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Historicising Eurocentrism and anti-Eurocentrism in IR: A revisionist account of disciplinary self-reflexivity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 September 2015

DENIZ KURU
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Abstract

The role of Eurocentrism in International Relations (IR) has become a focal point for critical scholarship. However, anti-Eurocentric scholars tend to overlook the extent to which Eurocentrism is a tempo-spatial phenomenon whose roots and development need to be analysed in a way that takes its internal differences into account. This article rejects a single notion of Eurocentrism, proposing instead to understand Eurocentrism through its three forms: historical-contextual, ideological, and residual. This differentiation can provide a means for dealing with the challenges of Eurocentrism in a more self-reflexive manner without seeing it as omnipresent and unchanging. It also offers to approach Eurocentric IR from a perspective that considers the role of historiographical differences in understanding the rise of European powers. This means that IR cannot base its explanatory frameworks on a single (the) historical record. Understanding the limits of Eurocentrism and of anti-Eurocentrism provides a better means for dealing with the formerʼs problematic impact on IR scholarship.

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Articles
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Review of International Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , April 2016 , pp. 351 - 376
Copyright
© 2015 British International Studies Association 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank J. Ann Tickner and John M. Hobson for their encouraging remarks on the first draft of this article. My thanks extend to the two reviewers for their very useful suggestions and to the RIS editorial team.

References

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2 For examples see the discussion below on definitions.

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4 Tickner, J. Ann, ‘Reading Hobson through feminist lenses’, Millennium, 42:2 (2014), pp. 472–479CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is important to note that Hobson is criticised here for ignoring the feminist critique of Eurocentrism in IR.

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9 See Mann, Michael, ‘Explaining International Relations, empires and European miracles: A response’, Millennium, 34:2 (2006), pp. 541–550CrossRefGoogle Scholar for another case in which Hobson’s historical account is rejected by reference to European actors’ dominant role in the late nineteenth century. It is important to note that Mann is careful to reject Eurocentric accounts while defending the relevance of Europeans.

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21 In Bilgin, Pınar, ‘The “Western-centrism” of security studies: “Blind spot” or constitutive practice?’, Security Dialogue, 41:6 (2010), pp. 615–622CrossRefGoogle Scholar a most symbolic example of this interwovenness comes to the surface, with the title referring to Western-centrism but the keywords list containing Eurocentrism.

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23 Ibid., p. 359, emphasis added.

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27 Ibid., p. 314.

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31 Ibid., pp. 16, 18.

32 Ibid., p. 29.

33 Ibid., pp. 236–42. Knutsen, Torbjørn, ‘Western approaches’, Millennium, 42:2 (2014), pp. 448–455CrossRefGoogle Scholar also states how the book is open to questions about its possibly excessive critical engagement that tends to encompass virtually all of IR scholarship within its Eurocentrism critique.

34 Hobson, , Eurocentric Conception, p. 320Google Scholar. It is important to distinguish between his manifest vs subliminal Eurocentrism and the three forms of Eurocentrism I propose. In the former, there is a rather cyclical quality with the manifest version being the more definitive form of Eurocentrism, whereas my framework is based on a gradual de-Eurocentricisation of world politics and the discipline of IR itself. This means that conjunctural forms and ideological versions gradually lose their influence, with residual Eurocentrism being a probable transitionary stage into a fully non-Eurocentric IR.

35 Hobson, , ‘Is critical theory’, p. 102Google Scholar.

36 Hobson, John M. and Lawson, George, ‘What is history in International Relations?’, Millennium, 37:2 (2008), p. 434CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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38 Hobson, , Eurocentric Conception, pp. 224–225Google Scholar.

39 See Hobson, The Eastern Origins.

40 Hobson, , Eurocentric Conception, pp. 325–326Google Scholar.

41 A different, but related problem is, as Robert Vitalis has recently pointed out, that Hobson’s framework has difficulties when interpreting scholars whose Eurocentricness decreased (or increased) over time. See his ‘A great-grandson breaks new ground in critical IR thought’, Millennium, 42:2 (2014), pp. 480–4.

