Critics at the edge? Decolonizing methodologies in International Relations

Abstract

This article reviews three recent books that challenge conventional ways of doing International Relations. The rich arguments deployed in these books provide different yet complementary perspectives that can help us to rethink International Relations. They share a concern over what they regard as International Relations’ entrenched coloniality and disciplinary straitjacket. They challenge what they identify as the hegemonic practices of conventional knowledge production that exclude alternative ways of knowing the international. They explore how International Relations is produced in the non-core and how personal narratives are embedded in theory-making, and question the claims to science of conventional methodologies. Yet, if all three books contribute to a praiseworthy attempt to trespass disciplinary boundaries, they also perpetuate hegemonic silences by failing adequately to engage with gender and indigenous perspectives.

Does Tanzania's Development Trajectory Borrow from the China Model?

“…This is problematic as IR, especially in Africa, tends to be explained in terms of arbitrary borders inherited from the colonial era. The problem here is that sovereignty then tends to be superimposed in politics, thereby making any extrasovereign dimensions impossible to see (Picq 2013). It is in this context that Siddarth Mallavarapu investigated the flow of goods across the Indian Ocean rather than considering artificial borders that depict overlapping patterns of authorities, which are impossible to grasp under traditional IR frameworks (Picq 2013).…”

“…The problem here is that sovereignty then tends to be superimposed in politics, thereby making any extrasovereign dimensions impossible to see (Picq 2013). It is in this context that Siddarth Mallavarapu investigated the flow of goods across the Indian Ocean rather than considering artificial borders that depict overlapping patterns of authorities, which are impossible to grasp under traditional IR frameworks (Picq 2013). A clearer example of the weaknesses in IR's obsession with stateness, or statehood, in its theory is offered by Rainer Hulsse who depicts himself in his tragicomic essay as a double soldier in Switzerland and Germany, given his dual‐nationality status (cited in Picq 2013).…”

Circuits, the everyday and international relations: Connecting the home to the international and transnational

“…A steady focus has also been maintained on elites, institutions and borders, and thus IR has been justifiably accused of ethnocentrism. As Picq (2013: 446) observed, ‘epistemologically speaking, IR remains a confined space’. Only relatively recently have mainstream IR authors sought to theorise a networked and transnational world (Keohane, 2005; Slaughter, 2017).…”

“…The point is an important one, albeit an uncomfortable one to admit: scholarly interpretations of conflict and people’s experiences of conflict can be anti-vernacular processes that risk stripping agency from individuals and groups who actually experience a conflict. This applies to qualitative and quantitative treatments of conflict that not only have their own scholarly argot, but also are reinforced by favourable political economies of knowledge production and research dissemination (Picq, 2013: 445).…”

Ali A. Mazrui, the Postcolonial Theorist

“…5.Today there is also growing awareness in postcolonialism that storytelling is an acceptable mode of inquiry. See, e.g., Picq (2013). …”