, 164). In addition, this should not be seen as returning to a previous state in which everything was ideal (such as the precolonial) but grappling with the complex relations of power across time (Mignolo 2009). Such a strategy of developing a more expansive understanding of relations is explored further below in rethinking environmental security towards what could be called “forms of life”. This is through reconceptualising concepts like war which presently lead to elisions of these relations. In addition, this contends with the presence of the many “others” outside Whiteness.
One critical perspective which could aid this project of rethinking can be gleaned from orientalism. Broadly, this may assist in highlighting the specific features of coloniality in IR beyond the useful insights offered by authors such as Krishna, Sabaratnam, Thakur, and Vale. This may be useful as a concept for understanding the histories of places in the course of forming a perspective of relations. From this, an awareness of the diverse modes used to constitute colonial relations between the “self” and the “other” can be developed.
Orientalism, at its basis, is a term referring to the Eastern “other” which has shaped Europe or the West in the contrast of its image (Said 2003, 5). While this has cultural elements of images and ideas, it also has material elements of imperialist exploitation and unequal power relations (Rai 2018). The power imbalance between the Orient and the West is what allows dominance to occur politically, economically, and subsequently, in art, literature, philosophy, and culture (Rai 2018). Importantly, this persists in the present, shaping vocabularies, discourses, and perceptions of developing nations (Rai 2018). As a philosophy, orientalism has various modes constituting the separation between the “self” and the orientalist “other” (Said 2003). One key mode of this separation is the co-construction of the West and Orient as geographic entities and the myth of them being normatively civilised and barbaric, respectively, as established through political, intellectual, cultural, and moral power (Said 2003, 3-7, 12). Politically, views of the Orient enable the assertion of authority over it directly through state institutions such as the police and a bureaucracy, and indirectly through cultural hegemony (Said 2003, 3, 7). An example of this would be the bureaucracy set up to manage British rule in India or the cultural promotion of Castilian as a model to script Mesoamerican languages in the Americas (Krishna 2001). In the Americas, this culturally established a fixed language used to draw up title deeds and articulate science and literature, something the picto-ideographic Mesoamerican languages could not so readily do (Krishna 2001, 413). This set up a distinction between what was considered civilised (Castilian) and what was considered barbaric (picto-ideographic languages). In India, the British established the Permanent Settlement to determine land revenues paid by zemindars (landowners) to the British colonial government, thereby establishing the mechanisms of distant government over rural subjects (Krishna 2001, 416).
Furthermore, the cultural mode of orientalism encompasses representations in media such as literature to entrench an intellectual power (Said 2003, 2-3, 41). In this instance, in addition to material power such as a police force or bureaucracy, orientalism makes claims to non-political and true knowledge which is considered universally valid and unrelated to political projects or the politics of scholars devising that knowledge (Said 2003, 10, 32). Furthermore, having knowledge of something establishes authority over it, aiding in domination (Said 2003, 32). This can be thought of as the abstraction of knowledge which Krishna discusses in thinking IR. For instance, in British India, Indians were seen as emotional and unable to be scientific, while accounts such as James Mill’s history of India without having been there were considered dispassionate and scientific (Krishna 2001, 416). Regarding Egypt, Lord Balfour asserted that he had knowledge of the lack of self-government in the Orient, which granted the British authority to dominate them (Said 2003, 32-33). Still, what was more than this was the assertion that in the difference between the Orient and West, because Europeans had universal knowledge, this made them know better than Orientals what was good for them (Said 2003, 34-35).
In addition to these facets of orientalism which resemble some of the features critiquing IR discussed earlier, Said (2003, 12) stressed the importance of culture and ideas as dynamic forces alongside “brute political, economic, and military rationales” of imperial domination. More explicitly than other authors, Said thus traces the pervasion of orientalist thinking through diverse modes of art, and remarkably, arrives at a similar conclusion. This is that coloniality has been premised on the establishment of difference (intellectually, culturally, politically, racially) between groups. Furthermore, this difference, alongside the power granted to some groups by their use of political power or universalist applications of culture and knowledge, has assisted in domination. Pertinently, however, Said identifies forms of maintaining this difference and domination not constrained to a discipline or academic pursuit, but which persist in diverse forms today. This offers insights into forms of persistent domination which exist in forms beyond the genealogy in thinking IR and in institutions establishing it. They also exist because of the emphasis of a fundamental difference established between people in diverse forms.