42 Hobson, , Eurocentric Conception, p. 326Google Scholar.

43 Ibid., p. 331.

44 For the former see Acharya, Amitav and Buzan, Barry (eds), Non-Western International Relations Theory: Perspectives On and Beyond Asia (London: Routledge, 2010)Google Scholar and Shilliam, Robbie (ed.), International Relations and Non-Western Thought: Imperialism, Colonialism and Investigations of Global Modernity (London: Routledge, 2011)Google Scholar; for the latter see Lamy, Steven, Baylis, John, Smith, Steve, Owens, and Patricia, Introduction to Global Politics (3rd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)Google Scholar and Baylis, John, Smith, Steve, and Owens, Patricia (eds), The Globalization of World Politics (6th edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)Google Scholar. Both textbooks aim to have a non-US perspective and to refer as much as possible to non-Western settings, unlike the previous mainstream textbooks focusing on the US and the Western setting. One has to note that both are among the most popular textbooks in the field, with the former prepared more specifically for the US students.

45 See Long and Schmidt (eds), Imperialism and Internationalism.

46 See Wæver, Ole, ‘The sociology of a not so international discipline: American and European developments in International Relations’, International Organization, 52:4 (1998), pp. 687–727CrossRefGoogle Scholar on IR’s prospects as a pluralistic discipline.

47 Hobson, , Eurocentric Conception, p. 344Google Scholar.

48 See Keohane, Robert, ‘Beyond dichotomy: Conversations between International Relations and feminist theory’, International Studies Quarterly, 42:1 (1998), pp. 193–197CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Tickner, J. Ann, ‘Continuing the conversation…’, International Studies Quarterly, 42:1 (1998), pp. 205–210CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Their International Systems in World History (text)book from 2000 emerges as the most important (and first) mainstream engagement with Eurocentric IR.

50 See Amitav Acharya’s ISA Presidential Address at the 2014 ISA annual convention in Toronto published as ‘Global International Relations (IR) and regional worlds – A new agenda for International Studies’, International Studies Quarterly, 58:4 (2014), pp. 647–59 and Neumann’s, Iver inaugural lecture at the LSE published as ‘International Relations as a social science’, Millennium, 43:1 (2014), p. 336Google Scholar and also fn. 22, where he makes the point that Eurocentrism is not only scientifically but also politically and morally untenable. Even Chris Brown, usually discontent to spend time on IR’s self-focused disciplinary issues, sees Eurocentric IR as a problem to the extent that non-Europeans’ thinking is ignored just because ‘they are non-Europeans’ (emphasis in original). See his ‘IR as a social science: A response’, Millennium, 43:1 (2014), p. 353.

51 Tickner, Arlene B. and Wæver, Ole, International Relations Scholarship around the World (New York: Routledge, 2009), p. 338Google Scholar.

52 Hobson, , ‘Is critical theory’, p. 106Google Scholar.

53 See also Rumelili, ‘Uluslararası İlişkilerde’, for a case in which any study that does not focus on the subjecthood of a non-Western actor is defined to be Eurocentric.

54 Jones, , Decolonizing International Relations, p. 2Google Scholar.

55 For instance, Kautilya’s much emphasised treatise on (world) politics Arthasastra, while being an important contribution of Indian civilisational sphere, was only rediscovered in its full text version in the twentieth century. Thus it could not have become a completely influential guide in contributing to IR even if the discipline were less Eurocentric in its early periods.

56 See Shilliam, International Relations and Non-Western Thought on non-Western international thought. It is significant that this volume shows the impact of the Western-shaped international order for the non-West, as its focus is much determined by the impact of Western imperialism.

57 For an influential example see Lebow, Richard Ned, A Cultural Theory of International Relations (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 Acharya and Buzan, Non-Western International Relations Theory, see especially the contributions by Buzan and Little.

59 In a 1997 volume on contemporary major IR scholars, all were from the ‘West’. By 2013, in another similar volume, which however also dealt with older scholarship, ‘IR classics’ were again all Western. See Neumann, Iver B. and Wæver, Ole (eds), The Future of International Relations: Masters in the Making? (London: Routledge, 1997)Google Scholar and Bliddal, Henrik, Sylvest, Casper, and Peter, Wilson (eds), Classics of International Relations: Essays in Criticism and Appreciation (London: Routledge, 2013)Google Scholar. But this only shows that ideational foundations are changing less quickly compared to interest shown for regions such as East Asia and Latin America in more recent IR studies. However, previously referred works by Acharya and Buzan as well as Shilliam show recent advances in this dimension, too.

60 See Zakaria, Fareed, The Post-American World (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008)Google Scholar and Ikenberry, John, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

61 Buzan, Barry and Lawson, George, ‘The global transformation: The nineteenth century and the making of modern International Relations’, International Studies Quarterly, 57:3 (2013), pp. 621CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 629.

