Beyond Eurocentrism and Anarchy
Chapters (6)
The nature, purpose, and scientific ambition of IR come into focus whenever there appears a treatise that aspires to recast the terms of disciplinary debates. The publication of Alexander Wendt’s Social Theory of International Relations triggered these effects.1 While acknowledging the strengths of Wendt’s arguments, I do not wish to engage them here. I am impressed that critics brought into focus several important points about the author’s desire for a uniform meta-theoretical understanding of international relations;2 his insistence on the necessity of a common methodological commitment to empiricism and positivist metaphysics;3 and his undeclared teleology or drive to develop a social science centered principally on the state system.4
In 1995, the American Public Broadcasting System (PBS) produced a month-long televison series commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II. The PBS series was one of many events that sought to recapture the high moments of the “great war.” According to PBS, these were inter alia the collapse of France; German invasion of Belgium; the march of Werhmacht toward the Low Countries; the Russian Front; the Stalin-CHitler Pact; the blitzkrieg or bombing of London; the Normandy landing; the Pacific Front; the fall of Germany; the liberation of death camp survivors; the division of Europe; and above all the selfless entry of the United States into war to defend democracy. Except for sequences on the loyalty of colonial troops to the Allied cause, the series characteristically omitted the role played by colonial populations. Africa was shown merely a theater for motorized battles opposing the ultimate victors to their Nazi and Fascist antagonists. Where it was mentioned, African participation was attributed to loyalty to the métropoles and/or compliance with metropolitan fiats. By a feat of visual effects, therefore, the series reduced the entire war to its American and European dimensions. Variations on this perspective are also commonsense in Europe. Related narratives pay little attention to the multiplicity of political symbols, motivations, ideas, and beliefs that drew other regions into that war.
Since the end the cold war, there has emerged a disquieting phenomenon today among some Western powers of instrumentally refurbishing the Western self-image. The reasons are many, but a few countries have invested time and resources in this effort in order to reclaim moral authority, lost during decolonization, and to project their power as legitimate guardians of international morality. The construction of this self-image depends upon purposefully embellished traditions and false representations of the concerned states’ intentions and actions throughout the modern era. France, for instance, boasts “honorable traditions” of humanism and democratic rule of law that afford liberty, equality, fraternity for all as well as solidarity and protection to the persecuted regardless of their origins.1 The European Union and the United States frequently make similar representations of themselves as the incipient model of civilization and the principal producer and guarantor of the public good.
Francis Fukuyama best captured the mood following the disintegration of the Soviet Union when he forecast the coming realization of Hegel’s dream of the end of history: the final victory of liberalism and the impending advent of a global liberal order.1 This mood was one of optimism2 that the new moment would “ensure in one go political forms of justice and economic forms of production of wealth, as well as setting up interests and optimizing gains for all.”3 It was also believed that liberal democracies would “deliver” peace and good governance everywhere, including where they had not taken roots. This basic idea was given a boost by President George H. W. Bush who, upon waging a war to reverse the 1990 Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, proclaimed the advent of a new world order based on multi-lateral and peaceful resolutions of international conflicts; prohibition of territorial occupations; preventive interventions in destabilizing nationalist disputes. Caught up in the exuberance, Michael W. Doyle envisaged the emerging union of the great classical doctrines of democracy and liberal forms as legitimating devices of both internal and foreign policies.4 The democratic peace theory was intended to not only supplant realist commonsense about the nature and telos of international relations, it was to dispense with the tenets of state Marxism and so-called third world structuralism—embodied inter alia by the theories of neocolonialism, dependency, and imperialism.
Rumor has it that Henry Morton Stanley perplexed over a quandary facing colonialists: “we cannot justify our presence among “natives” if we do not educate them; but I suspect that we are not prepared for what they will say about us when and if we do teach them to write.”1 Stanley correctly predicted that “natives” would have different understandings of the colonial act and that what appeared to the colonizers as virtues and necessities may well appear to the former as weaknesses and acts of barbarism. Stanley’s ruminations also show that the colonial act was accompanied by anxieties over the eventual prise de parole by natives, that is their self-conscious expressions of thought on colonialism. The core of these anxieties has been whether postcolonial discourses can be aligned on the rationalizations of the colonial act by its agents.
The key determinants of the legitimacy and credibility of the process of discovery and knowledge have undermined the universalist ambition of IR. These are Eurocentrism and statecentrism. Eurocentrism has generated archives, lines of inquiry, and modes of signification that posit Europe as morally coherent and ontologically superior and therefore the source and inspiration of international morality and norms. For its part, statecentrism takes the modern state to be necessarily and empirically the primary agent of international order and morality and thus conflates its absence with lawlessness or anarchy. Related assumptions are inadequate at best. Indeed, rather than provide inspiration to other international systems, modern “Europe” instituted practices and norms that undermined the autonomy and viability of other regional systems and their units as condition of its own ascent to hegemony. Nor did the Westphalian system of sovereignty chart the course for other regional orders that sought to attain emancipation and justice through equality and autonomy.
... Building on this discussion, I suggest that the example of Blyden shows us that it is possible to produce knowledge on Africa which counters the colonial library even while such knowledge will not fully escape the constraints of that library. Building on this idea, I engage with Gaurav Desai (2001), Philip Zachernuk (2000) and Siba Grovogui's (2006) discussions of the intellectual contributions of various colonial-era African thinkers to complicate how we think about the colonial library. Their writing shows us the complex, but productive position in which African intellectuals (both during the colonial era and today) are in. ...
... This discussion helps show why the intransigence of the colonial library need not lead us down a defeatist dead-end. This discussion will then be followed by a discussion of arguments made by Desai (2001), Zachernuk (2000), Grovogui (2006) and Diagne (2020), which show us that our choice is not between either 'escaping' the colonial library or perpetuating coloniality. Rather, I will argue that it is possible to move within the constraints of the colonial library while working to erode it. ...
... Rather, the production of knowledge about Africa includes many strands which are tangled together in complex ways. Grovogui's (2006) exploration of the ideas of Félix Eboué, Gabriel d'Arboussier and Daniel Ouezzin Coulibaly is another useful illustration of the way in which African thinkers both participated in and subverted colonial discourses. Grovogui shows that these three African thinkers, who were all important political figures during the 1940s, participated in and influenced political discourse and action at a time of war and general upheaval. ...
