Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The intention of the book is neither to treat nor perceive the Anglophone and Sinophone as closed systems that are impermeable and separate from one another, but as interrelated and constantly intermingling. The book recalls the relationality – and, in particular, the social practices, reciprocal figurations, and personal interconnections – which have been excluded from the standard narrative. It reviews two of the most prominent conversations on relationality in International relations (IR) – those in its Anglophone and Sinophone variants. The book outlines how both the relational turn and IR theory would look if these were to be imagined with the help of the concept and practices of guanxi. It therefore evokes the registers of worlding mutuality by elaborating the ways in which guanxi can help transcend the Eurocentric instrumentalism of disciplinary inquiry.