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

Abstract

This article conceptualises the variety of approaches taken by International Relations (IR) scholars around the world to dominant forms of knowledge production in IR. In doing so, it advances Global IR debates along two axes: on practices and on spatiality. We argue that binary conceptions are unhelpful and that engagement with knowledge production practices is best captured by a landscape of complexity, requiring a deeper interrogation of positionality, globality and context. Using 26 qualitative interviews with IR academics at institutions in East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, Eurasia and Africa, we construct a typology comprising seven modes of engagement that capture the conflicted relationships to dominant forms and practices of knowledge production in IR. The typology is intended to highlight the variation, complexity and contextual particularities in global IR knowledge production practices and to enable an interrogation of spatial hierarchies that unsettle conventional geopolitical West/non-West fault-lines.

Coming of age within ‘implosion’

“…Although the inclusion of 'non-Western' cases, narratives, theories, and epistemologies is essential, and long overdue, Zeynep Gulsah Capan 74 highlights how these often remain 'embedded within the binaries and dualities' that reproduce 'the colonial matrix of power' . 75 This becomes particularly pronounced when, as is often the case, these alternative approaches are compartmentalised into a single week of teaching towards the end of term, thus reproducing the binary, ordering logics that underpin Eurocentric approaches to the discipline. 76 Implosion, we argue, involves working out ways to expose the ontological fragility of the discipline to students, laying bare the discipline's contradictions, vulnerabilities, and erasures within IR curricula at all levels.…”

“…88 Yet reflecting on our location within the academic system -as precariously employed tutors who have little say in curriculum design, but who simultaneously occupy a privileged position as white women in European universities who are much less likely to face prejudice and discrimination than our non-white colleagues -has made us acutely aware of the consequences of calling for challenging the Western centrism of IR teaching. It not only risks framing pedagogical transformation as 'an objective choice, freely available to all regardless of their positionality within the academic system' 89 but also reproduces a simple dichotomy between Western hegemony and decoloniality that is dependent on an oversimplified conception of knowledge itself. Accordingly, we now turn our attention away from what students of IR encounter to a discussion of the different ways of how students come 'to know' in the classroom.…”

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

“…Having observed the two stages of the development of Indonesia's foreign policy studies, the research further elaborates on how to move toward the future trajectories of a non-Western FPA with Indonesian characteristics. Borrowing from Loke and Owen's (2022) typologies of the mode of knowledge production practices, Indonesia's foreign policy studies can be localized and diversified so that their open, progressive, and unique identity is well-featured. The process of knowledge localization is something crucial to heighten the academic benefits of the Indonesian IR community and FPA scholars.…”

How to Problematize the Global?

“…Overall, Global IR has enabled greater interrogation of context and complexity in IR knowledge production, beyond conventional conceptions of a dominant West and subordinate non-West. 211 This goes into the heart of the rationale and purpose of Global IR, which especially aims to contribute toward 'accelerating' IR's 'diversification' and 'integration'.…”