International Relations from the Global South

Worlds of Difference

Arlene B. Tickner, Karen Smith, Arlene B. Tickner, Karen Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781317629559
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This exciting new textbook challenges the implicit notions inherent in most existing International Relations (IR) scholarship and instead presents the subject as seen from different vantage points in the global South.

Divided into four sections, (1) the IR discipline, (2) key concepts and categories, (3) global issues and (4) IR futures, it examines the ways in which world politics have been addressed by traditional core approaches and explores the limitations of these treatments for understanding both Southern and Northern experiences of the "international." The book encourages readers to consider how key ideas have been developed in the discipline, and through systematic interventions by contributors from around the globe, aims at both transforming and enriching the dominant terms of scholarly debate.

This empowering, critical and reflexive tool for thinking about the diversity of experiences of international relations and for placing them front and center in the classroom will help professors and students in both the global North and the global South envision the world differently. In addition to general, introductory IR courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels it will appeal to courses on sociology and historiography of knowledge, globalization, neoliberalism, security, the state, imperialism and international political economy.

1 Introduction

International Relations from the global South

Karen Smith and Arlene B. Tickner

A familiar saying about the field of International Relations (IR) is that it is not very “international,” given the pervasiveness of Western (mainly Anglo-American) modes of thought, nor much about “relations,” except for those that exist between states, especially world powers. By way of justification, neorealist theorist, Kenneth N. Waltz (1979: 72) once claimed that

[i]t would be as ridiculous to construct a theory of international politics based on Malaysia and Costa Rica as it would be to construct an economic theory of oligopolistic competition based on the minor firms in a sector of an economy.

In his critical historiography of IR, John Hobson (2012) traces the origins of such myopia to scientific racism in the 18th and 19th centuries, showing how the main canons of (Westphalian) world politics are rooted in the perspectives and experiences of white, European men (a similar argument is developed in Chapter 4). This Eurocentric background, according to Hobson, accounts for both the intellectual and the material domination of the West in IR.

And yet, the claim that world politics may look different depending on the geocultural site from which one views it has become commonplace in IR. During the past two decades, growing scholarly interest in the global South and the non-West has led to a number of literatures that have sought to: (a) critique the supposed “universality” of categories such as sovereignty, the state, secularism and security; (b) analyze distinct IR concepts as they have actually been experienced, problematized and theorized in distinct parts of the world; and (c) identify different non-Western concepts that may shed light on world politics beyond existing disciplinary lenses (by way of illustration, see Neuman 1998; Dunn and Shaw 2001; Gruffydd Jones 2006; Acharya and Buzan 2010; Nayak and Selbin 2010; Cornelissen et al. 2012; Tickner and Blaney 2012).

Although significant contributions have been made by critical theories of distinct stripes, including feminism, poststructuralism, queer theory, postcolonialism and decoloniality, to our understanding of the social and situated nature of knowledge, and of the diverse perspectives on the world derived from them, the question of what an IR rooted in the experiences of the global South and the non-West might actually look like has been less explored, especially in the realm of teaching (for more on this issue, see Chapter 2).

It could be said that a growing “decolonializing” mood is permeating the IR discipline, generating impatience and discontent with much of the conventional work being done in North American and European universities (Gruffydd Jones 2006; Taylor 2012). Many in IR, particularly a growing number of younger scholars and students (including those still in undergraduate and graduate programs), are hungry for materials to enrich their knowledge in a way that helps them to see how the world looks from diverse places. A characteristic challenge that many of the contributors to this volume share when teaching IR both in or centered around the global South is precisely the disconnect that we sense between the theories customarily used to analyze world politics, the field’s key concepts, categories and themes as determined by those theories, and lived realities outside the West and North. However, deeply entrenched disciplinary logics operate in such a way that even scholars who acknowledge the problematic and exclusionary nature of the field, and support efforts to decenter or globalize it, continue to use conventional texts in their syllabi, and to present students with a limited, Western-centric account of IR. As explained briefly in the Preface, it is with this quandary in mind that the idea for our textbook emerged.

