Thinking past 'Western' IR

Dados Bibliográficos

ID5771580
AutoresPinar Bilgin (0000-0002-7326-8329, Bilkent University, autor correspondente)
Ano2007
Volume29
Fascículo1
Páginas5-23
Data de publicação2007-12-05
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThird World Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0143-6597 • E-ISSN: 1360-2241
EditoraTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/01436590701726392
OpenAlexW2160850287
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas169
Referências citadas23

The laudable attempts at thinking past 'Western'ir should not limit their task to looking beyond the spatial confines of the 'West' in search for insight understood as 'difference', but also ask awkward questions about the 'Westernness' of ostensibly 'Western' approaches to world politics and the 'non-Westernness' of others. For there may be elements of 'non-Western' experiences and ideas built in to 'Western' ways of thinking about and doing world politics. The reverse may also be true. What we think of as 'non-Western' approaches to world politics may be suffused with 'Western' concepts and theories. Indeed, those who are interested in thinking past 'Western'ir should take an additional step and inquire into the evolution of the latter. While looking beyond the 'West' may not always involve discovering something that is radically 'different' from one's own ways of thinking about and doing world politics, such seeming absence of 'difference' cannot be explained away through invoking assumptions of 'teleological Westernisation', but requires becoming curious about the effects of the historical relationship between the 'West' and the 'non-West' in the emergence of ways of thinking and doing that are-in Bhabha's words-'almost the same but not quite'. This article looks at three such instances (India's search for nuclear power status, Turkey's turn to secularism, and Asia's integration into the liberal world order) in the attempt to illustrate how 'mimicry' may emerge as a way of 'doing' world politics in a seemingly 'similar' yet unexpectedly 'different' way. Notes This article was written while the author was a fellow (2006 - 07) at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, Washington, DC. An earlier version was presented at the 48th annual convention of the International Studies Association, Chicago, IL, 28 February - 3 March 2007. My thanks go to the panel convenor Mustapha Kamal Pasha as well as to Adam David Morton and Philippa Strum for comments. I would also like to thank the participants of the 'Geocultural Epistemologies' project and its convenors Arlene Tickner and Ole Waever. The ideas I have presented in this article have been shaped through project-related encounters at successive isa meetings and workshops during 2004 - 07. 1 S Hoffman, 'An American social science-International Relations', Daedalus, 106 (3), 1977, pp 68 - 82; and E Krippendorf, 'The dominance of American approaches in International Relations', Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 16 (2), 1987, pp 207 - 214. 2 O Waever, 'The sociology of a not so international discipline: American and European developments in International Relations', International Organization, 52 (4), 1998, pp 687 - 727. 3 S Smith, 'The United States and the discipline of International Relations: "hegemonic country, hegemonic discipline"', International Studies Review, 4 (2), 2002, pp 67 - 85. 4 L Yew, The Disjunctive Empire of International Relations, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. 5 AM Agathangelou & LHM Ling, 'The house of ir: from family power politics to the poisies of worldism', International Studies Review, 6 (4), 2004, pp 21 - 49; and N Inayatollah & DL Blaney, International Relations and the Problem of Difference, London: Routledge, 2004. 6 SG Neuman (ed), International Relations Theory and the Third World, London: Macmillan, 1998; CS Jones, 'Special issue: Locating the "I" in ir-disclocating Euro-American theories', Global Society, 17 (2), 2003; RA Crawford & DS Jarvis (eds), ir -Still an American Social Science: Toward Diversity in International Thought, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001; S Chan, PG Mandaville & R Bleiker (eds), The Zen of International Relations: ir Theory from East to West, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001; and AB Tickner & O Waever (eds), Global International Relations Scholarship: Worlding Beyond the West, London: Routledge, forthcoming. 7 HK Bhabha, The Location of Culture, London: Routledge, 1994. 8 K Booth, 'Human wrongs and International Relations', International Affairs, 71 (1), 1995, p 125. 9 Unless, that is, s/he is willing to become curious about the production of 'sameness' (see below). 10 P Bilgin & AD Morton, 'Historicizing representations of "failed states": beyond the cold war annexation of the social sciences?', Third World Quarterly, 23 (1), 2003, pp 55 - 80. 11 E W Said, Orientalism, New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. 12 A Mazrui, 'The re-invention of Africa: Edward Said, VY Mudimbe and beyond', Research in African Literatures, 36 (3), 2005, pp 68 - 82. 13 But see JM Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 14 F Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, New York: Groove Weidenfeld, 1963, p 102. 