International Relations Scholarship Around the World

Arlene B. Tickner, Ole Wæver, Arlene B. Tickner, Ole Wæver

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781135981068
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

It has become widely accepted that the discipline of International Relations (IR) is ironically not "international" at all. IR scholars are part of a global discipline with a single, shared object of study - the world, and yet theorizing gravitates around a number of concepts that have been conceived solely in the United States.

The purpose of this book is to re-balance this "western bias" by examining the ways in which IR has evolved and is practiced around the world. The fifteen case studies offer fresh insights into the political and socioeconomic environments that characterize diverse geocultural sites and the ways in which these traits inform and condition scholarly activity in International Relations.

By bringing together scholars living and working across the globe Tickner and Wæver provide the most comprehensive analysis of IR ever published.

It is essential reading for anyone who is concerned about the history, development and future of international relations.

1 Introduction

Geocultural epistemologies

Ole Wæver and Arlene B. Tickner

How is the world understood around the world? How is it understood by those who are professionally dedicated to analyzing world politics, that is, by scholars of international relations? Presumably, we are all part of a global discipline studying a shared object of interest, and yet theorizing gravitates around a number of theories “made in the U.S.” In addition, access to this allegedly international field is highly asymmetrical and conditioned by factors ranging from seemingly mundane issues such as library holdings, physical safety in the street, and weekly working hours, to hurdles related to language, epistemology, and perspective.

Despite its self-understanding as a global discipline studying a global reality (or the discipline of “International Relations” studying “international relations”), the scholarly community has very little knowledge about how it is itself shaped by global and international relationships of power, knowledge, and resources. Admittedly, something fairly general about this state of affairs may be found in the existing literature in the way of critique or lament. However, ironically, when this is done without a concrete study of non-dominant and non-privileged parts of the world, it becomes yet another way of speaking from the center about the whole, and of depicting the center as normal and the periphery as a projected “other” through which the disciplinary core is reinforced. In order to transcend this state of affairs, it is necessary to actually know about the ways in which IR is practiced around the world, and to identify the concrete mechanisms shaping the field in distinct geocultural sites, a knowledge effort which must use theories drawn from sociology (and history) of science, post-colonialism, and several other fields.

A limited number of studies have emerged on the contrast between the field of International Relations in the United States and Western Europe, but within a global perspective this is a ridiculously narrow view. In tandem with the need to enhance understanding of what IR looks like in distinct places around the globe, our basic argument is that two other types of literature must also be addressed and both of them strengthened by becoming mutually engaged. On the one hand, the discipline has been exposed to various forms of interrogation, including post-positivist critique, sociology of science-based explanations, and historiographic questioning of its self-narration. On the other hand, the study of various “third world” contexts has led to claims that key IR concepts, including the state, self-help, power, and security, do not “fit” third world realities and may not be as relevant as others for thinking about the specific problems of such parts of the world. Connecting the two should bring to light how IR knowledge is shaped by the privileging of the core over the periphery and the formation of key concepts based solely on core perspectives.

The insights and lessons from this endeavor would be helpful for thinking about both “periphery” and “center” IR. The periphery would naturally be better understood, mainly because so little has been written about IR there—and the analysis that does exist is mostly negatively defined, i.e., about the deviations from IR normality, the reality that does not fit “our” theories, and the contributions to the field that never materialize. Looking at IR in different settings, both as scholarship in its own right and within the framework of a critical understanding of the discipline as a whole, would deepen our comprehension of and receptivity to knowledge produced around the world. IR at the center would be better understood too, given that core–periphery relations are an integral part of the social structures that produce knowledge there. Therefore, studying academic practice in the less influential parts of the world does not just explain deviation from a proto-global, Western normality. It also provides key insights into how “really existing IR” as canonized at the center (on behalf of an abstract, universal disciplinary ideal) is not produced by a global discipline that is only temporarily represented by a geographically defined forerunner, but is actually the local product of a particular geoepistemological perspective. Clearly, what IR is and could be at the core is challenged by this global tour.