Despite the fact that doing IR “differently” has become increasingly embraced as an idea, be it through distinct critical lenses, alternative concepts, or diverse methods such as narrative (Inayatullah and Dauphnee 2016), actual engagement in such an effort – the “how to” question – continues to pose considerable challenges. More so than other fields of knowledge, and as suggested by Waltz’s quote, IR has largely limited itself to the study of issues of relevance to the global North. When we try to think and write differently about international relations, we find ourselves constrained by the boundaries created by decades of gatekeeping and attempts at constructing and maintaining an independent field of study, not to mention the rules that customarily underwrite “scientific” narratives in general (Inayatullah 2013). These boundaries relate to what knowledges are regarded as important (in terms of subject matter), where knowledge comes from (both geographically speaking and in terms of how it is made, a question of epistemology), and how and where “serious” knowledge is published and presented.

The stories that textbooks tell

As Kim Nossal (2001) reminded us nearly 20 years ago, textbooks play an essential role in constructing the way in which the story of international relations is told and in introducing students to specific ways of thinking about the world. Even when they do not engage explicitly with theory, textbooks suggest what subject matters do and do not legitimately form part of the discipline of IR. In foregrounding certain issues, others are inevitably left out, implying that they are unimportant to the concerns of IR and to the workings of the international system. They also suggest which authors’ analyses should be considered authoritative.

It is important to challenge the view that there is a self-contained, existing field of IR “out there” and that the purpose of a textbook is simply to introduce students to it. This contention implies that textbooks play no role in constructing the field, when in fact they do. In particular, by emphasizing certain topics, framing them in a particular way and privileging some approaches to understanding the world, thus excluding many others, textbooks bestow upon students ready-made lenses through which to see international relations, which inevitably constrains the ability to think creatively about potential alternatives. As has been pointed out repeatedly, due to the nature and power dynamics that are operative within the global production of knowledge (Tickner 2013), IR textbooks are predominantly American or Western-centric, including not only their authors and publishing houses, but inevitably their content. The implications of this include the perception that only the views of Western scholars are important to the discipline of IR and, by extension, that only they can legitimately engage in theorizing (with non-Western scholars and students limited to being consumers of Western knowledge). It also “confirms” that international relations revolve around the West, and Western interests. As noted by Nossal (2001: 6), the main storyline as told by many textbooks is thus that world politics cannot be understood unless the United States is at the center.

While a number of introductory International Relations textbooks claim to be sensitive to global South concerns and/or to “alternative” readings of world politics, a common element that is largely missing from all of them are the views and scholarly voices from the global South. Our volume aspires to fill this gap by problematizing the issue of perspective as a theoretical, methodological and pedagogical problem that should be placed at the core of classroom debates, instead of being a secondary or subsidiary matter. Namely, it offers students a textbook that challenges the implicit notions inherent in most existing IR textbooks and, instead, presents international relations as seen from different vantage points in the global South. Its chapters are authored mainly by scholars who are either from and/or based in the global South, and whose primary goal is to provide an alternative or complementary reading of IR derived from the experiences of the non-core. We have tried to include perspectives that are not normally found in standard IR textbooks – including alternative origins of the discipline and views on the state and security that do not have their roots in the West or North. In doing so, we challenge conventional notions about which and whose narratives matter. In this sense, the knowledge-making exercise practiced in this textbook seeks to shift the point of departure from singular and exclusionary narratives towards multiplicity and discovery, thus showing that other ways of doing IR are possible.

The importance of multiple stories

Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave a TED talk in 2009 called “the danger of a single story” that has since been viewed by over 18 million people (watch it here: www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language). Her message resonates strongly with the singular readings of the world (re)produced in many IR textbooks. Although Adichie focuses largely on the problematic effects of simplistic narratives about Africa that condense the entire continent into oftentimes derogatory adjectives such as “backwards,” “uncivil” or “corrupt,” she alerts us to the impossibility, if not the dangers, of reducing people, places and problems to single, fixed explanations and categories by exploring her own biases concerning Mexico.¹

Within the field of IR, and notwithstanding increased self-reflection and self-consciousness concerning our academic practices, many scholars continue to ignore how their own perspectives – derived from myriad socio-cultural factors, including gender, race, class, academic training, institutional location and where they live – may lead them to prioritize one particular view. This is also characteristic of Eurocentrism (to be discussed further in the next section), which assumes not only that the West lies at the core of the world, but that its ideas and experiences are universalizable. The result is that we base our understandings on an incomplete history, in which agency is denied to many marginalized actors, and in which the worldviews, actions and experiences of a small percentage of the world’s population are prioritized. Stories from other parts of the globe are subsequently left out because they are believed to be of no consequence. That is, they do not provide credible accounts of the world, at least not as the West understands it. By listening only to some stories and being led to believe that they are the only important ones, we as scholars of IR are missing out on potentially important insights.