15 A Sen, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny, New York: WW Norton, 2006, pp 57, and esp 121 - 169. 16 A theme elaborated upon by Bhabha, The Location of Culture. Sen, Identity and Violence, pp 87 - 88 uses the example of James Mill's History of India. Although Mill never visited India and the book was suffused with inaccuracies and misrepresentations, it was nevertheless considered for decades to be 'the Bible of every British officer' visiting the country. 17 T Mitchell, 'The stage of modernity' in Mitchell (ed), Questions of Modernity, Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press, 2003, p 13. 18 Ibid, pp 3, 6. 19 Sen, Identity and Violence, p 57. 20 Ibid, pp 51 - 55; and B Bowden, 'The river of inter-civilisational relations: the ebb and flow of peoples, ideas and innovations', Third World Quarterly, 28 (7), 2007, pp 1359 - 1374. 21 T Barkawi & M Laffey, 'The imperial peace: democracy, force and globalization', European Journal of International Relations, 5 (4), 1999, pp 403 - 434. 22 See, for example, SP Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996; and B Lewis, 'The roots of Muslim rage', Atlantic Monthly, 17 (4), 1990, pp 17 - 26. 23 N Chomsky (ed), The Cold War and the University: Toward an Intellectual History of the Postwar Years, New York: New Press, 1997. 24 C Simpson (ed), Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences during the Cold War, New York: New Press, 1998; and I Oren, Our Enemies and US: America's Rivalries and the Making of Political Science, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003. 25 See notes 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. 26 PF Bell, 'The impact of the United States on the development of social sciences in Thailand', Social Science Models and their Impact on the Third World, XX (XX), 1991, p 97 (emphasis in original). 27 Nicholas Onuf provides alternative models to explain this phenomenon. See Onuf, 'Where are the theorists?', paper presented at the European Peace Research Association Fifth General Conference, Sakarya University, Turkey, 21 - 24 August 2007. 28 MK Pasha, 'Security as hegemony', Alternatives-Social Transformation and Humane Governance, 21 (3), 1996, p 283. 29 IL Gendzier, Managing Political Change: Social Scientists and the Third World, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985, p 63. 30 Ibid, pp 64, 51. 31 Oren, Our Enemies and US. 32 Quoted in RW Cox, 'Towards a post-hegemonic conceptualisation of world order: reflections on the relevancy of Ibn Khaldun', in JN Rosenau & C Ernst-Otto (eds), Governance without Government: Order and Change in World Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, p 143. 33 See, inter alia, RBJ Walker, 'Sovereignty, identity, community: reflections on the horizons of contemporary social practice', in RBJ Walker & S Mendlowitz (eds), Contending Sovereignties: Redefining Political Community, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1990, pp 159 - 185; C Enloe, 'Margins, silences and bottom rungs: how to overcome the underestimation of power in the study of International Relations', in K Booth, S Smith & M Zalewski (eds), International Theory: Positivism and Beyond, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp 186 - 202; JA Tickner, 'You just don't understand: troubled engagements between feminists and ir theorists', International Studies Quarterly, 41 (4), 1997, pp 611 - 632; H Gusterson, 'Missing the end of the Cold War in international security', in J Weldes, M Laffey, H Gusterson & R Duvall (eds), Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities and the Production of Danger, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 1999, pp 319 - 345; and K Booth, 'Security and self: reflections of a fallen realist', in K Krause & MC Williams (eds), Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases, London: UCL Press, 1997, pp 83 - 119. 34 B Korany, 'Strategic studies and the Third World: a critical evaluation', International Social Science Journal, 38 (4), 1986, pp 547 - 562; C Thomas, 'Southern instability, security and Western concepts-on an unhappy marriage and the need for a divorce', in C Thomas & P Saravanamuttu (eds), The State and Instability in the South, London: Macmillan, 1989, pp 174 - 191; and D Lemke, 'African lessons for International Relations research', World Politics, 56 (October), 2003, pp 114 - 138. 35 For example, 'Western' approaches to 'regional security in the Middle East' invariably take 'Western' interests as the referent, to the neglect of the concerns of regional actors. See P Bilgin, Regional Security in the Middle East: A Critical Perspective, London: Routledge, 2005. 36 Korany, 'Strategic studies and the Third World', p 115. 37 See P Bilgin & AD Morton, 'From "rogue" to "failed" states? The fallacy of short-termism', Politics, 24 (3), 2004, pp 169 - 180. 38 T Mitchell, 'Deterritorialization and the crisis of modern science', in A Mirsepassi, A Basu & F Waever (eds), Localizing Knowledge in a Globalizing World: Recasting the Area Studies Debate, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003, p 157. 39 Agathangelou & Ling, 'The house of ir', p 30. 40 T Mitchell, 'The Middle East in the past and future of social science', in DL Szanton (ed), The Politics of Knowledge: Area Studies and the Disciplines, University of California Press International and Area Studies Digital Collection, 2002, available at http://repositories.cdlib.org/uclapubs/editedvolumes/3, accessed 24 March 2004. 