62 In another joint article, they also criticise the usage of Eurocentric benchmarks such as 1648 and 1989 in IR. See Lawson, Buzan and, ‘Rethinking benchmark dates in International Relations’, European Journal of International Relations, 20:2 (2014), pp. 437–462Google Scholar.

63 Musgrave, Paul and Nexon, Daniel H., ‘Singularity or aberration? A response to Buzan and Lawson’, International Studies Quarterly, 57:3 (2013), p. 639CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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65 Osterhammel, Jürgen, Die Verwandlung der Welt: eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Beck, 2011), p. 20Google Scholar. Here and below, translations from German are mine. (The book was published as The Transformation of the World by Princeton University Press in 2014.)

66 Ibid., p. 118.

67 Langewiesche, Dieter, ‘Das Jahrhundert Europas. Eine Annäherung in globalhistorischer perspektive’, Historische Zeitschrift, 296:1 (2013), pp. 29CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 34.

68 It would suffice to compare Landes’, David S.The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor (New York: Norton, 1999)Google Scholar to C. A., Bayly’sThe Birth of the Modern World, 1789–1914 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004)Google Scholar to see different historiographical takes on the European role in the modern world.

69 This should not mean, however, that there are not important problems of Eurocentrism in the discipline of history itself. See Goody, Jack, The Theft of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)Google Scholar for a recent important discussion that also extends to social sciences.

70 Leira, Halvard, ‘International Relations pluralism and history: Embracing amateurism to strengthen the profession’, International Studies Perspectives, 16:1 (2015), p. 28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 See Lawson, George, ‘The eternal divide? History and International Relations’, European Journal of International Relations, 18:2 (2010), esp. pp. 221–222Google Scholar.

72 In a related context, discussing the (dis)connections between modernity and modernisation theory, Richard Wolin makes an important point when he calls for a form of ‘enlightened Eurocentrism’ that should provide a ‘self-critical Eurocentrism’ open to different cultural claims. See his ‘“Modernity”: The peregrinations of a contested historiographical concept’, The American Historical Review, 116:3 (2011), p. 747. The politico-historical Eurocentric legacy should not be, similarly, equated with the three forms of Eurocentrism.

73 Drayton, Richard, ‘Where does the world historian write from? Objectivity, moral conscience and the past and present of Imperialism’, Journal of Contemporary History, 46:3 (2011), p. 673CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The book is C. A. Bayly’s The Birth of the Modern World, 1789–1914. Noteworthy is Osterhammel’s (p. 16) caveat about his book’s relatively more Eurocentric nature compared to Bayly’s work.

74 Bull, Hedley, ‘The theory of International Relations 1919–1969’, in James Der Derian (ed.), International Theory: Critical Investigations (New York: New York University Press, 1995), p. 208Google Scholar. Originally published in 1972.

75 Bull, , ‘The theory’, p. 209Google Scholar.

76 See Dahrendorf, Ralf, Die angewandte Aufklärung: Gesellschaft und Soziologie in Amerika (Munich: R. Piper, 1963)Google Scholar.

77 Bull, , ‘The theory’, p. 209Google Scholar, emphasis added.

78 However, one has to note, as also Hobson does in Eurocentric Conception (p. 233), a later comment by Bull, made during his Hagey lecture in 1980: ‘… in choosing what parts of the historical past we examine we quite legitimately allow ourselves to be affected by our interest in the antecedents of events and issues that are important here and now. God forbid that we should turn away from Eurocentric international and imperial history towards so-called anti-imperialist or national liberation accounts of the past’. Although this position defends a more Eurocentric approach even in a rather explicit fashion, it is the ‘here’ and ‘now’ that should matter. Bull’s previous observations, discussed above, contradict these 1980 comments, and show his actual realisation of a changing world order. At the same time, these later explanations are also relevant with regard to my previous emphasis on the geo-historical epistemologies that scholars choose. Bull’s observation is in line with the position of choosing one’s historical (historiographical) starting point.

79 Stanley Hoffmann, ‘An American social science: International Relations’, in Der Derian (ed.), International Theory, p. 224. Originally published in 1977.

80 Ibid., p. 240.

81 Patomäki, Heikki, ‘Back to the Kantian “Idea for a Universal History”? Overcoming Eurocentric accounts of the international problematic’, Millennium, 35:3 (2007), pp. 576–577CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a similar position see Vasilaki, ‘Provincialising IR’, p. 5.