Debates on the politics of knowledge production on Africa are not new but are being revitalised by recent decolonial scholarship and student activism. This paper sets out to revisit earlier discussions on this topic to see what can be learnt from them. In particular, I use VY Mudimbe’s discussion of the colonial library to contribute to contemporary debates about how best we can decolonise knowledge production about Africa. The chapter begins with an overview of the concept of the colonial library. I then turn to Mudimbe’s discussion of the legacy of Edward Blyden to argue that it is possible to produce knowledge on Africa which counters the colonial library even while such knowledge may not fully escape the constraints of that library. Building on this idea, I engage with Gaurav Desai, Philip Zachernuk and Siba Grovogui’s discussions of the intellectual contributions of various colonial-era African thinkers to complicate how we think about the colonial library. Their writing shows us the complex, but productive position from which African intellectuals must necessarily work. It does not make sense, I will argue, to think that those trying to resist the colonial library can and should reject ‘Western’ knowledge and embrace some kind of purely African alternative. Rather, we should recognise and work with the ambiguous and difficult position that the colonial library creates for knowledge production on Africa. To illustrate the approach I seek to defend, the final section of the paper discusses recent writing by Souleymane Bachir Diagne, showing how he manages to both recognise and push beyond the constraints of the colonial library in creative and productive ways. Overall, the main goal of this chapter is to highlight the thinking of some important and thoughtful scholars (and particularly that of Mudimbe) whose insights are of value to current debates on decolonising knowledge production.
... A second way of challenging the eurocentric notion of sovereignty is to argue that if we only bothered to look outside Europe, we might find that actors in the international system have developed their own conceptions of sovereignty, even before the western model of sovereignty was institutionalised in Westphalia. Thus, for example, Ayse Zarakol maintains that between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Mongol empire, as well as subsequent empires and polities influenced by it, have operated with what she calls the "Chinggisid sovereignty model" [9]. 4 A third way of challenging eurocentrism, often associated with post-western scholarship, 5 is to argue that ideas about sovereignty did not appear out of thin air in Europe but instead coalesced through connections between various parts of the globe [10]. In sum, Global IR scholarship points out the importance of paying attention to the agency of nonwestern actors, bringing world histories to bear on international relations theory, and foregrounding interconnections between the various entities that constitute the world (more on this in the next section). ...
... To address this failure, Khong introduces the idea of the tributary system, with the US "as the hub or epicentre of a tributary system analogous to that of China's during the Ming and Qing dynasties." 10 The tributary system takes hierarchy as its point of departure, but emphasises two insights not found in existing accounts about the role of the US in world politics: the US' desires to be recognised by its tributaries as the number one power and for the tributaries to adopt US-style liberal democratic norms and institutions. With both tributes in hand, US policy makers are satisfied; their country and the world are safe, at least from their point of view. ...
This chapter examines the emerging scholarship on Global International Relations (Global IR), placing it in a broader disciplinary context. I review Global IR’s key claim (Mainstream International Relations Theory is inadequate), introduce its main tenets, benefits, and criticisms levelled at it, discuss one study of Global IR, and evaluate the extent to which it challenges mainstream IR theory. Having shown the contribution Global IR can make to our discipline, I point out five risks in doing Global IR and offer two ways to mitigate the substantial risk of essentialism. The conclusion makes the case for Global IR to promote greater epistemological innovation.
... The temporal turn has made important contributions to the discussions of time and temporality in the field that the debates on the international and the global could further draw upon to address the contradictions underlined in this article. For works that have problematised time and temporality in the field within the temporal turn see; Hom (2018) These three interrelated dynamics continue to be present in our discussions of the field through the identification of issues such as ahistoricism, methodological nationalism and Eurocentrism (Hobson and Lawson 2008;De Carvalho, Leira, and Hobson 2011;Bigo and Walker 2007;Bilgin 2016;Grovogui 2006;Hobson 2012). There are two main contradictions; the internal and the external and it is the external one that the discussion in this contribution will focus upon. ...
... The external contradiction is what Walker (2006) refers to as the 'double outside' of the international. This has been problematised primarily through the works that focus on the Western centrism or Eurocentrism of the field (Çapan 2016;Grovogui 2006;Hobson 2012;Bilgin 2016). For example, in the discussions about the 'expansion of the international system,' the arguments rest on the assumption of 'others' joining the international system (Dunne 1995;Keene 2002;Buzan 2004). ...
The ‘international’, the ‘global’, the ‘world’ have become different ways of characterising what it is IR as a field studies. The semantic change signals two dynamics. Firstly, the assumption being that the international has to be replaced or ‘superseded’ with another concept since either the ‘international’ never did or at present does not reflect the ‘reality’ of what exists out there, which presupposes an exact relationship between the signifier and the signified. The second point following from that is the prescription of a development into the ‘change’ in the words whereby a ‘better’ descriptor has to be assigned that is presented as being not only larger in scale but also more progressive. The article argues that the anxieties with respect to the object of study of the field of IR stem from contradictions inherent in the concept of the international, which are not specific to it but are rooted in the way disciplinary knowledge was established and as such cannot be addressed solely through a replacement/superseding. The first section of the article will discuss how disciplinary knowledge was constructed and organised through Wallerstein’s concept of TimeSpace which explains the formation of disciplinary knowledge along three axes: past/present, West/non-West and autonomous domains. The second section will discuss how the three axes of past/present, West/non-West and autonomous domains worked in creating the contradictions of the international. The third section then focuses specifically on what it means to bring in the ‘global’ to overcome contradictions of the international and how the global continues to reproduce the contradictions of the international.
... For instance, the idea of development as a national phenomenon makes little sense, since both processes of development and underdevelopment were conditioned by their integration into global/international networks of capitalist expansion during colonialism (Inayatullah and Blaney 2018: 126; see also Amin 1976). In that sense, postcolonial scholars in IR have produced analyses that have moved both beyond and below the nation-state and thus illustrated that international relations cannot be reduced to state to state interactions (see Grovogui 2006, Rao 2010, Sajed 2013. Given the enormous violence needed to initiate and sustain a colonial world system for over five centuries, the value of postcolonial critique lies in its understanding of the international system not as one of equal adversaries (namely nation-states) competing for survival and security in an anarchical system, but rather as one of profound inequality and violence (Biswas 2014, Persaud 2018, Persaud and Kumarakulasingam 2019. ...
... It also highlights the absence of the latter's voices and knowledges from any meaningful engagements with international relations. Siba Grovogui's (2006) work, for instance, excavates a different kind of narrative of post-WWII international relations and international institutions, from the perspective of Africa and Africans. Grovogui examines the theoretical and political activities of several noted PanAfricanists around the French proposal, in 1944, for the creation of a French Union between France and its African colonies. ...
