Despite attempts to redress the balance, international relations (IR) as a discipline is still dominated by Western theories. The contributors in this book explore the challenges of constructing an alternative, with a dialogue between global and local approaches. Drawing on scholars with backgrounds in the United States, Europe, Asia and South America, this volume attempts to critically engage with and reflect upon existing traditions of IR theory to produce a deeply pluralist approach. Traditions, cultures, histories and practices from around the world influence their respective theoretical understanding and in turn explain why the Western tradition of IR is insufficient. This book provides great insight for scholars of IR from around the world, looking for more diversity in IR theory.
This volumes engages with the 'Global(izing) International Relations' debate, which is marked by the emerging tensions between the steadily increasing diversity and persisting dividing lines in today's International Relations (IR) scholarship. Its international cast of scholars draw together a diverse set of theoretical and methodological approaches, and a multitude of case studies focusing on IR scholarship in African and Muslim thought, as well as in countries such as China, Iran, Australia, Russia and Southeast Asian and Latin American regions. The following questions underpin this study: how is IR practiced beyond the West, and which theoretical alternatives are there for Western IR concepts? Fundamentally, what divides today's IR scholarship in light of its geo-epistemological diversity? This volume identifies shortcomings in the existing debate and offers new pathways for future research.
This book seeks to reposition international relations (IR) theory by providing insights into non-Western concepts and theories. By engaging with understandings of power, identity, the state and the individual from a range of states outside of the Western hemisphere, the contributors to this book introduce new methods for understanding aspects of IR in context considerate ways. Engagements with Western theories and cases highlight how we need to reposition traditional understandings to allow non-Western approaches to IR develop alongside and inform their Western counterparts. Moreover, the book reinforces the need to move beyond the traditionally used Western-centric lenses without removing them completely, instead it advocates a harmonisation between them to reduce generalisations across the local, state and regional levels.
Globalizing International Theory adds to the literature on non-Western international relations (IR) theory by probing the question of what it means to globalize international theory. The book starts with the premise that international theory is unfinished, incomplete, and homogenous because it provides a limited conception of the international which, in turn, derives from its partiality that reflects its narrow Western-centric bias. The contributors argue that the IR vision of the world is projected through a polarizing Western-filtered lens. Rather than utilizing an objective set of explanatory tools for explaining world politics, the reality is that orthodox IR theory only tells us why ‘the West is best’ and why ‘the Rest should become like the West’. This means that international theory is not truly international. In provincializing Western international theory, this volume navigates beyond the Eurocentric and imperial frontier of the prevailing limited conception of the international to explore the hidden contributions to international theory which can be found in the non-Western world. Bringing in excluded, non-Western conceptions of international theory highlights a broader conception of the international. The book provides a framework for theorizing globally, exploring the fundamental problems with Western IR theory, and how to overcome them. This book will be used by advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, scholars, researchers, and IR theorists worldwide who are interested in non-Western IR theory. It will help navigate the problem of internationalness in the face of the grand theoretical problem of our time: the use and misuse of international theory in making sense of, and responding to, the complex global realities of the twenty-first century.
Presents a challenge to international relations scholars to think globally, understanding the field's development in the Global South alongside the traditionally dominant Western approach.
Building on the recent initiative to truly globalize the field of international relations, this book provides an innovative interrogation of regionalism. The book applies a globalizing framework to the study of regional worlds in order to move beyond the traditional conception of regionalism, which views regions as competing blocs dominated by great powers. Bringing together a wide range of case studies, the book shows that regions are instead dynamic configurations of social and political identities in which a variety of actors, including the less powerful, interact and partake in regionalization processes and have done so through the centuries.
Unrivalled coverage of IR theories from leading experts, featuring a new chapter that reflects on the historic marginalisation of global IR and a wide range of case studies that show readers how theory can be applied to address concrete political problems.
International Relations (IR), as a discipline, is a western dominated enterprise. This has led to calls to broaden the scope and vision of the discipline by embracing a wider range of histories, experiences, and theoretical perspectives – particularly those outside the Anglo-American core of the West. The ongoing ‘broadening IR projects’ – be they ‘non-Western IR’, ‘post-Western IR’, or ‘Global IR’ – are making contributions in this regard. However, some careful thinking is needed here in that these attempts could also lead to a national or regional ‘inwardness’ that works to reproduce the very parochialism that is being challenged. The main intellectual concerns of this edited volume are problematising Western parochialism in IR; giving theoretical and epistemological substance to pluralism in the field of IR based on both Western and non-Western thoughts and experiences; and working out ways to move the discipline of IR one step closer to a dialogic community. A key issue that cuts across all contributions in the volume is to go beyond both parochialism and fragmentation in international studies. In order to address the manifold and contested implications of pluralism in in the field of IR, the volume draws on the wealth of experience and research of prominent and emerging IR scholars whose contributions make up the work, with a mixture of theoretical analysis and case studies. This book will appeal to scholars and students interested in Global IR and promoting dialogue in a pluralist IR.
Drawing on a wealth of expertise from an international team of contributors, the second edition of International Relations Theories presents a diverse selection of theoretical positions. Arguing that theory is central to explaining the dynamics of world politics, editors Tim Dunne, Milja Kurki, and Steve Smith cover a wide variety of theoretical positions--from the historically dominant traditions to powerful critical voices since the 1980s. The editors have brought together a team of international contributors, each specializing in a different theory. The contributors explain the theoretical background to their positions before showing how and why their theories matter. The book opens up space for analysis and debate, allowing students to decide which theories they find most useful in explaining and understanding international relations.
