Diversity and Empathy

Abstract

Advancing global international relations (IR) reminds me of Dr. Doolittle’s two-headed pushmi-pullyu. Observing good table manners, the pushmi-pullyu typically uses one head for talking, and the other for eating. The global and the international are similarly poised at different and complementary ends of an analytical spectrum that encases different world views. On the one hand, there is the modern vision of a global world transforming, for better and for worse, the traditional divisions between nation-states. It highlights new connections between global and local and the growing importance of nonstate actors. On the other hand, there is the traditional vision of an international world in which cross-border exchanges of goods, services, money, peoples, and information increases the dynamic density of the international system, without challenging the position of nation-states as the most important actors in world politics. Like Dr. Doolittle’s pushmi-pullyu, global IR will do most and will do best if, tugging in different directions, it continues to stands still, attentive to both the transformative and traditional elements of world politics. The reason is simple. Scholars and teachers will need all the tools that global and international studies can offer to navigate a …