Everyday international relations: Editors’ introduction

Abstract

The connection between the everyday and the international has received growing attention in the field of international relations (IR) in recent years. To rethink the international in terms of the everyday, the mundane and the ordinary has brought attention to neglected spaces of the international and turned the everyday into a site of IR analysis. As many of the contributors to this special issue of Cooperation and Conflict note, the everyday has until now not been satisfactorily theorised in relation to IR. It seems clear, however, that to pay attention to the everyday is an attempt to decentralise notions of the international. By drawing on critical approaches to IR, the articles in this special issue unpack the notion of everyday IR and thus provide new and broadened understandings of what IR denote, and how we can make sense of the everyday as a generative site for these relations. (Less)