Can we understand International Relations without colonialism and race? This chapter argues that we cannot examine the domain of the ‘international’ without a meaningful engagement with the crucial role that colonialism and processes of racialization and capitalist expansion have played in the very constitution of our current international system. Postcolonial theory grapples with the history and legacies of colonialism, and of race and racial hierarchies, and examines the ways in which they have shaped global politics and contemporary racial hierarchies. IR theory has failed to analyze these power structures and dynamics, and postcolonial theories have aimed to ignite debate and reflection in the discipline about its own foundations, and about its contemporary colonial and racist dynamics.
The first section of this chapter outlines the history of postcolonialism as a theoretical perspective by discussing both a few major historical landmarks associated with the rise of postcolonial thought (e.g. Bandung Conference; Non-Aligned Movement; Suez Crisis; Tricontinental Conference), and a number of prominent theoretical contributions by intellectuals who are now seen as “foundational” of postcolonial theory (e.g. Aimée Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Edward Said). The second section then examines postcolonialism’s entry into International Relations by focusing on a number of key concepts which are central to postcolonial interventions in IR: colonialism, race, and epistemic justice. The last section engages the interactions and debates between postcolonial perspectives in IR and other critical approaches in IR (e.g. poststructuralism, Marxism and feminism). The concluding section highlights the continued relevance of postcolonial perspectives in a global world.
... These and other key thinkers and texts have shaped postcolonial IR theory. Today, contributions to this body of thought continue to provide important new readings of colonial history (Getachew 2019), to draw attention to the persistence of colonial forms of power and racism in world politics (and in IR), and to challenge the Eurocentrism of IR and its insistence on the universal utility of Western Enlightenment thinking (Grovogui 2006). They are critical IR theories in that they draw attention to obstinate relations of structural inequality, with a focus on the inequalities created and maintained by colonialism and racism; in that they demand justice, in the form of recognition, repair, and redress; and in that they are actively engaged in a struggle to decolonize both world politics and the discipline of IR. ...
With the rapid rise of China and the relative decline of the United States, the topic of power transition conflicts is back in popular and scholarly attention. The discipline of International Relations offers much on why violent power transition conflicts occur, yet very few substantive treatments exist on why and how peaceful changes happen in world politics. This Handbook is the first comprehensive treatment of the subject of peaceful change in International Relations. It contains some 41 chapters, all written by scholars from different theoretical and conceptual backgrounds examining the multi-faceted dimensions of this subject. In the first part, key conceptual and definitional clarifications are offered and in the second part, papers address the historical origins of peaceful change as an International Relations subject matter during the Inter-War, Cold War, and Post-Cold War eras. In the third part, each of the IR theoretical traditions and paradigms in particular Realism, liberalism, constructivism and critical perspectives and their distinct views on peaceful change are analyzed. In the fourth part papers tackle the key material, ideational and social sources of change. In the fifth part, the papers explore selected great and middle powers and their foreign policy contributions to peaceful change, realizing that many of these states have violent past or tend not to pursue peaceful policies consistently. In part six, the contributors evaluate the peaceful change that occurred in the world’s key regions. In the final part, the editors address prospective research agenda and trajectories on this important subject matter.
... However, such contestation is not new. As Desai (2001), Grovogui (2006) and Zachernuk (2000) demonstrate, African intellectuals were already engaging with and challenging colonial discourses during the colonial era. Contestation around knowledge production continued and intensified after the formal end of colonialism. ...
African Studies as a scholarly discipline has colonial origins. The traces of these origins remain evident in contemporary scholarship on Africa. As someone who teaches African Studies at a South African university, I have been working with my students to think about how to write and teach about Africa in a way that acknowledges and challenges these colonial origins. This paper reflects on these efforts, using V.Y. Mudimbe’s notion of the colonial library to discuss students’ responses to critiques of the coloniality of African Studies. The term “colonial library” refers both to the texts on Africa produced within a colonial framework and to the broader system of knowledge and meaning created by these texts. Some of my students believe that we need to decolonize African Studies by producing knowledge that is uncontaminated by the colonial library. Others are pessimistic about the possibility of escaping contamination by the colonial library, leading them to despair of the possibility of decolonizing African Studies. Drawing on Mudimbe, I discuss both these positions arguing that recognition of the tenacity of the colonial library need not lead us to resign ourselves to a perpetual state of intellectual colonization. While we cannot purify ourselves of all colonial contamination, it is possible to act under constraints. Through the subversive appropriation of elements of the colonial library and through learning to live creatively with the colonial library, we might destabilize and reconfigure existing forms of knowledge production about Africa despite our inability to fully step outside of them. After defending this approach to the colonial library, I discuss how we can encourage such an approach in the university classroom.
... In line with Mignolo's notion of "geopolitics of knowledge" (2002), scholars such as Grovogui (2006) or Sajed (Hobson and Sajed 2017) present alternative definitions of the Global South, thereby encompassing marginalised communities (of people of colour, women, and migrants) in Western societies. Applying that intersectionality perspective to the analysis would mean to include the representation of predominantly marginalised institutions in the discipline (e.g. ...
The article contributes to the postcolonial and decolonial debate on epistemic inequality in International Relations (IR) research by analysing the global representation of universities at the Annual Convention of the International Studies Association in Toronto in 2019. The results are fourfold. First, the overwhelmingly represented Western countries are mostly located at universities in North America and Europe. Second, universities located in Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) are largely underrepresented compared to their population size and number of universities. Third, even in so-called Global South panels, the representation of scholars from the Global North is much higher than that of academics from the Global South. Fourth, the representation gap also holds true when analysing researcher mobility and individual publication records. The implications of the case study results shed light on the difficulties of analysing epistemic violence without contributing oneself to the prevalent asymmetries.
... According to these critiques, Linklater's narrative suffers from a difficulty in dealing with 'unconventional' or 'non-traditional' forms of scholarship derived from non-Western modes of inquiry. This point was briefly mentioned by Grovogui (2006) in the past, but it is worth exploring it further and turning it more clearly to Linklater's recent writings on harm conventions. The misrepresentation of 'outsiders' in the construction of dominant harm conventions is largely attributed to power asymmetries that have historically limited their voices in such processes. ...
