Blinkered Learning, Blinkered Theory: How Histories in Textbooks Parochialize IR

Abstract

Calls for a more “global” international relations (IR) based on theories grounded in world rather than Western histories have highlighted the Eurocentrism of history within the discipline. Global IR literature, however, neglects the role of tempocentrism in fostering that Eurocentrism. Tempocentric IR portrays the past as an extrapolation of the (Eurocentric) present, suggesting an inevitability and normality to Western dominance of international relations and obscuring non-Western significance. It also deprives IR theory-building of a broader pool of examples to inform existing theories. This article locates those centrisms in the textbooks of the discipline, while drawing on interdisciplinary research to reveal the disproportionate influence of the first years of higher education on students’ future worldviews. It is here that students are exposed to a historical grand narrative that establishes the boundaries of their inquiries and outlines what is, and what is not, significant. For a more “global” IR, therefore, it is suggested that textbook historical narratives require reconstructing in two ways. First, textbook history should be presented through connections and relations rather than substances. Second, historical chapters should reveal the multiple layers of time, including the deeper past, that have been instrumental in constituting the international relations of today.

Introducing the ‘conceptual archive’: A genealogy of counterterrorism in 1970s Britain

“…Such is security studies' dual problem with the past: either an 'obsession' 41 with the present in empirical analysis, constraining the discipline's conceptual scope; or, a 'fetish' for 'the particular and the exceptional' 42 negating past-present interpellation. All is not lost, however.…”

Mapping practices and spatiality in IR knowledge production: from detachment to emancipation

“…It involves a multiplicity of political projects that relate to each other when acknowledging the centrality of race and racism in the articulation of global power relations (that includes the academy), the continuities of the imperial/colonial legacies (subjectively and materially) and its capacity to re-articulate through multiple layers of Global North/Global South relations. (Fonseca, 2019: 59) Such investigations include problematising the assumption of Western ascendency as natural and given, and focusing on the broader relations between non-state actors (Powel, 2020). Several respondents highlighted that mainstream IR's focus on the Westphalian state was often less applicable in non-Western contexts and that emancipation should work to move beyond the 'black box of the state' and unpack broader knowledge claims and practices.…”

“…Ever since Stanley Hoffmann’s 1977 claim that IR is an ‘American Social Science’, debates have continued over the American or Western-dominated nature of the discipline (Hoffmann, 1977; Smith, 2000; Wæver, 1998). Numerous studies have revealed Western/US hegemony and insularity across a range of academic practices, from theory-building (Tickner, 2013) and publishing practices (Hendrix and Vreede, 2019; Maliniak et al, 2018) to syllabi and pedagogical practices (Andrews, 2020; Colgan, 2016; Kang and Lin, 2019; Mantz, 2019; Powel, 2020). These findings are largely mirrored in the sentiments of IR academics towards their discipline (Maliniak et al, 2014).…”

“…Such investigations include problematising the assumption of Western ascendency as natural and given, and focusing on the broader relations between non-state actors (Powel, 2020). Several respondents highlighted that mainstream IR’s focus on the Westphalian state was often less applicable in non-Western contexts and that emancipation should work to move beyond the ‘black box of the state’ and unpack broader knowledge claims and practices.…”

Three visions of the global: global international relations, global history, global historical sociology

“… 5 ‘World history’ is one of the six research agendas proposed for global IR in Acharya 2014, 652. For previous attempts to link global IR and global history, see Bilgin 2016; Phillips 2017; Powel 2020.…”