Such a viewpoint is valuable for this study as it enables a thorough analysis of Gaza’s history and the current war by drawing attention to the diverse ways in which orientalist relations are present, such as through culture. This goes beyond international legal judgements, for instance. It can assist in calling to attention more expansive accounts of how Gaza has been occupied and how relations to the environment have been shaped through its experience of war. In embracing the power of cultural dynamics, orientalism also challenges thinking IR by introducing elements often not considered in traditional IR. In these ways, as much as orientalism can serve as a critique of IR and how the environment is impacted by war, it offers insights on how rethinking could look. In this sense, in addition to the discussion of what rethinking may look like above, orientalism provides a theory for understanding how relations of power and difference are dynamically shaped. This is not just through obvious relations of imperialism and force but through dualist logics and the force of culture and depictions. For conceiving of the environment’s place, orientalism is not rooted in a solely political analysis as IR theories often are, allowing relations to the environment to be seen without politicising it in a security logic, but seeing it as an “other”. Also, in terms of this theory, it becomes possible to recognise that since the “self” and “other” are co-constitutive, so too may be the environment or planet and beings which inhabit it. Furthermore, having knowledge of this “other”, being able to control and manipulate it, and even extolling ideas of a pure environment, or proclaiming to know what is best for the environment and planet, are orientalist ways of seeing the environment. Instead, the critical viewpoint of orientalism allows this to be avoided and allows for diverse ecologies of relations to be envisioned in a way that rethinks IR and the impact of war on the environment. Before the capabilities of this as a theory focused on understanding war and the environment is discussed, the way the environment is thought is explored next.
Rethinking Environmental Security
In order to understand how the environment is thought of in security and to envision how it may be thought of alternatively, it is necessary to explore how security is seen generally. As mentioned above, wars are seen as periodic, in relation to the state, and with an increasing martial intellect to relations (Grove 2019; Simangan 2020). Security itself has traditionally been concerned with politico-military issues between states (Dyer 2001, 442). From this stems the classic security dilemma which seeks to secure territory and sovereignty by seeking more security, which inspires suspicion in others, leading to a cycle of perpetually seeking more security (Dyer 2001, 442). Even without a stance critical of statehood and the coloniality of thinking in IR, this traditional view could be challenged by recognising the transboundary nature of global environmental change (Dyer 2001, 442). Alternatively thus, security may have a referent object of humans instead of states, but this may perpetuate Anthropocentrism which is identified as at least imperfectly contributing to the climate crisis (Dyer 2001, 442). Overall, security is thus an area which is concerned with objects. From this limited view, it is problematic to privilege any form of security which perpetuates a hierarchy of concerns as this simply perpetuates the issues with thinking in IR. At a more basic level, security in IR is usually limited to territories or times (much like war) (Dyer 2001, 449). However, the environment defies this in its transboundary nature (Dyer 2001, 449). Hence, security may be entirely insufficient in accounting for the environment as important. For this reason, it is worth turning to ideas critical of IR, for they hold promise for imagining less securitised perspectives that suggest a rethinking of environmental security towards thinking simply for the environment.
As a basis, many emerging theories suggest the importance of recognising entanglements between humans, the environment, and more, while dismantling dualities separating them and embracing the fluidity of their relations (Simangan 2020, 218; Harrington 2016, 488-490). This may embrace attempts such as posthumanism which aim to erase hierarchies and grant agencies to non-humans like animals and non-living objects (Harrington 2016). As discussed earlier, however, because this is premised on decentring the human, it may be insufficient for contending with the structures of power which more concretely explain environmental degradation (Grove 2019). Still, dismantling a hierarchy of concerns, granting agency to diverse sets of actors, and ensuring that the power relations underlying environmental degradation are all appreciated, represents an integrated strategy for bringing the environment into the fold of a broader relational thinking. As a part of this, it is also essential that the environment, nature, and the planet not be seen as pure and static features which need to be preserved but which change in their relations with other beings (Harrington 2016, 487-488). The “forms of life” framework that Grove suggests as effective for this is discussed next. Then, the discussion concludes by considering how a complete framework which embraces this, rethinking IR and coloniality in temporality and positionality, and the valuable additions of orientalism, may be applied to this study.
