Approaching regional conflicts through the prism of ontology in statu nascendi
Channel: In Statu Nascendi
Date: 12/09/2023

Ontologies surround us, a quick and useful example of which is how the Internet has been shaped and categorized, heavily relying on the collection of algorithms and alphanumerical addresses of the domain that underpins and interlinks the way in which the information is stored, interlined, indexed, and accessed in the public domain. Under normal circumstances, more comprehensive searches would offer us a chance to gather more pluralistic data about concepts, ideas, and processes in a more transparent and comprehensive manner. As a metaphor, most IR theorists work these days by switching off all but one or two regional servers before performing an Internet search, so we would not be able to call the results of such browsing scientific. They just provide us with partial data from the public domain, yet many IR theorists have no issue with following the currents of just one or two schools of thought.

This study suggests a new way of approaching contemporary conflict by embracing much stronger ontological roots in our literature on the subject that might reinvigorate the pursuit of the truth about international relations to make it easier for IR scholarship to reach traditionally uncharted and neglected territories of science. Specifically, it puts forward the ontology in statu nascendi to deal with a modern conflict of global or regional importance in a more approachable manner, for this new compartmentalization and a supplement to the existent IR theory was explicitly designed to embrace a more systematic, interdisciplinary, and contemplative mode of IR-related deliberations that hopes to convey the central meaning of the given research area by breaching the division between the main conceptual, methodological, and analytical differences between what appears to be a collection of rival approaches, theories, and traditions that should be better integrated within IR theory. It essentially postulates building empirical bridges of mutual understanding instead of walls of division to approach our research area more constructively.

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PIOTR PIETRZAK, Ph.D. is a geostrategist, influenced by geoeconomy, pragmatic IR theorist, political thinker and an ontologist by training who asks uncomfortable questions for a living. His primary interests lie in conflict management, conflict resolution, just war theory, humanitarian matters, and post-conflict reconciliation. He coined the term ontology in statu nascendi to approach both the great debates within the IR theory in a more coordinated way and makes it easier to approach the events in the Middle East in a more holistic manner and through the prism of various other developments in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Africa, and Eurasia in general.