Western Dominance in International Relations?

The Internationalisation of IR in Brazil and India

Audrey Alejandro

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138047983
• eBook ISBN: 9781351692045
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Globalisation
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Since the 1970s, a 'critical' movement has been developing in the humanities and social sciences denouncing the existence of 'Western dominance' over the worldwide production and circulation of knowledge. However, thirty years after the emergence of this promising agenda in International Relations (IR), this discipline has not experienced a major shift.

This volume offers a counter-intuitive and original contribution to the understanding of the global circulation of knowledge. In contrast to the literature, it argues that the internationalisation of social sciences in the designated 'Global South' is not conditioned by the existence of a presumably 'Western dominance'. Indeed, although discriminative practices such as Eurocentrism and gate-keeping exist, their existence does not lead to a unipolar structuration of IR internationalisation around 'the West'. Based on these empirical results, this book reflexively questions the role of critique in the (re)production of the social and political order. Paradoxically, the anti-Eurocentric critical discourses reproduce the very Eurocentrism they criticise. This book offers methodological support to address this paradox by demonstrating how one can use discourse analysis and reflexivity to produce innovative results and decentre oneself from the vision of the world one has been socialised into.

This work offers an insightful contribution to International Relations, Political Theory, Sociology and Qualitative Methodology. It will be useful to all students and scholars interested in critical theories, international political sociology, social sciences in Brazil and India, knowledge and discourse, Eurocentrism, as well as the future of reflexivity.

1 Diversity

It is now ‘a commonplace to call for thinking past “Western” IR’ (Bilgin 2008, 5). Following its use of the categories ‘West’ and ‘non-West’, the literature understands academic diversity to be a result of geographical and cultural dynamics. The expression ‘geocultural epistemologies’ coined by Arlene Tickner and Ole Wæver (2009) illustrates this tendency. Approaches to IR diversity often adopt geographical lenses (Agnew 2007; Vüllers 2014). As summarised by Wæver: ‘IR is quite different in different places’ (1998, 723). Following the line of research commonly referred to as ‘mapping Global IR’ (Holden 2014), edited volumes are produced with different chapters focusing on IR in different countries (Balzacq and Ramel 2013; Tickner and Wæver 2009). This geographical framework sometimes alludes to the ‘cultural’ characteristics of IR contexts of production (Inayatullah and Blaney 2004, 16–17; Jørgensen and Knudsen 2006, 3; Mayall 2011, 335). The study of IR forms part of IR’s broader ‘cultural turn’ (Shilliam 2011, 6), and references to IR ‘traditions’ point to the existence of national IR heritages, which are there to be recovered and championed (Huysmans and Wæver 2009; Brown 2011).

But to which kind of ‘IR diversity’ is the narrative of Western dominance referring? While some researchers highlight the plurality of world ‘visions’ (Puchala 2002) or ‘metaphysical viewpoints’ (Kitaro 2002, 213), generally the literature pinpoints three types of diversity. Theoretical diversity is identified as the major challenge for IR diversification, as IR theory is described as ‘almost exclusively Western’ (Acharya and Buzan 2007, 288). In the words of Ersel Aydinli and Julie Mathews: ‘whoever creates the theories, controls the agenda’ (2008, 694). While theory is described as the best route to access international recognition, it appears as the most Eurocentric dimension of IR (Wæver 2007, 294–6). There is, according to Siba Grovogui, a theoretical fundamentalism in IR (2006, 17). The literature designates thematic diversity as a second area of concern. Thematic diversity refers to the specialisation of research domains related to scholars’ specific national interests. Dominant IR communities would implement ‘IR dominance’ by setting up the research agendas of other communities (Turton 2015, 23); the discipline thus being accused of focusing on themes overwhelmingly influenced by ‘Western policy-informed taxonomies’ (Hamati-Ataya 2012, 642; see also Barkawi and Brighton 2011; Thomas and Wilkin 2004). Finally, ‘demographic diversity’ focuses on the national origin of scholars participating in international publications and conferences (Turton 2015; Strange 1995). Boyu Chen et al. (2009) call, for example, for ‘the democratisation’ of the discipline. The degree of theoretical, thematic and demographic diversity acts as a marker of Western dominance based on the idea that Eurocentric gate-keeping practices: (i) complicate the internationalisation of articles using ‘non-Western’ theoretical frameworks; (ii) put scholars ‘from the Global South’ with the alternative of either complying with the imposed research agenda or being discriminated against; and (iii) these result in a lack of representation of such scholars in international IR institutions.

