Introduction to the forum on: Karin Fierke, Snapshots from Home: Mind, Action and Strategy in an Uncertain World (Bristol University Press, 2022)

Abstract

Karin Fierke situates Snapshots from Home at the intersection of two bodies of scholarship: one directed toward globalizing the study of world politics and the other drawing from quantum theory’s insights to study the social world. The first body of scholarship has a long history. That it did not make a mark on the study of world politics until the mid-2010s has to do with the narrow notion of “science” that dominated the study of world politics, also known as disciplinary International Relations (IR). By way of showing the obsolescence of the narrow notion of “science” that IR has modeled itself on, the body of efforts that draw from quantum theory’s insights has the potential to make more room for the first one. Fierke’s book, by way of exploring the parallels between quantum physics and Asian philosophies, allows us to identify this potential. The contributors to this special forum each elaborate on different aspects of this potential.