Forms of Life
Grove, in his book entitled Savage Ecology, envisions a way of understanding the relationship between war and the environment by proposing “forms of life” as a way of witnessing complex and collective co-constitutions and interdependencies of all things. This understanding stems from Grove’s critiques of IR and assists both in a critique of destructive forms of life and the envisioning of ones which could address the crises stemming from the impact of war on the environment. Overall, he provides a multitude of insights into the issues with IR which have been explored above. More than this, however, he centrally contends that the Eurocene as a Euro-American-centric world order is one that better describes what is called the Anthropocene as the degradation of the environment. He vitally connects it as a form of life to war and violence, as a savage ecology. In addition, he sees war itself as a form of life, revealing insights into its mechanisms which traditional IR does not imagine. As such, forms of life, as he uses them, represent insightful heuristics for understanding the relations of all things, critiquing the problems of relations as they stand, and imagining alternatives (Grove 2019).
At its basis, forms of life are collective ways of being which define who or what one is in terms of complexity and interdependence with all things human and non-human, such as species, practices, histories, cosmologies, habitats, relations, and the environment. As a means of identifying being, this makes it inseparable from the way life is lived (Grove 2019, 3). This thus provides insight into understanding nature and being as a complex entanglement of all interdependent things. Grove (2019, 10) uses the term ecology to describe the inhuman relationalities across scales which may defy anthropocentric and causal logics, and offer alternative insights into forms of life. Grove (2019, 2) asserts that when forms of life are interrupted, existential threats are posed not only to practices but to being, causing genocide and extinctions.
As an indictment of IR, Grove (2019, 3, 7) asserts that geopolitics itself is a globally pervasive form of life but one that is concerned with being selective, interventionist, and violent towards other forms of life it encounters. This is in the pursuit of homogenisation, total control, and the erasure of nonconformant beings (Grove 2019, 3, 7). This form of life has used settlement, conquest, extraction, exploitation, and the valorisation of modernity to order the world (Grove 2019, 40). This selectiveness of ordering divides other forms of life into what is useful and what is inconsequential, adopting a productivist logic that determines what is maintained and what is severed (Grove 2019, 3). This severance may manifest in violent wars which interrupt the continuity and conditions of life, leading to long-term impacts on other forms of life (Grove 2019, 4). While this geopolitics may change its focus and means of operating, it nevertheless remains the dominant operating system of the planetary form of life (Grove 2019, 5). It is possible to imagine how this may entail endurance of violence after ceasefires or colonial independence as manifestations of this. He specifically terms this the Eurocene and identifies its contributions to climate change, species loss, slavery, genocide, and extractive capitalism (Grove 2019, 38). Grove (2019, 7-8) sees this form of life as successful in having its presence felt at every point on the planet. This is from satellite feeds and radioactivity to carrier emissions, the pollution of water tables, and the scars on people experiencing sexual trauma or forced removals (Grove 2019, 7-8). In doing so, it encompasses strategies such as genocide and ecocide which may operate simultaneously.
This form of life has grown to utilise the plasticity of technology to its advantage (Grove 2019, 8). This may entail the technological developments of advanced military technology to support annihilation (Grove 2019, 84). Still, while this decentres humans as the primary cause of environmental degradation (as the Anthropocene contends), a geopolitical form of life does not lose sight of what humans have done. Indeed some humans have been a part of the geopolitical form of life (Grove 2019, 10). These are those who have been the Global North beneficiaries of the Eurocene, who in animating the pursual of politics and order, have contributed directly to environmental degradation (Grove 2019, 39, 43). In fact, the Anthropocene may serve as a tool to continue the Eurocene’s shaping of the planet by underestimating the scale of the crisis, only focusing on carbon emissions, reinforcing the means by which the crisis was precipitated, and avoiding responsibility by universally attributing blame to all humans (Grove 2019, 47).
