This article addresses recent work on empire and colonisation which calls for a reappraisal of how agency and resistance manifests among groups responding to structural marginalisation. We argue that approaching these questions from within the colonial order reveals important idiosyncrasies regarding how groups understood resistance, agency, and popular organising as possible responses that emerged from within imperial landscapes. Using the example of race as a central regulatory category and practice of colonial power, we analyse two cases which we suggest benefit from an account of agency and resistance within colonial order: the Black Loyalists in English America and the Indigenous royalists of New Granada, two groups which pursued emancipation by choosing to remain under colonial rule. The resulting analysis produces a more dynamic account of resistance and emancipation which responds to the far-reaching influence of colonial order for resistance movements at local, national, and international levels. This account contributes to recent debates which call for theoretical analysis of “middle actors” and popular thinking as it relates to international politics, postcolonial movements, and studies of empire.

Affective ties encompass a broad family of emotional phenomena, including love, affection, attachment, and devotion. Affective ties may appear deeply personal, and they most certainly are. But they are also important resources for the exercise of political power in international politics – not only as vulnerabilities that can be exploited for coercion but also, and more significantly, as means to mobilise action and sacrifice. Viewed from the vantage point of political agents, affective ties are thus power resources whose distribution in the international system shapes their strategies and choices. Viewed from the perspective of the system, the international realm is not only characterised by struggles over material capabilities or ideas but also competition over affective ties. Correspondingly, nationalism is not simply an identity. It is a collection of techniques and practices for generating and capturing affective ties that has emerged as a highly effective contender in this contest, with crucial implications for how the international system is organised. That being said, other forms of eliciting affective ties also persist.

Speaking after the addition of The Forth Bridge on UNESCO’s World Heritage List (WHL), a Scottish minister described it as an ‘honour that shows this is a great industrial treasure not just to the city, to Scotland or the United Kingdom, but the entire world.’ A few years later, the delegation of Indonesia took the floor after the inscription of Ombilin Coal mines. Dubbed Indonesia’s first industrial world heritage site, the mines had been owned by the Dutch East Indies government. Thus, the delegation had to describe the industrial heritage as a colonial imposition before noting that the area became ‘modern and integrated.’ If both Scotland and Indonesia received international recognition as modern, industrial subjects, they got there differently. In apprehending that difference, this article extends social-structural theories of international recognition. Approaching these structures as providing uneven recognition possibilities, I develop three modes of recognition pursuits that mediate the challenges of such uneven terrain. I probe the traction of these modes by analyzing speeches state delegations deliver after placing their sites on the WHL. This framework and analysis extend our understanding of international recognition pursuits by pointing to the hold of symbolic structures, and their transformation under creative state engagements.

A prominent theory of political obligation argues that, to avoid the dangers of statelessness (basic needs deprivation, rights violations, and political disenfranchisement) people should establish, maintain, and obey states. This theory underwrites a statist ideal that presents states as the primary guarantors of justice and democracy. I challenge this statist ideal, arguing that statist institutions are ill-equipped to provide full justice, especially for stateless people. I argue that statelessness is a product of the state system’s structure and that eliminating the dangers of statelessness therefore requires challenging the core organising principles of the state system. I conclude that stateless people have broad prima facie moral permissions to resist the state system’s constitutive norms, practices, and institutions; that others may have obligations to support their efforts; and that addressing the dangers of statelessness requires resisting rather than obeying statist institutions. I also offer a corrective to the literature on refugees’ political obligations, illuminating how even obedience to a relatively just state or camp authority can uphold a state system that is unjust overall. I examine these issues in conversation with empirical scholarship on stateless people’s activism, like Hong Kong’s ‘Refugee Occupy’ movement.

In this rejoinder, we engage with the recent International Theory symposium on Global IR, situating it within the broader literature and outlining intellectual pathways for advancing Global IR’s agenda. We explore how the main critiques identified by the symposium – namely, essentialism, geo-epistemologies, disciplinary reformism, and ahistoricism – have been and can be further addressed through recent developments in Global IR. This rejoinder is not an attempt to prioritise one version of Global IR over another; rather, it emphasises that Global IR comes in multiple versions, and these versions should continue to be a collective work in progress. Our engagement with the evolving debates in Global IR seeks to fulfil the promise of a more global and diverse discipline.

This reply responds to criticism of our original symposium, ‘Global IR and the Essentialism Trap.’ We respond to four particular charges and end with a call for Global IR to move beyond its current emphasis on creating a more diverse, equal, and inclusive discipline to identifying specific research programs that demonstrate the necessity of moving beyond the West. We nominate global order and disorder.