Surprisingly, after twenty years of collectively mapping the discipline and four years after launching the book series Worlding Beyond the West, two of its editors Arlene Tickner and David Blaney confessed that ‘this on-going exercise in “revealing” difference’ has been ‘somewhat disappointing’ as IR as a field of study was ‘not as plural as [they] had imagined’ (2013, 4). Tickner explains: ‘A somewhat troubling discovery … is that IR, as it is professed in non-core settings such as Latin America, offers relatively little of the kinds of alternative knowledge that critical scholarship so eagerly seeks’ (2008, 745). These statements challenge the common perception of IR diversity and question our assumptions about the image of the field.

Is IR as diverse as the critical literature assumes it to be and do such differences represent comparative disadvantages for the internationalisation of publications? Our journey into deconstructing the narrative of Western dominance starts by answering these questions. This chapter aims at investigating the existence of national differences as described in the literature (theoretical, thematic and demographic). It examines the consequences of demonstrating such specificities for the internationalisation of publication. IR literature in Brazil and India, interviews and a history of the development of IR in these countries will support the analysis.

Theoretical diversity

If a specifically Brazilian or Indian theoretical approach to IR exists, this tradition remains implicit. Indian and Brazilian authors indeed underline the absence of such literature (Lessa 2005b; Mallavarapu 2009). As Amitabh Mattoo mentions for the case of India: ‘there is no recognisable contemporary Indian school of IR despite the rich civilisational repository of ideas on statecraft and inter-state relations’ (2009a). A few examples of isolated publications can be mentioned, however. In India, the article ‘Hindu Theory of International Relations’ represents the closest example of what such a tradition could look like (Sarkar 1919). The book Inserção internacional: Formação dos conceitos brasileiros written by Amada Cervo offers an overview of IR concepts used in Brazil (2008). It aims at showing the contribution of Brazilian academic and non-academic analysts in the context of the country’s history.

The lack of interest in IR national traditions is also evident at universities, where such issues are absent from IR curricula and teaching. To my knowledge, no IR programmes provide such courses in Brazil. However, interviewees did not express frustration about it. In India, two programmes include reference to ‘Indian approaches’ in their IR theory modules: Delhi University (DU) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). The teacher in charge of the course at DU explained that it introduced students to a vast array of approaches including the ‘mainstream framework’ (such as ‘realism’, ‘constructivism’, ‘feminism’ and ‘neo-Marxism’) as well as ‘non-mainstream approaches’ (such as ‘Chinese traditions of IR’, ‘Indian traditions of IR’ and ‘European traditions of IR as distinct from American traditions of IR’).

The scarcity of explicit references to national theoretical traditions may also reflect their implicit nature. I explored this possibility during the interviews through two types of question. The first type dealt with the degree of adaptation required by scholars when addressing a foreign audience. Such adaptations would reveal the existence of specificities that had to be explained to scholars with different academic socialisation. With the second type of question, I directly asked the interviewees what could represent a specific tradition of IR in Brazil and India.

Interviewees did not express the need to adapt the concepts and theories used ‘at home’ when addressing a foreign audience. One interviewee, for example, described the use of concepts as quite ‘homogeneous’ internationally. Amado Cervo, the author of the book mentioned above, was the only interviewee defending the existence of national theoretical/conceptual developments in Brazil.

While interviewees did not identify any national theoretical approaches, they often pointed out how their IR national communities missed opportunities for such theorisation. They put forward three types of discourses that scholars could have introduced in IR to produce original national contributions: (1) theories developed in other disciplines, (2) theories developed outside academia and (3) pre-colonial literature. One case of a theory developed in another discipline was mentioned in Brazil. Four discourses developed outside academia were suggested in India as well as two examples of pre-colonial literature.

Brazilian interviewees only suggested one missed opportunity for IR theorising in Brazil: dependency theory. Dependency theory originates from the works published by Hans Singer and Raúl Prebisch in 1949. It later developed within the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) to the rest of Latin America, including for instance the works of Brazilian authors such as Celso Furtado, Ruy Mauro Marini and Fernando Cardoso (Furtado 1964; Cardoso and Faletto 1969; Cardoso 1973; Marini 1973). The international success of this theory contrasts with its marginality within Brazilian IR (Lessa 2005b, 171; Herz 2002, 17).¹ None of the other potential sources of theorisation was mentioned by the Brazilian interviewees.

In India, the interviewees identified four discourses developed outside academia that could have represented interesting sources for national IR theorisation: (1) the travelogue Varthamanappusthakam, (2) Rabindranath Tagore’s writings, (3) non-violence and (4) non-alignment.

Written in the eighteenth century by Paremmakkal Thoma Cathanar, Varthamanappusthakam is considered to be the first modern travelogue in a vernacular Indian language (Malayalam) (Paremmakkal 1971). One interviewee described it as a potential ‘starting point of an alternative political anthropology of otherness’. The use of this travelogue for IR theorising could offer a decentred counter-point to the constructions of images of otherness that were created by Europeans in the midst of the colonial experience.

