ABSTRACT
The aim of this first chapter is to construct the broad theoretical architecture of the book. I will begin by arguing that the conception of politics found in dominant strains of international relations (IR) theory – and neo-realism in particular – is incapable of accounting for forms of politics enabled by the current climate of rapid, global sociocultural change. By locating ‘the political’ within the state, conventional IR theory reproduces a set of political structures unsuited to circumstances in which political identities and processes configure themselves across and between bounded forms of political community. After reviewing some of the (infra)structural transformations which have been affecting world politics in an increasingly globalised – or ‘translocal’ – era, I go on to look at the progress which critical approaches to IR theory have made towards comprehending alternative notions of the political. I then suggest that IR has much to gain from engaging with debates going on within other disciplinary projects – namely post-colonial studies, cultural studies, and, especially, anthropology. These fields, I argue, have been better placed to anticipate these transformations and have consequently been able to provide considerably more sophisticated treatments of these issues. Transnational anthropology, in particular, has begun to develop various modes for theorising post-statist forms of politics. After a critical review of some of this thinking, I go on to develop a conception of
translocality as an increasingly important form of political space. I see the translocal as an abstract category denoting sociopolitical interaction which falls between bounded communities; that is, translocality is primarily about the ways in which people flow through space rather than about how they exist in space. It is therefore a quality characterised in terms of movement. I will argue that the ‘travelling’ which takes place in translocality serves to enact forms of politics which challenge sedentary notions of community and identity.
