9 - Conclusion

Summary

This chapter draws conclusions based on the impacts of exclusionary and hierarchical practices, the relative value of ‘top-down’ reform and ‘bottom-up’ activism, and the place of global learning in a gradualist approach to progressive change. Beyond that, the chapter considers how an approach inspired by American Pragmatism informs Global International Relations, which seeks to construct a discipline that is more inclusive of non-Western perspectives. The chapter draws parallels between the book’s reading of classical Pragmatism and non-Western ‘cosmologies’ like Confucianism. This has been introduced to contemporary Western IR mainly through the works of Yaqing Qin. The chapter does, however, build on other works identifying resonances across Deweyan Pragmatism and Confucian philosophy. The chapter argues that if the Pragmatist turn in Western IR continues, then it can be more easily harmonized with non-Western approaches. This at least signposts a path ‘towards’ Global IR, even if it does not fix the path’s end point. Indeed, the chapter argues that we should follow such signs because they do not fix the destination. Those points are for practitioners and global publics to construct and reconstruct as they work collectively to mitigate lived problems through communities of practice that are inclusive, reflexive, creative and deliberative.