Deafening silence? Marxism, international historical sociology and the spectre of Eurocentrism

Abstract

Approaching the centenary of its establishment as a formal discipline, International Relations today challenges the ahistorical and aspatial frameworks advanced by the theories of earlier luminaries. Yet, despite a burgeoning body of literature built on the transdisciplinary efforts bridging International Relations and its long-separated nomothetic relatives, the new and emerging conceptual frameworks have not been able to effectively overcome the challenge posed by the 'non-West'. The recent wave of international historical sociology has highlighted possible trajectories to problematise the myopic and unipolar conceptions of the international system; however, the question of Eurocentrism still lingers in the developing research programmes. This article interjects into the ongoing historical materialist debate in international historical sociology by: (1) conceptually and empirically challenging the rigid boundaries of the extant approaches; and (2) critically assessing the postulations of recent theorising on 'the international', capitalist states-system/geopolitics and uneven and combined development. While the significance of the present contributions in international historical sociology should not be understated, it is argued that the 'Eurocentric cage' still occupies a dominant ontological position which essentially silences 'connected histories' and conceals the role of inter-societal relations in the making of the modern states-system and capitalist geopolitics.

Uneven and combined confusion: on the geopolitical origins of capitalism and the rise of the west

“…Their analysis reflects existing debates on the need to challenge Eurocentric historiography that not only views the development of capitalism as internal to Europe but that also understands the development of captialism as a linear progression (Banaji 2007;Bhambra 2009;2010;Chakrabarty 2000;Chalcraft 2005;Goody 2006;Shilliam 2004;Tansel 2015). They argue that:…”

Internal colonisation: The intimate circulations of empire, race and liberal government

“…Despite the emergence of work examining IR’s neglect of racism and colonialism (Anievas et al, 2014; Bell, 2013; Carrozza et al, 2017; Rutazibwa, 2016; Shilliam, 2013) and the push to engage postcolonial and decolonial scholars in the critique of war, humanitarianism and development (Barkawi, 2016; Sabaratnam, 2017; Sajed, 2013), there still remains a tendency for scholars of European states to overlook the place of colonialism in the development of contemporary rule and the production of modern racism (see Venn, 2009). This is further exacerbated by a persistence of a methodological nationalism and/or Eurocentrism (Tansel, 2015) when exploring state formations prior to the 20th century (and the rise of globalisation), as well as a tendency to treat modern domestic liberal politics as endogenously produced, rather than inherently tied to and made possible by transnational and explicitly colonial processes of accumulation, exploitation and control (Neocleous, 2012).…”

“…The problem with such an account is not so much the focus on contemporary ‘imposition’ (and the unequal power relations that this relies upon), but the assumption that Africa and Northern European states have existed as closed units. There is little or no room for the South to have played a role in the historical development of Northern states or in forms of contemporary governmentality (Bhambra, 2016; Hansen and Jonsson, 2014; Tansel, 2015). As Tansel (2015: 78) notes, this relies on the Eurocentric normalisation of ‘an ex post factor hypothesis that modern socio-economic development is an exclusively endogenous European affair and the components of this trajectory can be found unanimously within a geographical and culturally defined Europe (and in general the West)’.…”

Navigating Beyond the Eurofetishist Frontier of Critical IR Theory: Exploring the Complex Landscapes of Non-Western Agency

“…Last but not least, many neoTrotskyists in IR (e.g., Ashman 2009;Davidson 2009;Callinicos 2009, 123-36) subscribe to the first step of the BBT by assuming that modern capitalism originated as an intra-European process and that industrialization emerged spontaneously within Britain, with no discussion of the non-Western involvement in the making of capitalist modernity on show (see Hobson 2011;Bhambra 2011). Nevertheless, a significant minority of neo-Trotskyists has effectively dispensed with the Eurocentric logic of immanence, thereby advancing what we view as a genuinely non-Eurocentric approach (Matin 2013;Anievas and Nişancio glu 2015;Tansel 2015;cf. Selwyn 2015).…”

“…The same conclusion applies to the leading Political Marxist IR analyses of the causal origins of capitalism and the European sovereign states system (e.g., Teschke 2003;Lacher 2006;Dimmock 2015), though this is perhaps unsurprising given that such Eurocentrism underpins the framework of this variant's founders, Ellen Wood and Robert Brenner (on this see Blaut 2000, 45-72;Bhambra 2007, ch. 6;Tansel 2015; Anievas and Nişancio glu 2015, ch. 2).…”