Inspired by the Critical Social Theory put forth by the Frankfurt School, Andrew Linklater has dedicated part of his career to elaborating a critical and emancipatory research agenda for International Relations. However, his recent research on the restriction of violence in international society, mostly influenced by the English School and by Eliasian Sociology, has pushed Linklater away from an explicit engagement with critical epistemologies and theoretical approaches. Although there is a possibility for close dialogue between these theoretical strands, we claim that Linklater did not articulate these approaches as much as he could have done. Therefore, we make an assessment of his work to discuss some of its epistemological and theoretical inconsistencies. Based on this, we provide a way to bridge Linklater’s initial critical agenda with his most recent analyses on processes of violence restriction and regulation of global harm in the international realm. We argue that by focusing on multiple global processes that contributed to the restriction of violence, Linklater failed to consider the particularities, pitfalls and side-effects of allegedly beneficial processes of violence restriction and, as a result, his work lost critical potential. Accordingly, this article demonstrates how Linklater would benefit from going back to his initial critical agenda to address the limitations of his scholarship on global harm.
... The West as a construction is better understood by further reiterating the "difference" or the oppositional qualities with the non-West. The binaries are not only relational for example, but the self is also superior in relation to the other which is inferior, or the civilized West in relation to the uncivilized non-West (for works that challenge the binary constructs see Barkawi, 2017;Bilgin 2016aBilgin , 2016bÇapan, 2017;Go & Lawson, 2017, Grovogui, 2006. The binaries feed on each other to further reify the differences and perpetuate the hierarchies. ...
Recent voices have challenged the Eurocentric gaze in IR . Western hegemony over the discipline has been accounted due to structural, disciplinary, language, institutional reasons, and the monopoly over knowledge production by the West. The big bangs of IR, 1919 and 1648, have played a role in the construction of a Eurocentric IR discipline which is still presumed to be a ‘White man's burden' which needs to theorize the non-West. Conversations within the IR academe to recalibrate IR are incestuous, and the ‘dialogue' is going on within the ‘conclaves' of the various national schools, rather than across the various ‘silos' within the IR community. A more appropriate ‘lens’ to make the study of IR ' Global' would be to adopt an eclectic model and to strengthen perspectives like postcolonialism, Contrapuntal reading, and Marxist perspectives to bridge the gap between the core and the periphery and reign in the silenced narratives.
... More recently, reflexivism in IR has translated into the multiplication of calls to "decolonize IR" by highlighting issues and factors that had previously been sidelined, but were central to how world politics manifest in the "non-Western" world, in addition to being pervasive in (and reproduced by) the West, such as colonialism, race and racism, imperialism, and dispossession (Mudimbe 1994;Tickner 2003;Grovogui 2006;Gruffyd-Jones 2006). This focus on decolonization also has important implications for our inquiry into Canadian IR, as an instance of reflexivism. ...
Observers of the evolution of international relations (IR) theory often point to an American hegemony in the discipline on a global level. However, more recent analyses show that there has been a systematic and increasing Canadianization of IR scholarship in Canada since the 1990s, facilitated by government policies that fostered the hiring of domestic candidates and the creation of Canadian foreign policy research centers. This process has by no means been a cohesive one, yet it reflects a tendency in Canadian IR to make room for a pluralism in ontological as well as epistemological and methodological terms. This opening up of space for diversity is an important yet underappreciated characteristic of Canadian IR's contribution to the discipline, which has not been seriously examined beyond the study of Canadian foreign policy. This article assesses the impact of Canadian IR scholarship on the development of a “Global IR” through an examination of its contributions to Asia-Pacific and African IR. We argue that despite its heterogeneity, Canadian IR scholarship in both areas is characterized by a common set of elements that, taken together, reflect a distinctly Canadian way of studying and practicing IR in relation to the Global South: pluralism and reflexivism.
... As such, modernity/coloniality expresses a duality, and you cannot consider modernity without considering the flip side of coloniality, as they are intertwined. These entanglements and complex connections (Grovogui 2006;Barkawi 2017) make IR more reflexive about using existing binary categories to understand the forces that shape IR, including processes of epistemological privileging and hierarchical power structures. ...
The article argues that academics navigate and occupy various localities, spaces, and identities, which allows them to be self-reflexive in understanding the inherent challenges in diversifying the discipline. Using personal narratives as a methodological and theoretical tool, this article situates plural experiences and contexts of a woman of color, working in precarity in academia. The intersection of multiple identities reveals various sites of privilege and oppression, and inclusion and exclusion. Unsettling and dismantling binaries and identities reveal complex entanglements and connections that provide more nuanced understandings of IR. This article further discusses ways the discipline of IR has excluded diverse theoretical and empirical knowledges and regions, including critical approaches and the Global South. This disciplinary exclusion and erasure is reproduced in everyday academic practice and can serve as an entry point to understand why diverse communities are underrepresented in IR. Further, academia is not immune from the functions of power and social and economic hierarchies in society, and those hierarchies are manifested in various forms of asymmetry observable in academia, especially toward diverse communities and academics working in precarity.
What do different ways of seeing the world mean for actors engaged in peacemaking? Through the case of Cameroon, I illustrate the critical yet often-overlooked role of one’s conceptions of self in the world – how actors see the world and their positions within it – in shaping peace processes. Considering the growing debate over the conceptualisation of the world order as anarchic or hierarchical and foregrounding Cameroonian articulations, I examine how notions of hierarchy and hypocrisy are constitutive of the conflict actors’ perceptions of the world and condition their engagements in foreign-led mediation concerning the Anglophone Crisis. Drawing on over 60 interviews, including those with Cameroonian ruling party members, opposition politicians, and individuals leading the armed separatist movement, I explain how considerations of self-image and status are powerful drivers of behaviours and not aspects that can be dismissed as ‘irrational’ or ‘overly sensitive’; rather, various Cameroonian actors deploy themes of hierarchy and hypocrisy in highly rational and intentional ways to further their aspirations. Inspired by Historical International Relations and reverse ethnography, the article challenges the presentist bias in much of today’s analysis of global politics and offers a historically conscious explanation of conflict parties’ behaviour in mediation.