The second case is the work of Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941). Tagore was an Indian poet, writer, painter and philosopher who received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1913. An interviewee emphasised the significance of his works for the construction of the Indian image of ‘the foreigner’ (especially Europeans and the British). However, no research has adopted this line of inquiry in the country.

The third discourse mentioned by Indian interviewees was the theory of non-violence, as developed and used by Mahātmā Gandhi in the decolonisation of India (Gandhi 1960). It was acknowledged internationally by political leaders around the world such as Martin Luther King Jr., the fourteenth Dalai Lama and Lech Wałęsa. Despite its international fame, this theory has not been used for Indian IR theorising. Two articles written by an Indian researcher and published in an IR journal (Journal of Peace Research) have used non-violence as a theoretical framework (Chatterjee and Bhattacharjee 1971; Chatterjee 1974). Bishwa B. Chatterjee, who wrote the articles, was however neither an IR scholar, nor affiliated with an IR institution (he was working with the Gandhian Institute in Varanasi).

Fourth, the theory of non-alignment was the ‘missed opportunity’ for theorisation most cited in the interviews. Non-alignment is a foreign policy doctrine developed in the 1950s by the leaders of the non-aligned movement, including India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Indonesia’s President Sukarno, Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ghana’s President Kwame Nkrumah and Yugoslavia’s President Josip Broz Tito. It defends self-determination in foreign policy. This line originates from the experience of ‘non-Western people’ and offers an alternative to the Cold War allegiances (Mahajan 2010, 67). If many Indian works have been published on non-alignment, they do not use this theory as a theoretical frame of reference.²

Two examples of pre-colonial literature emerged in the Indian interviews as potential sources for IR theorisation.³ The Arthaśāstra came out several times. Written between the fourth and second century BCE (Mabbett 1964), it epitomises the Sanskrit literature on the understanding of political issues. Composed of fifteen volumes, it provides a synthesis of the thoughts of the epoch on economics, political anthropology, statecraft and international relations. Its presumed author is Kautilya, and it was translated for the first time into English in 1915.

The interviewees identified the theory of Mandala (as reformulated by Kautilya but developed before him by Shookra and Kamandaka) as the main potential contribution of the Arthaśāstra for IR. This theory holds both normative and universalistic ambitions. It contains key principles for engaging the foreign dimensions of governance, such as the need for state independence or the need to expand of the ‘aspirant to conquest’ (vijigeesoo) (Sarkar 1919, 400–1). Yet, Indian academic publications have barely used the theory of Mandala as an explanatory device. Rather they refer to it as an anecdote or a metaphor, such as in the introduction of Mohan Raja’s (2006) article ‘India and the Balance of Power’.

The second case of precolonial literature mentioned by the interviewees is the Nyāya Sūtras. The Nyāya Sūtras is a Sanskrit text written by Akṣapāda Gautama between the sixth and second century BCE (Fowler 2002). It comprises five books compiling 528 aphorisms on rules of reason, logic, epistemology and metaphysics. In the following excerpt, the interviewee who put forward this idea presents the heuristic interest of this text in conceptualising relations:

In the Indian tradition, in Sanskrit, there is something called the Nyāya [sic]. There are different nyāyas, many numbers of nyāyas. Nyāya means, this kind of logic linking, when you link things, you need to have some kind of logic to link. […] There is matsya nyāya, that means ‘big fish will eat small fish’. So those are there, in traditional texts and things like that, which can be used to know, predict a behaviour of some of the powers, you can very well use the term matsya nyāya, ‘big fish will always try to eat the small fish’. So that is there; it’s a very rich tradition.

Several Indian articles on Indian IR also share the position that Indian traditional sources represent rich traditions for theorisation. The two excerpts below exemplify this position:

This corpus could include the political thinking of well-known anti-colonial nationalists like Gandhi, Nehru, Tagore, Ambedkar, Aurobindo and Radhakrishnan. It would also encompass a study of the political traditions initiated by pre-colonial figures like Kautilya, Ashoka, Akbar and Kabir whose philosophies continue to be of enduring relevance.

(Mallavarapu 2009, 168)

A second line of inquiry calls for IR scholars to undertake a thorough re-reading of the Indian history and analyze the political thought of various Indian philosophers and political thinkers including Manu, Valmiki, Buddha, Iqbal, Aurobindo Ghosh, Dadabhai Naroji, Tagore and political leaders such as Gandhi, Nehru, Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad among others. In view of our analysis of Kautilya’s Arthshastra, the issue of ‘how to’ read history is of critical importance.

(Behera 2007, 360)

Critical literature tends to assume the existence of ‘non-Western’ IR...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Diversity
• 2 Regarding internationalisation
• 3 The non-role of ‘the West’
• 4 The national and the international
• 5 Discursive entanglements
• 6 The recursive paradox
• Conclusion
• Index