This geopolitical form of life, rather than saving the planet, pursues a savage ecology which destroys the environment as a target linked to other forms of life (Grove 2019, 4). The particular mechanism of this is the waging of warfare, which as a form of life itself, is an ongoing, commonplace, and persistent feature with various appendages constituting it (Grove 2019, 6). This view disrupts the colonial war peace binary and preoccupation with states, finding warfare as an enduring form of life. It alludes to the aforementioned instances of imperial encounters of violence which saw the environment as an assemblage of encountered forms of life to be eradicated. This exists in activities not even seen as war which slowly accrete into a perpetual being of war which has devastating consequences (Grove 2019, 77). War as a form of life is thus not a complete unitary organism in this sense, but is composed of relations of violence, machines of war, acts of war, and the recipients of violence (human, animal, and nature alike) (Grove 2017, 69-71). Other entanglements include economies, resources, technology, and science, which augment war as a form of life, and inform its impacts (Grove 2019, 82). War becomes a complex form of life of many parts and defines being in a way defying periodisation. In short, it becomes an ecology.
While this form of life may be hurtling down the path to apocalypse, Grove (2019, 9-10) suggests that a form of life view which decentres humans and views the inhuman relationalities of ecology would see that these have occurred before and have led to transformations allowing other possibilities for life. Recognising this, this viewpoint does not romanticise any static vision of human life or even nature (Grove 2019, 9). Indeed, moving beyond environmental security to ecologically understand the relations between all forms of life, within and outside the geopolitical form of life, can imagine more diverse forms of life which may not all end in a human conception of apocalypse (Grove 2019, 10-11). Moreover, despite identifying the issues of a geopolitical form of life, Grove (2019, 24) asserts that it is not a conspiracy, but indeed a form of life. The recognition of this may offer hope in imagining alternative forms of life which do not pursue control (Grove 2019, 24). Such a view should ultimately avoid anthropocentrism and use ecology to see the multispecies, relational, and cross-geographical entanglement of everything (Grove 2019, 43).
In imagining forms of life, Grove presents a way of understandings the entanglements which compose beings that can help reveal problematic elements of current forms of life. In adding nuance, this appreciates extant or possible forms of life which would seem to defy the crises of hegemonic forms of life like the geopolitical Eurocene. As a framework, this offers potential not only to critique and highlight links, but to imagine expansively.
This perspective shares specific criticisms of what is called the Eurocene – as something operating through violence to establish order, universalise experiences (such as the Anthropocene), and avoid responsibility. More than this, however, war as a form of life embraces decolonial provocations which see it as more fluid, less episodic, and concerned not only with states or humans, but a networked assemblage. Finally, imagining existence as a transcendent form of life perhaps may thus encompass other forms of life. It thus provides a way of thinking of the environment as one appendage in a broader assemblage which is impacted by the Eurocene and by war. This is defined by complex being neither defined only in relation to, or completely separate from, human beings.
Overall, Grove contends with a nuanced approach to understanding the global order’s role in shaping relations which advance war, violence, and environmental degradation. He does so by trying to grapple with the power of political structures over life and death, but unlike Foucault, locates it beyond European history and imagines appendages beyond the political realm. Understanding entanglements, rather than hierarchically understanding political power, also helps dismantle hierarchies which silence the agencies of marginalised beings like non-Western human beings and the environment, while grappling with what entails life. In granting agency to more than just humans or the living, he expansively considers life so that agency can permeate spaces in which it has been absent. In the body-politic line of thought, Grove does thus consider how what is considered living determines what is allowed to live, as well as considering the violence of making die in line with necropolitics. However, he does not restrain a relational understanding to these considerations of life and death as his savage ecology is able to encompass varying modes and structures.
This approach represents one that contends with the multifaceted relations of coloniality between beings, as constituted in the Eurocene, such as the Western “self” and all its appendages and the non-Western “other” and all its appendages. The orientalist construction of these opposed forms of life or non-life helps describe the diverse modes by which coloniality is perpetuated as well as the specific employment of a savage ecology. This is an important recognition in itself, but is worth enhancing by exploring the rethinking of two additional modes of coloniality – temporality and positionality.