Peace mediation has not only become a guiding paradigm for global governance, but also part of the toolkit of international peace diplomacy. Mediation promises to transform conflicts, promote peace and security, and prevent crises. Numerous international and (sub-)regional governance actors therefore compete for influence in a growing mediation market. Internationalised mediation approaches and practices are deeply rooted in Anglo-Eurocentric politico-philosophical thoughts and ‘liberal’ mediation theory. Peace mediation theory and discourse are remarkably silent on the question of entrenched knowledge hierarchies and their (re)production - a gap that becomes also visible in peace mediation in African contexts. This article critically reflects on the African Union’s peace mediation approaches against a backdrop of path dependencies of Eurocentric perceptions and internationally transferred standardised instruments. It problematises standardised peace mediation governance with its de-contextualisation, de-politicisation, and de-pluralisation effects and shows how hegemonic assumptions and principles embedded in the travelling mediation model are translated into peace mediation practices in African contexts. It furthermore criticises the coloniality implicit in these embedded hegemonic assumptions and principles, proposing angles for decentring and reimagining mediation as a decolonial device, operating across diverse conflict resolution knowledges.
Afirma-se recorrentemente que o marco histórico das relações internacionais – como objeto de estudo – se dá em 1648 com a Paz de Westfália ao se compreender a gênese dos Estados-nacionais modernos. Apesar de ser inegável o legado deixado pela lógica westfaliana e sua utilidade para o campo de estudos de Relações Internacionais (RI), a centralidade conferida a esse episódio configura um ponto de fratura na história das RI. Dividiu-se, a partir de então, o mundo entre os Estados que fizeram parte do tratado e os outros que foram excluídos dessa racionalidade de modernidade construída. Posto isso, este artigo está organizado em duas seções: na primeira parte se expõe como se deu o início do processo de formação hierárquica europeia/ocidental na disciplina. Por conseguinte, na segunda seção, são apresentadas as perspectivas conceituais de Ibn Khaldun e como suas contribuições atravessam as Relações Internacionais. Desse modo, chama-se atenção para a importância de um movimento de insurreição e inserção epistemológica com o fim de propiciar uma quebra na manutenção da hierarquia dos saberes científico-acadêmicos que fora edificada sob pressupostos racistas nas Relações Internacionais.
This chapter asks how to start the process of doing research that addresses Eurocentrism in International Relations (IR). It begins by recognising that, when thinking globally about world politics, a major obstacle facing us is a failure to be puzzled, because we presume that we already understand. One of the first steps, therefore, is learning to be genuinely puzzled, for which we can turn to strategies employed by scholars like Said. The rest of the chapter takes stock of available approaches to thinking globally about world politics, which are presented according to their place on a continuum of connectedness in the way they understand the production of ideas and knowledge about how the world works. These include worlding as geocultural situatedness, non-Western IR, worlding, everyday IR, decentring, historical connections, relationality, contrapuntal reading, and constitutive outside.
This chapter traces the trajectory of the efforts to address International Relations (IR)’s Eurocentric limitations by utilising one of its own methods: worlding. It begins by considering two different understandings of worlding and underscores the need to utilise both at the same time so that we can make sense of the apparent tension between IR being global and yet not global enough. Next, the chapter traces the trajectory of the scholarship that has sought to address IR’s Eurocentric limitations by worlding this body of work in terms of both the situatedness and constitutive power of knowing. In doing so, the chapter identifies key moves, openings and closures, as scholars have reflected on US hegemony in the study of IR, responded to its persistence notwithstanding efforts to pluralise the discipline, diagnosed the cultural production of a particular way of doing IR as ‘IR’, inquired into IR in other parts of the world, and called for a ‘Global IR and Regional Worlds’.
This chapter zooms in on one of the two main subfields of International Relations (IR), namely (International) Security Studies, to further highlight different ways of thinking globally about world politics. The chapter begins with the observation that international security has not always been studied in a manner true to its name. Second, lest it seems that Eurocentrism only limits the study of those parts of the world other than ‘Europe’, the chapter looks at the study of militarism, highlighting the ways in which the study of security in ‘Europe’ too has suffered. Next, the chapter turns to Critical Security Studies (CSS) and focuses on how CSS scholars have treated the Eurocentrism of ISS as an ‘absence’. Finally, the chapter explores one way of thinking globally about security by utilising the notion of ‘constitutive outside’, so as to see how those who have been outside of our ISS narratives have been constitutive of security in theory and in practice.
Postcolonial theory has been at the forefront of attempts to remedy the problem of Eurocentrism. This article argues that postcolonial theory has not progressed far enough in successfully treating the problem of Eurocentrism, for it has not sufficiently abided by its own methodological underpinnings, i.e., it has not satisfactorily developed its own critique of the “presentist” conceptions of history. More precisely, postcolonial theory has not shown how to make a complete departure from the methodologically presentist conceptions of capitalism, which, in turn, limits our ability to overcome hierarchical readings of global modernity. To problematize and fill this gap, I take an unconventional tack, turning to a seldomly cited figure in debates on Eurocentrism: Karl Polanyi. I contend that although Polanyi places the origins of capitalist modernity in Europe, his historical sociology provides an alternative and more definitive solution for presentism and Eurocentrism. Polanyi’s rejection of the “economistic” and “dualistic” understandings of human life, his insistence on the commonality and diversity of human degradation in the face of capitalist modernity, and his historically specific conception of the “counter-movement” enable a decidedly non-presentist, non-triumphalist, and non-hierarchical narrative of the genesis and development of the modern present.
The modern international system has been shaped by long-standing historical practices of unequal power relations, which have positioned the Western world at the center of the political universe. Due to the centrality of the Global North in the international system, any IR theory that aims to portray a true picture of the “globe” necessarily situates the West at the center of scientific inquiry. Furthermore, the form of universality generated by Western hegemony has been diffused throughout the world over centuries, spreading Western political institutions, economic structures, and ideological norms in an uneven setting. As a result, the social structures of the Global South have developed through an uneven form of relationship and dialectical interaction with the West. Therefore, homegrown IR theories, which uncover local political, philosophical, or cultural motives as sources for theory-making, in fact, concentrate on stratified forms of the universal reality that is diffused through the uneven spread of Western social structures. In this sense, there is a Western-centric moment in any homegrown IR theory. Accordingly, this article develops a scientific realist account of the structure/agent relationship in order to analyze the material grounds of Westerncentrism in the field of international politics and to evaluate the role of non- Western actors. Additionally, it critically evaluates distinctive homegrown theories produced on three different continents to reveal the aforementioned Western-centric moments in these theoretical initiatives. Namely, the Dependency School of Latin America, the Chinese School of International Relations, and the African School are respectively scrutinized to disclose the embedded Westerncentrism in these theoretical initiatives
En este resumen presentamos el capítulo introductorio de International Relations Scholarship Around the World, publicado por Routledge en 2009. Los editores y también autores de esta introducción, Ole Wæver y Arlene B. Tickner, argumentan sobre la necesidad dentro de la teoría de Relaciones Internacionales de mirar más allá de los límites geográficos, espaciales y temporales actuales. Al plantear un debate en relación a los fundamentos epistémicos de la disciplina y en relación al cientifismo de los datos recolectados, Wæver y Tickner ponen en cuestión la supuesta globalidad de una disciplina que es más a menudo basada en la influencia que la identidad local proyecta en otras culturas y en otras situaciones políticas. Los autores buscan incorporar la teoría producida desde espacios alternativos muy importantes, aunque aún poco representados. Este libro no es solo acerca de otros espacios geográficos o trabajos no tradicionales desde el terreno, sino también de valiosas metodologías y prácticas diseñadas desde otras áreas actualmente no entedidas como Relaciones Internacionales (RRII). En este capítulo se crítica cómo el conocimiento es producido, cómo la academia y la investigación son financiadas, cómo dicha financiación influye en el contenido de la investigación y cómo esto prejuicia a los investigadores. Wæver y Tickner enfatizan los aportes de este libro para académicos e investigadores sobre el terreno en cuanto a los enfoques teóricos y los datos producidos por los estudios de caso. Por último, los autores nos invitan a considerar las RRII no solo desde la experiencia concreta sino también como una compilación de teorías inter-relacionadas que nos ayudan a comprender las realidades más allá de los espacios tradicionales.
