An Intellectual Confession from a Member of the “Non-White” IR Community: A Friendly Reply to David Lake’s “White Man’s IR”

Eun, Yong-Soo

doi:10.1017/s1049096518001208

Cited by 10 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…This is, of course, not to say that greater openness and diversity would necessarily be undesirable. However, without a complementary impetus to assess these perspectives for their ability to produce or impede a more just society, let alone whether they are that ‘different’ to begin with, the politics of pluralisation are obscured (see Eun, 2019; Paipais, 2016).…”

Section: Redividing the Worldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imperial dialectics and epistemic mapping: From decolonisation to anti-Eurocentric IR

Murray

2019

European Journal of International Relations

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What would it mean to construct a post-imperial discipline rather than a ‘post-Western’ one? ‘Post-imperial’ means addressing the ways in which colonial empires divided the world into separate realms of human capability and thought. The binary categories of Western and Eastern, or Western and non-Western, represent one such way of dividing the world according to an imperial imaginary. Rather than merely excluding, these divisions created justifications for local universalisms and power structures. Yet, many anti-Eurocentric scholars now make use of these categories in order to argue for fixed epistemic differences between Western and non-Western populations. Accordingly, I critique the imperial division of the world by drawing on the intellectual trajectories of two thinkers who struggled against empire in the 20th century: WEB Du Bois and Frantz Fanon. Du Bois and Fanon were both aware of how ethnic and cultural foundations for politics could reproduce imperial order, and, therefore, offer potential alternatives to Western/non-Western ontologies. This includes recognising that representations of difference are processual, determined by strategic necessity, and subject to incentives to represent difference within hierarchical institutions. This article builds on recent studies in International Relations and other disciplines to think through the legacies of empire in knowledge production, and to push towards more historical and relational approaches to world political and social inquiry.

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Section: Redividing the Worldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imperial dialectics and epistemic mapping: From decolonisation to anti-Eurocentric IR

Murray

2019

European Journal of International Relations

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“…What should be rejected is not the West but Western-centrism in the South Korean IR community's mind-set: 'we must first problematize ourselvesspecifically, our routinized behavior and actions that continue to fall within the mainstream paradigm'. 99 Decolonising IR scholarship is as much a mind-set as it is a theory/practice. It begins with a careful examination of a scholar's life here and now, while decentring and unlearning the totalising hegemony.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The emergence and evolution of International Relations studies in postcolonial South Korea

Seo

Cho

2021

Rev. Int. Stud.

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This study investigates how International Relations (IR) as an academic discipline emerged and evolved in South Korea, focusing on the country's peculiar colonial and postcolonial experiences. In the process, it examines why South Korean IR has been so state-centric and positivist (American-centric), while also disclosing the ways in which international history has shaped the current state of IR in South Korea, institutionally and intellectually. It is argued that IR intellectuals in South Korea have largely reflected the political arrangement of their time, rather than demonstrate academic independence or leadership for its government and/or civil society, as they have navigated difficult power structures in world politics. Related to this, it reveals South Korean IR's twisted postcoloniality, which is the absence – or weakness – of non-Western Japanese colonial legacies in its knowledge production/system, while its embracing the West/America as an ideal and better model of modernity for South Korea's security and development. It also reveals that South Korean IR's recent quest for building a Korean School of IR to overcome its Western dependency appears to be in operation within a colonial mentality towards mainstream American IR.

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“…Acharya and other proponents of the Global IR argue that the study of world politics has been hegemonized by theories and methodologies drawn upon Western (mainly European) social, cultural, and political experiences. This knowledge system was then claimed to be scientific with a universal truth, defying the rights of non-Western (beyond European) societies to uphold their native intellectual traditions (Eun, 2019). The universalization of Western IR must be rejected.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Approaches to Indonesia's Foreign Policy: Area Studies, FPA Theory, and Global IR

Wicaksana

Karim

2023

J. ASEAN Studies

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This article traces the evolution of Indonesia's foreign policy studies, highlighting the major theoretical and methodological trends that have shaped their current form. As a starting point, we introduce a discourse on non-Western Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA), having developed beyond the dominance of the Western-rooted International Relations (IR) discipline. The authors encounter that Indonesia's foreign policy studies evolve through two stages. The first stage occurred during the Cold War until the early 2000s. It demonstrated a scholarship development characterized by an attempt to promote a national-focused or area studies perspective, despite the influence of realism and positivism. The second stage, visible since the mid-2000s, shows the advancement of diverse theory-driven inquiries, having been moved by the younger generation of scholars more exposed to various theories and research methods in IR. Dealing with these two phases of the studies will likely build Indonesia's foreign policy studies' inclusive, critical, and unique identity. It can be realized by adopting and contextualizing approaches offered by state transformation theory, critical realism, and reflexive theorizing in IR to unpack the relatively overlooked aspects of Indonesia's foreign policy.

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An Intellectual Confession from a Member of the “Non-White” IR Community: A Friendly Reply to David Lake’s “White Man’s IR”

Cited by 10 publications

References 33 publications

Imperial dialectics and epistemic mapping: From decolonisation to anti-Eurocentric IR

Imperial dialectics and epistemic mapping: From decolonisation to anti-Eurocentric IR

The emergence and evolution of International Relations studies in postcolonial South Korea

Approaches to Indonesia's Foreign Policy: Area Studies, FPA Theory, and Global IR

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