Temporality and positionality
The coloniality of linear temporality has been critiqued above, highlighting the ways in which treating time as linear sets up standards of progress which assist in the marginalisation of the “other” or by distinctly segmenting the realms of the past, present, and future, such that their entanglements are severed. There are several authors who have considered how this mode of coloniality may be challenged. Hunfeld (2022, 109-110) explores how feminist theory can appreciate the constitutive importance of complex and ethical relationships between all beings in space and time. Herein, insights can be gained towards understanding how the present, past, and future, as well as the beings inhabiting them, shape each other (Hunfeld 2022, 111). Similarly, the relational care proposed by ubuntu ethics offers resources for contending with justice by prioritising care and interdependence (Hunfeld 2022, 112-113). Ubuntu is similarly explored by Maphosa and Makama (2024, 9-10) in terms of its promotion of collective co-existence which appreciates the dynamism of time. It devalorises “being” in favour of “becoming”, promoting an appreciation of the relational nature of change which has no end-point or static ideal to which to progress (Maphosa and Makama 2024, 10). These authors also explore Ka Canham’s cylindrical epiphenomenal temporality which sees time as a productive co-existence of the past, present, and future without compartmentalising them (Maphosa and Makama 2024, 9). Mackay and LaRoche (2017) discuss how pluralism which highlights multiple pasts and views can expose multilinear accounts of history offering richer insights for theory in IR. Overall, these authors suggest eschewing linearity to appreciate multilinearity and what may be cycles or webs of interactions between points and beings in time.
History understood non-linearly, as Hunfeld (2022) asserts, can assist in disrupting practices of linearity and advance justice by bringing an awareness to injustices across time which have cross-temporal relations. This marks the importance of history for decentring the privileging of the present. It may also offer methodological insights into how history should be looked at. Instead of treating history as a purely linear narrative or discriminating between what is of value and what is not, history could be explored non-linearly to bring attention to relations between people, pasts, presents, and futures. This could contend with occlusions by highlighting misrepresentations or violence. Beyond the freeing of temporal bounds, this may also assist in highlighting relations which have acted at the expense of the environment or which may benefit it. As Glamann (2001) discusses, history being discussed linearly assumes the irreversibility of time and valorises causality but cannot at once diachronically study an object through time and synchronically understand its complexity at a single point in time. This is because linearity gives no room for understanding the relations through time which shape being at a single point (Glamann 2001).
There remains a critical question of who speaks this history and discusses the aforementioned reflections of orientalised linkages of coloniality to rethink IR. Who is the subject challenging the coloniality of knowledge so that decolonial subjectivities may emerge? These are important considerations in light of the critiques to thinking IR discussed above which show that positionality of thinkers have been effaced to maintain a dualism which pretends to be universally valid and objective. In fact, this dualism only serves to structure unequal relations between the subject and its object by occluding the voice of the othered object and the violent power enforced upon it.
Interestingly, despite developing theories in line with this mode by utilising a European conception of history, authors such as Foucault recognised that speaking is linked to power and hence non-Western peoples necessarily need to represent their own experiences (Ziai 2018, 118). It is precisely this matter with which Gayatri Spivak takes issue, asserting that thinkers such as Foucault and Deleuze, recognising the power which marginalises some voices, assume that those voices can speak in a utopic way (Ziai 2018, 119). Their essentialist view espouses an abstract universality which creates a moral standard that does not accord with reality. Spivak suggests that it is an intellectual’s responsibility to speak for others in this case (Ziai 2018, 119). In a way, it is their privilege which lends them a responsibility to speak (Ziai 2018, 120). However, is it possible to manage the tension here between a subject claiming universal validity and a subject requiring another to speak for it? How can one subject speak for another without making a claim to universal validity or at least a prejudiced judgement of their inability to speak? This is especially when those speaking are speaking from their spatial and temporal position (Mignolo 2009, 163). Corbridge suggests that this may be done by balancing the responsibility to speak for others and the rejection of universalist discourses by contending with the relation of power privileging some subjects and not others (Ziai 2018, 120). This furthermore entails helping develop an understanding of the world as it is so that change may be envisioned for others without presuming that the privileged subject knows exactly what is best for the non-speaking one (Ziai 2018, 120). Rather than providing for a blueprint which asserts knowledge of exactly what is needed to uplift the marginalised, it provides a blueprint for a struggle towards this in which the agency of the marginalised is placed central (Ziai 2018, 131).
