Journal Article

World Ordering from the Margins: An Introduction

Quack, Sigrid, Rinck, Patricia, Tripathi, Siddharth, Unrau, Christine

2024

Overview

This Special Forum is an invitation to reconsider the analytical toolbox with which world order has been analyzed in the past. In this introductory article, we propose to focus on processes of world ordering from the margins as a contribution to research on world-order conceptions beyond the Liberal International Order. We examine world-ordering practices by a variety of actors, across the Global North and the Global South, including activists, political parties and actors beyond the state, whose activities are not typically perceived as world-ordering endeavors. Shifting the analytical focus to those at the margins of the world polity offers a better understanding of the plurality and contestations of contemporary world order and helps to (un-)cover critiques and possible alternatives to existing world orders that emerge from these groups, practices and discourses. In this introduction, we propose three perspectives to study and research world ordering from the margins: positionality, methodology, and strategy. We argue that examining world order from these perspectives leads to a nuanced picture of a multitude of positions of marginality, emanating from different experiences, perceptions and discourses, all of which matter for the respective world-ordering endeavors. Retrieving such alternative perspectives is paramount in view of multiple crises that current forms of world order seem unable to address.

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Subject: Activism / Discourses / International relations / Marginality / Perceptions / Political activism / Political participation / Political parties / Research methodology / World order