International Relations is interrogated in this book as both a social and an intellectual phenomenon. That is, we are interested in the discipline of IR as a social world, including the political and social environment that informs scholarship, the rules, rivalries, and regulations operative among people working as IR scholars, and their working conditions and criteria for individual success and professional survival. At the same time, this focus also sheds light on the intellectual products of these people, namely theories and analyses of IR. The social organization influences intellectual patterns: how scholars work, what they are recognized and rewarded for, and what kinds of practices rule the field, are important factors determining what kinds of scholarship are eventually produced and which, among these, comes to count as superior scholarship. Conversely, intellectual structures impact upon social relations: the form of knowledge and especially the dominant conceptions of (social) science and of theory are important elements in the social regulation of scholars. The social and intellectual structures are closely connected, but nevertheless distinct interests. Whether one is interested in understanding the world of IR scholars or the world of IR theories, the analyses in this book should help to obtain a more global answer—the social dimension can be a tool to understanding the intellectual dimension, while conversely, an understanding of the intellectual patterns helps to clarify the social structure of the IR discipline.

Achieving this kind of insight into the geocultural dimension of the IR discipline is a larger task that will be continued in two other edited volumes, as well as a book series titled “Worlding beyond the West.” This first book has the very explicit purpose of satisfying many scholars’ curiosity by explaining “what goes on” in IR in other parts of the world that is difficult to follow due to linguistic and publishing barriers, among other factors. When teaching IR theory, most of us probably field questions from students about how this is seen from other parts of the world: “Is there a Chinese approach?”, “Are conflicts between the West and parts of the Islamic world rooted in different views of international relations?”, “Do African scholars think about the world based upon the specific problems of the continent?”, and so forth. As a student or scholar of international relations, one ought to have some sense of how the discipline looks on a global scale, but so far there has been no such overview available.

Two maturing literatures that need to meet

Since Stanley Hoffmann’s 1977 seminal depiction of International Relations as an American social science, it has become commonplace to affirm that IR is not “international” at all, but rather characterized by the pervasiveness of Anglo-American modes of thought and their respective conceptual and spatial boundaries (cf. also Alker and Biersteker 1984; Holsti 1985). Recent research on the state of the field suggests that the overall nature of IR has changed very little (Wæver 1998; Aydinli and Mathews 2000; Smith 2000; Crawford and Jarvis 2001; Friedrichs 2004). IR’s primary conceptual tools, although sorely inadequate for understanding key global problems and dynamics, do not get updated through innovative input from new circles; few contributions from the non-core are recognized as legitimate ways of thinking about international politics; and scant dialogue exists among competing perspectives.

Notwithstanding attempts within International Relations to reflect critically on itself and to use these reflections constructively for the sake of developing the field, the center– periphery axis has been particularly underexplored. During the past ten years, systematic efforts have been made to analyze the discipline. Debate concerning the irrelevance of standard IR terminology, perspectives, and theories for many “peripheral” situations has also grown considerably, but on a separate, parallel track. The former has taken four basic forms: post-positivist critiques of IR (Lapid 1989; Walker 1993; Smith 1995); historiographic questioning of its disciplinary self-narration (Schmidt 1998, 2002; Wilson 1998; Holden 2001, 2002, 2006; Ashworth 2002); explanation of the existing state of the discipline drawing on sociology of science (Guzzini 1998; Wæver 1998); and exploration of national variations, many of which confirm the continued status of IR as an “American social science” (Wæver 1998; Smith 2000; Crawford and Jarvis 2001; and a number of articles on single cases, many by the contributors to this volume).

Although most of the relativization of the U.S.-centric view has been rooted in comparisons between the United States and Europe, such studies often mention the need to expand this work into non-Western and “third world” contexts. The work actually done about IR theory and the third world has included: analyses of the misfit between numerous core concepts (among them power, security, sovereignty, and the state) and narratives with peripheral realities and problems (Ayoob 1995; Blaney 1996; Inayatullah 1996; Neuman 1998; Chan et al. 2001; Tickner 2003b; Agathangelou and Ling 2004; Inayatullah and Blaney 2004); the examination of national and regional IR perspectives different from those of the United States and Europe (Chan 1996; Cox 1997; Alagappa 1998; Chan 1999; Rajaee 1999; Dunn and Shaw 2001; Inoguchi and Bacon 2001; Euben 2002; Geeraerts and Jeng 2001; Tickner 2003a); and the identification and analysis of representational practices in IR discourses and their role in perpetuating subordinate relations between core and periphery (Escobar 1995; Doty 1996).