With this void in mind, our textbook is filled with a wealth of stories. Indeed, most of the chapters begin with a story, an example or an anecdote that puts into relief situations and encounters in global politics that the tools offered to us by conventional IR are poorly equipped to understand, and that beg to be accounted for distinctly in order to make better sense of the world(s) around us. Contrary to scholarly prose, stories allow us to lower our guard, avoid trying to fit things into accepted categories and stop asking questions such as “what is this an instance of?” or “what theory does this reflect?” When they contain ideas or behaviors that contradict predominant modes of understanding the world, stories also play a more emancipatory function through the jolts they produce to accepted ways of knowing and categorizing the world. In this fashion, they turn conventional academic analysis on its head by generating openness towards new and oftentimes unexpected situations (if not feelings) that are often “explained away” by dominant conceptual lenses. “This relaxed transportation … allows us a sense … that multiple valuable positions exist on any issue” (Inayatullah 2013: 194–5), thus opening space for the creative and transgressive power of diversity and difference.

This textbook is premised largely on the argument that the global South’s encounter with the “international” has been mediated by its particular (and dependent) mode of insertion into the world system, thus making its experiences distinct. However, a second underlying theme is that the invisibility of the global South within dominant narratives about world politics has been a key enabling factor of the singular, universalizing stories of the West, such as the formation of its civilizational ideal or the idea of the modern nation-state. This is not a call for particularism, but rather an invitation to transcend the Western-centrism within which IR has historically been embedded, and to make visible and give legitimacy to alternative worlds. Accordingly, the contributors to the textbook ask questions such as: how has the global South dealt with the epistemic violence that is mainstream IR? What is the meaning of sovereignty to those who have experienced colonialism and imperialism? How can we re-imagine the “international” when the global North sets its norms, institutions and practices? What does it mean to give voice to the world’s silenced voices? Does it mean to necessarily hold critical views on IR? In addition to focusing on how geocultural differences influence the experience, problematization and conceptualization of world politics, the textbook asks: how should we teach this global South IR?

Defining our terms

Although this textbook does not assume prior knowledge of the main theoretical debates in the field of International Relations, many of our contributors refer to both “conventional” IR theories and to a number of terms more prevalent within “critical” IR circles (including feminism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism and decoloniality). It is to a broad definition of some of the latter that we now turn.

Conventional, mainstream, disciplinary IR

Many of the textbook chapters establish contrasts between global-South-driven approaches, on the one hand, and “conventional,” “mainstream” or “disciplinary” IR on the other. Although diverse contributors may use such terms in slightly different ways in order to highlight distinct facets of the dominant strains of International Relations, they largely operate as synonyms in that they all underscore the idea that IR is a field of study in which certain understandings of the world predominate and various gatekeeping practices (among them specialized publications, scholarly associations and academic training) are in place that “discipline” potential members and reproduce such domination.

By way of general distinction, by mainstream or conventional IR we refer to scholarship that centers on specific research topics (largely rooted in the experiences of the West and the North, as discussed previously), that defends a positivist idea of science (consisting of empirical observation and the testing of hypotheses and causal claims about a world “out there”), and whose adherents share ontological assumptions about what the “international” is and epistemological ones about how to build knowledge about it (Steans 2003: 432). In turn, we share Ling’s (2017: 4–7) description of disciplinary IR as a domain of hypermasculine, Eurocentric whiteness that is rooted in realist and liberal modes of relating to the world, and that assumes that the West and North America are the main origins (and drivers) of international relations. For her, the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and the resulting Westphalian state system are thus one of disciplinary IR’s main founding myths.

North, South, West, non-West

In this textbook, many references are made to the “West,” “non-West,” “global North,” “global South,” “third world,” “core” and “periphery.” We are cognizant of the varied interpretations that might exist of these terms, the boundary problem entailed in their use as dichotomies, and the potential risks of deploying them to refer to very diverse parts of the world (including the danger of treating diverse places as homogeneous). Placing the terms initially in quotes is meant to acknowledge the contingent nature of their construction and their eventual overlaps. For example, the “West” certa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of boxes
• List of contributors
• Preface
• 1. Introduction: International Relations from the global South
• PART 1: Discipline
• PART 2: Concepts
• PART 3: Issues
• PART 4: Futures
• Index