In his response, Manjeet S. Pardesi argues that global international relations and relational scholarship rooted in global history can learn much from each other and must work together to overcome Eurocentrism while avoiding other forms of ‘centrisms’. The second contribution by Zeynep Gülşah Çapan aims to underline three interrelated dynamics: space (global), time (history), and knowledge. In the third and final response, Musab Younis draws on Edward Said's critique of ‘counter-conversion’ to suggest how anticolonial and postcolonial thinkers sought to create oppositional forms of knowledge while remaining alert, in ways not always replicated in recent writing, to the dangers of nativism.
This chapter explores the international political thought of Amílcar Cabral. Cabral was the leader of PAIGC, the national liberation movement of Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde. He played a leading role alongside his peers and fellow militants Agostinho Neto, Mário Andrade, Eduardo Mondlane, Marcelino dos Santos and others in the liberation of the Portuguese colonies in Africa and, as such, was a key figure in the liberation of the African continent from colonial rule. From his own times to today he has been widely recognised as an anticolonial leader and thinker of considerable stature. Until relatively recently, however, his work has not been generally or widely taught in the disciplinary area of Politics and International Relations—attention to Cabral would be more the concern of African Studies or Postcolonial Studies. This chapter explores various dimensions of his thought which speak to the international. In doing so, the chapter additionally elaborates a meta-reflection on what it means today to consider the question of political thought and, especially, international political thought. In what ways is anticolonial thought a historically specific form of political thought? These broader historical and epistemological questions arise inherently from an exploration of Cabral’s international political thought, they pertain to central concerns of postcolonial theory (in other words they arise inherently from a consideration of the relationships between colonialism and knowledge), and, in particular, they resonate with contemporary energies and popular demands regarding decolonising academic minds, disciplines and institutions. The first section of the chapter provides some brief contextual and biographical discussion of Amílcar Cabral. The central body of the chapter explores his international political thought through a focus on questions of race, colonialism, and liberation. The concluding section draws together an argument about the specific character of anticolonial political thought.
The notion that popular vigilance is central to safe-guarding democratic freedoms is a key pillar of republican political thought. Yet, this conception does not translate well to postcolonial contexts without some reconceptualization. In this article, I take up the ways in which two African statesmen and political theorists, Julius Nyerere and Thomas Sankara, reconceptualize the practice of vigilance in the postcolonial context. Both theorists demonstrate that the collective exercise of vigilance is a qualitatively different political practice in the postcolonial context because citizens must simultaneously target internal domination from elites and external domination from international institutions and former colonial powers. Furthermore, they underscore that a shared political vision in the form of a national ethic is crucial for generating and guiding mass practices of vigilance. Doing so, Nyerere and Sankara articulate a distinct tradition of postcolonial republicanism that better conceptualizes the challenges of stabilizing state–society relations in postcolonial Africa.
The conventional IR theories answer the query related to one-and-many-ness of the world in an ‘either-or’ fashion: presumably, either we live in one world of globalizing capitalism centered on a single hegemonic power (US or China?), or we live in many worlds containing many voices, including the anti-hegemonic voices of indigenous people often relegated to the sphere of myths, legends or beliefs. Contrary to this either-or answer, the recent Global IR texts (inspired by several Chinese, Indian, and Japanese worldviews) envisage a world which is concurrently ‘one and many’: that is to say, the unity of a single world lies underneath the diversity of plural worlds. This chapter clarifies how these Global IR texts—along with their ‘shared hard-core assumptions’ about the need to reconcile the West–non-West binaries and foreground the West–non-West complementarities—form a ‘Lakatosian research programme’ where multiple theories with shared hard-core assumptions cooperatively corroborate their findings of truth and regularly revaluate their increasing or decreasing truth-content, not a ‘Kuhnian paradigm’ where a single theory claims superiority over or incommensurability with the truth released by rival theories.
This article examines the #SdScandal: the backroom and public fracas surrounding an article on epistemic racism in classic securitization theory that we authored. It argues that what the #SdScandal illustrates is that disciplinary whiteness in international relations has been upheld not despite, but in part through, the 'critical turn'. Using textual analysis as well as cyber-ethnographic and auto-ethnographic methods, it details how post-positivist knowledge-frames sometimes become vehicles for the rehabilitation of racial-colonial concepts, and how white femininities and novel tender masculinities can be evoked in the defence of institutional hierarchies. That such gendered shifts in disciplinary whiteness (seem to) depart from old-guard 'white man's IR' (per Lake, 2016) only increases their efficacy in securing the status quo. The article further contextualizes this argument about international relations within the broad backlash against resurgent claims for racial justice both inside and outside the academy. It identifies political-intellectual convergences, not only between orthodox and some critical thought, but between right-wing and some self-identified liberal, leftist and/or feminist scholars, especially around the supposed threat of 'cancellation' of scholars and scholarship. Examining what critics of the #SdScandal called threats of retribution against this journal, it argues that at stake are issues of editorial independence and academic freedom, and, more broadly, contending visions of how to pursue anti-racism.
