Is Bear Country a Country?: Imagining More‐Than‐Human Theory of International Relations

ABSTRACT A sign at a trailhead in Montana's Glacier National Park declares you are now “Entering Grizzly Country.” Thinkers of International Relations' (IR) Neo‐Realist School, notably Kenneth Waltz, have suggested that humans are the only meaningful agents in society, states are the only meaningful containers for sovereign self‐determination and relations between states at the global level are marked by violent distrust. But, what if we took that sign in Glacier Park literally? Can bears be political? Does it make sense to consider Bear Country sovereign? Is our relationship with bears inevitably marked by a mutual threat of harm? Dominant IR conversations describe a remarkably bearless world. Meanwhile, there is little engagement in Environmental Studies with IR. This paper attempts to reimagine IR theory by thinking with Bear Country and learning from Indigenous dipomatic traditions, in which there is more‐than‐human political agency beyond “Man”; animal sovereignties beyond “The State”; and the possibility of multi‐species diplomacy beyond “War.” The paper draws on an ethnographic study of the human–bear nexus in New York State's Adirondack Park and elsewhere in North American Bear Country.