Ordering vis-à-vis Worlding: Towards Non-anthropocentric World(s) Ordering > Journal

We humans are living in a world of mutually reinforcing great disruptions. Climate change, global pandemics, digital revolutions unleashed by AI, weaponized popularism, unprecedented crisis of democracy, the ascendance of autocracy, and the return of the spectre of a nuclear war all combined have created a perfect storm that subverts the familiar ontological world that a majority of IR scholars and political scientists conventionally reflect upon and theorize about. This article assesses critically how these great disruptions of the existing world order inspire and facilitate a new type of worlding, which sees the world that we humans live in as singular plural. It starts with critiques of current ordering narratives in IR scholarship, which remain largely state-centric, or at best anthropocentric. It argues for a critical move away from our fixation on ordering the state-centric and anthropocentric world. It espouses a new approach to worlding that sees humanity as living in and experiencing a complex of multiple worlds, which we humans share, co-constitute, and co-create as well as destroy, together with other non-human and more-than-human life forms, species, and intelligences. Looking through the lens of climate change and the rapid advancement of AI as two great disruptors, it contends for a new conception of non-anthropocentric world(s) ordering and examines tentatively the classical dilemma in our pursuit of order and justice in a singular plural world where humans are unconditionally decentred.

Ordering

Worlding

Towards non-anthropocentric world(s) ordering