The social sciences and humanities in general and International Relations (IR) specifically are organised around what has been called 'analytic bifurcation'. Analytic bifurcations artificially structure and divide analytic spaces into, for example, Europe/non-Europe, inside/outside, state/empire, and metropole/colony. Recently, these bifurcations have been problematised within IR and adjacent fields. Our article contributes to and extends these discussions by foregrounding two interrelated aspects that have not received sufficient attention: first, connections between colonies rather than between metropole and colony and, second, the construction and reproduction of the bifurcation of Europe/non-Europe. We explore how technologies of power, in our case mapping and the use of 'blank spaces' , were used to create imaginaries of colonisable land. To do so, we trace two episodes from nineteenth-century German colonial discourse. The first episode analyses imaginaries of exploration in the Humboldtian tradition and how these imaginaries depict spaces outside of Europe, namely in Africa, as blank spaces. The second episode reconstructs the cartographic work of Paul Langhans, who focused on mapping 'Germandom' (Deutschtum) in Central and Eastern Europe. Juxtaposing these two episodes shows the interconnectedness between these spaces (Africa and the European East) and how techniques such as blank spaces were applied to create colonisable land.
The "Russian Idea" in International Relations identifies different approaches within Russian Civilizational tradition — Russia’s nationally distinctive way of thinking — by situating them within IR literature and connecting them to practices of the country’s international relations.
Civilizational ideas in IR theory express states’ cultural identification and stress religious traditions, social customs, and economic and political values. This book defines Russian civilizational ideas by two criteria: the values they stress and their global ambitions. The author identifies leading voices among those positioning Russia as an exceptional and globally significant system of values and traces their arguments across several centuries of the country’s development. In addition, the author explains how and why Russian civilizational ideas rise, fall, and are replaced by alternative ideas. The book identifies three schools of Russian civilizational thinking about international relations – Slavophiles, Communists, and Eurasianists. Each school focuses on Russia’s distinctive spiritual, social, and geographic roots, respectively. Each one is internally divided between those claiming Russia’s exceptionalism, potentially resulting in regional autarchy or imperial expansion, and those advocating the Russian Idea as global in its appeal. Those favoring the latter perspective have stressed Russia’s unique capacity for understanding different cultures and guarding the world against extremes of nationalism and hegemony in international relations.
This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Russian foreign policy, Russia–Western relations, IR theory, diplomatic studies, political science, and European history, including the history of ideas.
This essay considers the Ukraine conflict as a war of decolonization. It understands decolonization as a practice of world order making that creates international relations out of imperial relations. What does such a perspective tell us about the conflict in Ukraine and its implications for world politics?
In organizational theory, institutionalists generally make predictions of corresponding context and policy outcome based on structural processes. Psychoanalytic theory, in contrast, focuses on the rhetorical framing rather than the environment of a policy for predictive outcomes. This study aims to explore the debate over policy prediction by developing a supervised machine learning model to predict for policy success and context in the United Nations (UN). Through data collected with a python web scraper on all UN meetings in the General Assembly (GA) and Security Council (SC) between 1994 and 2020, we parse motions, policies, and conflict indicators, before passing meeting records through the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) psycholinguistic algorithm. Next, we build 12 different machine learning models to predict for policy passage and context using preprocessed motion and LIWC data; results demonstrate that the psychoanalytic models better predicted for both context and policy outcomes than the institutionalist models, suggesting that the classical political axiom, “actions speak louder than words,” may not be supported by the empirical evidence.
Both in the conventional accounts of International Relations discipline, as well as in foreign policies of various actors, the Global South has predominantly been defined with reference to a “zone of lack” which is “in need of aid and tutelage.” In recent decades, postcolonial IR approaches have problematized this representation through interrogating the reasons for and processes of its construction. While doing this, however, the postcolonial IR literature mainly focuses on the Global North actors’ discourses and practices on the Global South, and how non-core actors view their counterparts remains underexamined. Based on this gap in the literature, this study investigates whether and how Turkey, as a non-core actor in world politics, challenges or contributes to predominant representations of the Global South. As such, the study seeks to answer the question of “how do the politicians in Turkey understand the place of the Global South in world politics?” The study is structured around three sections. The first section looks at previous works done about Turkish foreign policy in the Global South. The second section presents our theoretical framework, and the selected research method. The third section analyses the discourses produced in the 2000s by political elites from both the ruling as well as the opposition political parties in Turkey about the Global South. The study concludes with discussing the implications of our findings.
This article conceptualises the variety of approaches taken by International Relations (IR) scholars around the world to dominant forms of knowledge production in IR. In doing so, it advances Global IR debates along two axes: on practices and on spatiality. We argue that binary conceptions are unhelpful and that engagement with knowledge production practices is best captured by a landscape of complexity, requiring a deeper interrogation of positionality, globality and context. Using 26 qualitative interviews with IR academics at institutions in East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, Eurasia and Africa, we construct a typology comprising seven modes of engagement that capture the conflicted relationships to dominant forms and practices of knowledge production in IR. The typology is intended to highlight the variation, complexity and contextual particularities in global IR knowledge production practices and to enable an interrogation of spatial hierarchies that unsettle conventional geopolitical West/non-West fault-lines.
Actualmente varios investigadores han señalado que las Relaciones Internacionales (RRII) es una disciplina formulada principalmente a partir de la experiencia política europea moderna y los desarrollos filosóficos, sin embargo, se propone abordar asuntos internacionales. Varios críticos señalan que la naturaleza eurocéntrica de la Teoría de las Relaciones Internacionales (TRI), dentro de la historia de Europa, no puede dilucidar adecuadamente el pasado y el presente de las regiones no occidentales. En un intento de convertir las RRII en una disciplina netamente internacional, los especialistas de las regiones no occidentales han proporcionado sus propias definiciones locales (por ejemplo, conceptos, experiencias históricas, filosofías, etc.). Asimismo, se tiene como objetivo dar una mejor explicación de cada región. Aunque la Teoría de la dependencia de América Latina no es ampliamente reconocida como una TIR propia, este artículo argumenta que puede contribuir a ella. El artículo se divide en tres secciones. La primera sección desarrolla dos críticas al enfoque eurocéntrico de las RRII y sus teorías. La segunda presenta brevemente el pensamiento de los dependentistas (Fernando Henrique Cardoso y Enzo Faletto, Ruy Marini, y Samir Amin, aunque el último dependentista es franco-egipcio), así como CEPAL. Y la tercera argumenta que la Teoría de la dependencia podría contribuir a la TIR de tres maneras: (1) al reconocer que los problemas, y los intereses, no son homogéneamente universales, enfatizando la necesidad de dar soluciones locales para los problemas locales; (2) susceptibilidad a los actores no tradicionales, como las empresas multinacionales y los grupos económicos nacionales; (3) entendimiento del escenario internacional y constituido jerárquicamente por una rivalidad de la estructura centro-periferia.