41 For important exceptions, see K Booth, Strategy and Ethnocentrism, London: Croom Helm, 1979; Weldes et al, Cultures of Insecurity; Krause & Williams, Critical Security Studies; and MC Williams, Culture and Security: Symbolic Power and the Politics of International Security, London: Routledge, 2007. 42 There is also the group of scholars who fit the description of 'native informants'. I do not address their contributions in this section, because their role is better explained with reference to the aforementioned hierarchical division of labour. Nor do I address here the issue of how ir is structured in specific contexts, which, in turn, shapes and is shaped by its relationship with 'Western' and/or US ir. 43 D Puchala, 'Third World thinking and contemporary International Relations', in SG Neuman (ed), International Relations Theory and the Third World, London: Macmillan, 1998, p 139. 44 PG Mandaville, 'Toward a different cosmopolitanism-or, the "I" dislocated', Global Society, 17 (2), 2003, p 211. 45 See Puchala, 'Third World thinking'. 46 See Jones, 'Locating the "I" in ir'. 47 Mandaville, 'Toward a different cosmopolitanism', p 211. 48 Reference to the 1975 film, The Stepford Wives, by Bryan Forbes about a group of suburban men replacing their wives with robots with perfect skills minus all-so-human constraints. 49 Puchala, 'Third World thinking', p 139. 50 Mandaville, 'Toward a different cosmopolitanism', p 211. 51 For an attempt, see P Bilgin, 'Os estudos de segurança na Turquia: situando a Turquia no "Ocidente" por meio de "escrever a segurança"', Contexto Internacional, 26 (1), 2004, pp 149 - 185. 52 J Han & LHM Ling, 'Authoritarianism in the hypermasculinized state: hybridity, patriarchy, and capitalism in Korea', International Studies Quarterly, 42 (1), 1998, pp 54, 57. 53 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, p 86. 54 LHM Ling, 'Cultural chauvinism and the liberal international order: "West vs rest" in Asia's financial crisis', in G Chowdhry & S Nair (eds), Power in a Postcolonial World: Race, Gender and Class in International Relations, London: Routledge, 2002, pp 115 - 141. 55 Spivak, however, warns against the search for authenticity. In Loomba's words, 'the pre-colonial is always reworked by the history of colonialism, and is not available to us in any pristine form that can be neatly separated from the history of colonialism'. A Loomba, Colonialism/postcolonialism, London: Routledge, 2005, p 21. 56 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, p 88. 57 'Special Issue on South Asia and theories of nuclear deterrence', India Review, 4 (2), 2003 - 04. 58 G Perkovich, 'Is India a major power?', Washington Quarterly, 27 (1), 1998, p 129. 59 I Abraham, The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science, Secrecy and the Postcolonial State, New York: Zed Books, 1998, p 17. 60 Ibid, p 13. 61 The absence of colonial status from Turkey's history need not render postcolonial insights less relevant. Following Jorge de Alva, postcoloniality should 'signify not so much subjectivity "after" the colonial experience as a subjectivity of oppositionality to imperializing/colonizing (read: subordinating/subjectivizing) discourses and practices'. Cited in Loomba, Colonialism/postcolonialism, p 16. 62 Or 'European'. See H Kohn, 'The Europeanization of the Orient', Political Science Quarterly, 52 (2), 1937, pp 259 - 270. 63 See, for example, Ç Keyder, State and Class in Turkey: A Study in Capitalist Development, London: Verso, 1987. 64 For further discussion, see P Bilgin, 'Re-thinking the securityness of secularism in Turkey', unpublished manuscript. 65 Halide Edip Adıvar cited in S Kili, The Atatürk Revolution: A Paradigm of Modernization, İstanbul: İş Bankası Yayınları, 2003, p 356. 66 For further discussion, see A Davison, Secularism and Revivalism in Turkey: A Hermeneutic Reconsideration, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998. 67 EW Said, Culture and Imperialism, New York: Knopf, 1993. 68 Said, Orientalism. 69 Space does not allow a discussion on how the Ottoman Empire had previously produced its own discourse to justify its imperial forays into its East and its West. 70 See BJ Dickson, Red Capitalists in China: The Party, Private Entrepreneurs, and Prospects for Political Change, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 71 See S Suzuki, 'Japan's socialization into janus-faced European international society', European Journal of International Relations, 11 (1), 2005, pp 139 - 170. 72 Ibid, p 147. 73 LHM Ling, Postcolonial International Relations: Conquest and Desire between Asia and the West, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002, p 17. 74 Ibid, pp 17 - 18. 75 Ibid, p 75. 76 Following Cox's distinction between 'problem-solving' and 'critical theory'. See RW Cox, 'Social forces, states and world orders: beyond International Relations theory', Millennium, 10 (2), 1981, pp 126 - 158. 77 K Booth, 'Nuclearism, human rights and constructions of security (Part 1)', International Journal of Human Rights, 3 (2), 1999, pp 1 - 24. 78 EW Said, 'Traveling theory', in M Bayoumi & A Rubin (eds), The Edward Said Reader, New York: Vintage Books, 2000, p 197. 79 Booth, 'Human wrongs and International Relations', p 125

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