82 Patomäki, ‘Back to the Kantian “Idea for a Universal History”?’, p. 582.

83 Ibid., p. 594.

84 It is in this historical sense that one can rethink Bull’s observations in his 1980 Hagey lecture that I discussed in fn. 78. For Bull, the world was changing, but its (previous) determinants were still Eurocentric when it came to a historical explanation of world politics.

85 Wallerstein, ‘Eurocentrism’.

86 Hans J. Morgenthau, ‘The intellectual and political functions of theory’, in Der Derian (ed.), International Theory, p. 47. Originally published in 1970.

87 See Schmidt, Brian C., The Political Discourse of Anarchy: A Disciplinary History of International Relations (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Knutsen, Torbjørn L., ‘A lost generation? IR scholarship before World War I’, International Politics, 45:6 (2008), pp. 650–674CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robert Vitalis, ‘Birth of a discipline’, in Long and Schmidt (eds), Imperialism and Internationalism, pp. 159–81.

88 Hobsbawm, Eric, The Age of Empire (New York: Vintage, 1989)Google Scholar.

89 Lizée, Pierre, A Whole New World: Reinventing International Studies for the Post-Western World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90 Telò, Mario, International Relations: A European Perspective (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), p. 10Google Scholar.

91 Ibid., p. 1.

92 Harding, Sandra G., Is Science Multicultural?: Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

93 Tickner, Arlene B. and Wæver, Ole, International Relations Scholarship, p. 334Google Scholar.

94 The volume does not have an entry on Eurocentrism in the index.

95 Tickner and Wæver, International Relations Scholarship, pp. 340, 329.

96 Lizée, Whole New World, p. 4.

97 Ibid., pp. 9–11.

98 Acharya, Amitav, ‘Dialogue and discovery: In search of International Relations theories beyond the West’, Millennium, 39:3 (2011), p. 620CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

99 Ibid., pp. 625, 624, 626.

100 Ibid., p. 621, fn. 10.

101 See Ikenberry, John and Mastanduno, Michael, International Relations Theory and the Asia-Pacific (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003)Google Scholar and Paul, T. V., Larson, Deborah Welch, and William C., Wohlforth (eds), Status in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

102 This is also visible in the recent engagements with racism within IR. In addition to Vitalis, ‘Birth of a discipline’, there is also Race and Racism in International Relations: Confronting the Global Colour Line (London: Routledge, 2014), a volume co-edited by Alexander Anievas, Nivi Manchanda, and Robbie Shilliam, that deals with the problematic nature of racism in the discipline and global politics. The important aspect here pertains to the fact that this very focus is a result of a less Eurocentric IR, although race was also, as Vitalis has significantly demonstrated, at the origins of IR’s scholarly foundations. Stated differently, the gradual decline in Eurocentrism has paved the way for a more critical engagement with various aspects so far left unanalysed.

103 Jones, , Decolonizing, p. 229Google Scholar.

104 Tickner, Arlene, ‘Seeing IR differently: Notes from the Third World’, Millennium, 32:2 (2003), p. 301CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

105 For relevant acknowledgements of this problem, see for instance Bilgin, Pınar, ‘Thinking past “Western” IR’, Third World Quarterly, 29:1 (2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

106 The recent volumes co-edited by Arlene Tickner and David Blaney are an important step in this direction, as they go beyond the earlier assumptions about any non-Western scholarship being non-Eurocentric. To the contrary, they build on the idea that a real engagement beyond IR’s ‘West’ can only arise from more self-reflexive approaches that recognise the actual connections and differences between Western and non-Western thought and scholarship. See their Thinking International Relations Differently (London: Routledge, 2012) and Claiming the International (London: Routledge, 2013).

107 Kristensen, Peter Marcus, ‘Revisiting the ‘American social science’: Mapping the geography of International Relations’, International Studies Perspectives, 16:3 (2015), p. 266CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

108 Koskenniemi, Martti, ‘Law, teleology and International Relations: An essay in counterdisciplinarity’, International Relations, 26:1 (2012), p. 18CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The study is May, Ernest R., Rosecrance, Richard N., Steiner, and Zara, , History and Neorealism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

109 Hagmann, Jonas and Biersteker, Thomas J., ‘Beyond the published discipline: Toward a critical pedagogy of international studies’, European Journal of International Relations, 20:2 (2014), pp. 291–315CrossRefGoogle Scholar.