Welcome
Welcome to the International School of Radical Relationism (ISRR) website! On our site, you will:
- Find out more information about who we are and what we do;
- Gain an understanding of what radical relationism is;
- Access our Zoom meeting video recordings of ongoing sessions where radical relational scholars workshop their ideas;
- Find out about upcoming Zoom meeting workshops and seminars and about how to join and
- Find a list of our current members.
What is the ISRR?
The ISRR comprises an international group of interdisciplinary scholars who are working toward the promotion of social justice and the decolonization of knowledge. The ISRR meets regularly on Zoom to workshop ideas toward the production of a statement on radical relationism, as current works on radical relationism are scattered in the literature. This statement for research, teaching and activism will take the form of an academic book, an accessible website and useful tools for social justice education and activism as a relational and collaborative effort.
What is Radical Relationism?
Radical relationism is a non-mainstream perspective on knowledge production that promotes social justice and has decolonizing potential. Radical relationism considers that human actors and their attributes constitute each other through their exchanges with each other and their environment (social/political and natural). This means human actors are clusters of relations and relationships and are always embedded in power relations with other actors, at the same time as they are embedded in and dependent on their natural environment qua embodied organisms. Because of its ontological commitment to making relations the central unit of analysis and its ethical commitment to humility in knowledge production and discovery, radical relationism is a non-anthropocentric framework that is congenial with the vast plurality of ways of knowing in the world today and can effectively embrace anti-oppression. This entails a politics or a political standing that is radical in search of social justice and in resisting the injustices and excesses of extractive capitalism and colonial oppression; but not “radicalized” in a sense that may imply extremism or hate; compassion is a major ethical axis of this approach.
The following 4-minute video is a brief invitation to find out more about this framework.
The video below presents a close to 40 minute discussion led by Christopher Powell and Mónica J Sánchez-Flores with members of the ISRR on the possibilities and potential of the radical relationism framework for knowledge sharing and production.