How can we explain Central and Eastern Europe's (CEE) relative absence in the 'worlding International Relations'(IR) conversation? What does provincializing the discipline from CEE might look like? I argue that CEE has been relatively neglected in the 'worlding IR' literature 1) due to local factors, 2) because it might have been turned into an 'unimportant other', 3) and because the history of the region challenges the macro-categories-'West/non-West', 'North/South', 'core/periphery'-that structure this conversation. I show how the special issue offers promising endeavors to provincialize IR that are transferable to other contexts, for instance small states. Doing so, I use CEE as a case study to build a bridge between the special issue and the different debates it contributes to-making IR a less Eurocentric/ parochial field, decentering European IR from the IR produced in UK/Scandinavian countries, and exploring the conditions of formulating critiques that produces something other than the problems they denounce.
Concerned about the continued dominance of Western International Relations (IR) theories , the global IR community has proposed various measures to address disciplinary hierarchies through encouraging dialogue and pluralism. By investigating the pedagogical preferences of instructors from 45 countries, this paper questions the global IR initiative's emancipatory potential, arguing that disciplinary practices in IR resemble those of dependent development. The study develops a new typology of IR theoretical (IRT) scholarship and examines the readings assigned in 151 IRT syllabi worldwide for evidence of similarity, replication, and assimilation. The findings show that mainstream core IRTs dominate syllabi globally, regardless of region, language of instruction, or instructors' edu-cational/linguistic backgrounds. This domination extends to periphery scholars not using their own local products. Even when they do seek alternative approaches, they prefer to import core alternatives, that is, critical traditions, rather than homegrown IRTs. Finally, the results show that even in syllabi taught in local languages the readings remain dominated by core IRT works. These findings expose a structural defect in the current cry for global IR, by revealing the system's dependent development paradox. The paper concludes with suggestions for creating a symmetric interdependent structure, in the aim of achieving a genuine globalization of IR.
Many postcolonial or critical scholars are rather sceptical of the Responsibility to Protect principle. In most of the critical literature, Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is presented as a product from the West, whose liberal ideal relies on a perception of Southern states being potentially dysfunctional, which in turn justifies an interventionist discourse with neocolonial overtones. The problem with this interpretation of R2P is that it essentially ignores non-Western, particularly Southern, inputs on the concept, falling precisely into the trap that, many authors claim, vitiates Responsibility to Protect: its West-centrism. Building upon a mix of critical, decolonial, postcolonial and Third World Approaches to International Law scholarship, this article proposes a number of additional steps to decolonize R2P in an effort to avoid what Pinar Bilgin describes as ‘conflating the critiques of the particularity of universals with critiques of the idea of having universals’. What successive decolonizing layers expose is a negotiation process in which the agency of states from the global South in shaping the – still controversial – principle has proved particularly obvious. Decolonizing Responsibility to Protect, this article argues, requires critical scholars to engage in a contrapuntal analysis in order to acknowledge the concept’s mutual constitution by the West and the ‘rest’ and the deeper struggles over universals hiding underneath.
Africa and the ICC: Realities and Perceptions comprises contributions from prominent scholars of different disciplines including international law, political science, cultural anthropology, African history and media studies. This unique collection provides the reader with detailed insights into the interaction between the African Union and the International Criminal Court (ICC), but also looks further at the impact of the ICC at a societal level in African states and examines other justice mechanisms on a local and regional level in these countries. This investigation of the ICC's complicated relationship with Africa allows the reader to see that perceptions of justice are multilayered.
This article unpacks the ways Eastern Europe (broadly conceived) has featured as a space, trope, and scholarly origin in major International Security Studies (ISS) and International Relations (IR) journals over the past three decades. A framing and authorship analysis in 18 disciplinary journals between 1991 and 2019 demonstrates how the region has been instrumental for the ISS subfield as an exemplary student of the Western theory and practice of IR. Eastern Europe has served as a symbolic space for exercising the civilising mission of the West and testing the related theories (security community building, democratisation, modernisation, Europeanisation, norm diffusion) in practice. The relative dearth of East European voices in ISS and leading IR theory journals speaks volumes about the politics of knowledge production and the analytical economy of the field. The positionality of East European ‘captive minds’ complicates ‘worlding’ IR from the region. The East European subalterns are largely enfolded in the definitive discourses of the field, and their power through disciplinary journals remains marginal.
"Discourses of diversity are all too often used to justify both the hubris of thinking that we know all that there is to know, and the violence we create when this way of thinking is hidden within well-meaning yet often hurtful moves to embrace difference."
Article fully available online here: https://rdcu.be/colKT
While many forms of violence shape the global world order, the disciplines devoted to international politics are often content with reductionist concepts of violence; knowledge and knowledge production are more often than not seen as altogether antithetical to direct and physical harm. At the same time, global entanglements of knowledge with violence have increasingly come into view in the course of the ongoing (de-)colonial turn. After more than 30 years, Gayatri C. Spivak’s feminist postcolonial understanding of epistemic violence is still the preeminent theoretical touchstone for addressing this issue. By providing an interdisciplinary understanding of lesser known conceptions of epistemic violence, I open up additional routes for deploying the term in the analysis, theorization, and critique of international politics. Based on this assemblage, I frame epistemic violence along the decolonial concept of a coloniality of power, knowledge, and Being and finally consider how we can possibly undo epistemic violence while un/doing IR.
The EU–India relationship is a playground for policy analysts—numerous policy recommendations are addressed to both India and the EU. Policy analysis influences the European and Indian political practitioners and also the public with their constructions of possible future relations. Because the scientists’ impact carries such weight, it is necessary to engage with the fundamental research principles that underlie the production of policy analysis. The assumption of this contribution is that an examination of supposedly abstract theoretical debates using the disciplines of International Relations (IR) and policy research helps to critically reflect on the role of policy analysts. On the basis of the critical hints identified in the theoretical discussions, a possible way forward will be proposed to advance research on the relationship between the two largest democracies in the world. By adapting the so-called Global IR paradigm, a practical proposal will be developed to put the scientific cooperation of the EU–India relations in general and the cooperation in policy-oriented research in particular on a broader basis: The idea of parapublic underpinnings (Krotz 2007) can help to substantially improve relations between India and the EU to establish the basis for research on an equal footing.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.