As mentioned previously, little has been done in the way of combining these two increasingly dynamic areas of research—critical, disciplinary self-reflection at the core and the periphery’s revolt against IRs concepts—and exploring how the IR discipline and the knowledge it prefers are shaped by core license over the periphery and how the rethinking of concepts in non-core contexts interacts with and influences disciplinary developments at large. We are not saying that this has never occurred. From the pioneering cultural analyses of Ali Mazrui (1990, 1996) to works emerging from post-colonialism and feminism on the role of geocultural factors in molding epistemological perspectives (Harding 1998), important observations have been made. However, this nexus remains systematically understudied. The discipline seems to be heading—slowly and reluctantly—towards increased sociological reflexivity, but one major aspect is still missing: the core–periphery structure so deeply entrenched within it. In turn, analyses of IR from the periphery could also benefit from being connected more systematically to historiographic, sociological and epistemological debates that have focused mainly on the discipline at the core.

Around the world

Our basic premise is that the first step towards addressing this lacuna is simply to ask what the state of IR is in different corners of the world. Similar questions have been posed before, normally in relation to only one country or region, and a few relatively brief summaries of larger parts of the globe. However, no study has covered all parts of the world, and none has tried to draw systematically upon sociology of science, post-colonialism, and other helpful disciplines in mapping the field’s global contours. This effort becomes more complicated as soon as one starts to think about the circularity of the question: How does one ask about IR in different places without assuming either some a-spatial and a-temporal conception of the field or privileging core IR as normality? In what sense do the different efforts unearthed constitute “IR” and what would it take for the discipline to recognize them as such?

The choice of a geographical strategy in this volume is meant to be an interpretative grid rather than a claim about “the Indian approach” or “the Chinese school.” Although we aim to bring to light the varied approaches that exist and compete in distinct locales, this is best achieved by moving around the world and shifting the geographical reference point chapter by chapter. On a more concrete level, the selection of countries and regions for the book’s distinct chapters involves a choice among a spectrum of possible scales and their ensuing delineations. This ultimately comes down to pragmatic judgments about which areas can be covered within one chapter and which demand more extensive treatment—for example, one chapter for China, one that covers Japan, Korea, and Taiwan together, two chapters for Africa, and only one for Latin America. The drawing of lines is not meant to be a deep ontological statement à la Huntington about natural regions or civilizations, and along the arch from Turkey to India especially we could have made other choices—for example, we might have created a “Muslim countries” category and pulled Pakistan and Iran in with the Arab states (creating problems in Southeast Asia), or defined Israel into a larger Middle East. However, the ultimate criterion had to be (our pre-book knowledge of) the nature and conditions of IR scholarship in these sites, where it seems reasonable to consider both Turkey and Israel distinct from the Arab world, to look separately at Iran, and to treat South Asia as an integrated region. Similarly controversial is the decision to group the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland together as “the Anglo core,” emphasizing its global position as “almost center” or “post-imperial non-core” more than contiguity or other forms of internal coherence in the group. The cuts between both Canada and the United States, and the British Isles and the rest of Europe are in some respects unnatural, but in others the chapter captures extremely well the shared condition of being in the English-speaking developed world, and thus as privileged as can be without being in the United States as such. Although there is no one correct way to do to this, we believe that we have created a 16 case study structure that is both exhaustive and non-overlapping, in which each chapter is meaningful within its own borders, be they national or regional.

A likely question is whether a project of this nature shows the discipline of IR as particularly self-examining. Other fields, such as anthropology, have been even more soul-searching, partly due to self-doubt about th...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of tables and figures
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: geocultural epistemologies
• 2 Latin America: still policy dependent after all these years?
• 3 South Africa: between history and a hard place
• 4 Africa: teaching IR where it’s not supposed to be
• 5 Japan, Korea, and Taiwan: are one hundred flowers about to blossom?
• 6 China: between copying and constructing
• 7 Southeast Asia: theory and praxis in International Relations
• 8 South Asia: a “realist” past and alternative futures
• 9 Iran: accomplishments and limitations in IR
• 10 Arab countries: the object worlds back
• 11 Israel: the development of a discipline in a unique setting
• 12 Turkey: towards homegrown theorizing and building a disciplinary community
• 13 Russia: IR at a crossroads
• 14 Central and Eastern Europe: between continuity and change
• 15 Western Europe: structure and strategy at the national and regional levels
• 16 The “crimson world”: the Anglo core, the post-Imperial non-core, and the hegemony of American IR
• 17 The parochialism of hegemony: challenges for “American” International Relations
• 18 Conclusion: worlding where the West once was