Tucker suggests that relations of reciprocity could be another way of looking at positionality. Researchers can be centred as collective contributors to forms of knowledge rather than sole origins of knowledge while disrupting the hierarchy between researchers and non-researchers by valuing contributions of each equally (Tucker 2018, 226) This may also thereby aid the disruption of hierarchies in coloniality more generally and foster a process of knowledge making which is collaborative and multi-directional instead of extractive and unidirectional (Tucker 2018, 226). Indeed, this may even help alternative methods and perspectives inform studies as different contributors bring different levels of expertise (George and Bennett 2005, 35).
Hence, studying Gaza must contend with avoiding linear conceptions of time which perpetuate a vision of progress rooted in coloniality highlighting the complex relations between various beings across different points in time. At the same time, even this, and the broader rethinking of IR to understand the impact of war on the environment cannot hold a universal validity in speaking for Gaza, for Palestinians, and for an emancipatory future. Instead, it can attempt to root itself in Palestinian voices and recognise that these voices must have agency in collectively shaping their emancipation from colonial relations. More broadly, the environment must attain subjectivity and agency in determining its emancipation from ecocidal effects which may result from war, or from the Eurocene’s colonial violence in general. This can be found in understanding that the category of humans, understood by coloniality as speaking subjects, needs to be dismantled to afford life and agency to hitherto non-speaking subjects as well (Mignolo 2009, 165).
Conclusion
Taken together, the insights explored above offer different perspectives that may create a nuanced framework for dealing with case studies and ultimately answering the question: How rethinking IR can use a relational ecology to understand the impact of war on the environment?
Rethinking IR itself suggests the importance of interrogating histories, hierarchies, and relations outside of the bounds of IR to reveal alternative accounts and understandings. Orientalism proposes similar evaluations of relations and power to seek the dynamic forces like culture which shape views of the “other”, and in seeing the environment in this way, highlights dynamics which harm the environment. Still, without seeing it as political in the IR sense, this represents an opportunity to see the environment relationally, not in terms of security, which may be inadequate. Forms of life takes this further by highlighting the patterns of savage ecology which the Eurocene practices to dominate and degrade the environment. War is also enhanced here to encompass slow and diverse appendages of violence which deny narrow state-centric foci or periodisations. Furthermore, with a vital focus on the interconnectedness of all beings, the scope of enquiry has no limit as entanglements between groups such as humans and the environment can be seen in more complexity. They can even be seen in ways which deny catastrophist discourses. This reveals new insights and methods to both problems and solutions. Altogether, this creates a framework of a relational ecology which must understand the history and entanglements of that ecology’s appendages (identities, cultures, politics, weapons, conflicts). This is while also vitally recognising the distinction between the “self” and the “other” in shaping relationships. Critically, decolonising the knowledge which is responsible for coloniality may simultaneously exercise disobedience to epistemic coloniality and de-link from coloniality (Mignolo 2009). It furthermore contends with how the knowledge producer as a subject should not perpetuate coloniality in treating a historical analysis purely linearly, or without critical cognisance of their locus of enunciation. It is critical to have a reciprocal awareness of voices from those marginalised by colonial relations. With these perspectives, IR can be rethought to more critically understand the impact of war on the environment.
In terms of the war on Gaza, this requires an appraisal of the history of Gaza to reveal the appendages featuring in its ecology and their relations to each other. Recognising this, the feature of these appendages in the current war on Gaza may then be revealed. For instance, this would consider Gaza’s relation to the international and to states, as well as to the State of Israel, its history of occupation, the persistence of violence, the experience of weapons, and the state of Gaza as an ecology of people and an environment at present. Novel methods may be used to establish this, using both qualitative methods to explore history, and quantitative methods to analyse impact. An understanding of the war on Gaza could then be gained which sees its experience of genocide and ecocide as interdependent parts of the same ecology of war. This ultimately rethinks IR by challenging its methods, definitions, and boundaries, in a way that brings a presence to the environment in a relational, not hierarchical way. This is dealt with in the next two chapters, dealing with Gaza’s experience of history first, followed by Gaza’s experience of war.
Chapter 5: Background on War on Gaza
This represents the work from my Master’s research, which can be found in full here.