The place of Africa in international relations: the centrality of the margins in Global IR

Abstract

The Global IR research agenda lays emphasis on the marginalised, non-Western forms of power and knowledge that underpin today's international system. Focusing on Africa, this article questions two fundamental assumptions of this approach, arguing that they err by excess of realism – in two different ways. First, the claim that Africa is marginal to international relations (IR) thinking holds true only as long as one makes the whole of IR discipline coincide with the Realist school. Second, the Global IR commitment to better appreciate ‘non-Western’ contributions is ontologically realist, because it fails to recognise that the West and the non-West are dialectically constitutive of one another. To demonstrate this, the article first shows that Africa has moved from the periphery to the core of IR scholarship: in the post-paradigmatic phase, Africa is no longer a mere provider of deviant cases, but a laboratory for theory-building of general validity. In the second part, the Sahel provides a case for unsettling reified conceptions of Africa's conceptual and geographical boundaries through the dialectical articulation of the inside/outside dichotomy. Questioning the ‘place’ of Africa in IR – both as identity and function – thus paves the way to a ‘less realist’ approach to Global IR.

Reaching for allies? The dialectics and overlaps between international relations and area studies in the study of politics, security and conflicts

“…The different contributions point to similar theoretical and conceptual issues within traditional IR debates, offering alternative lenses to understand key political and security affairs. Specifically, the contributions gathered here touch upon the ‘IR/AS dialectics’ in terms of disciplinary development and menage to explore idiosyncrasies and key remaining dilemmas across regions of the world (e.g., Raineri and Baldaro 2021; Costantini and Hanau Santini 2021; De Franco 2022). The case of Europe analysed by Chiara De Franco, for instance, applies an AS approach to the region and it is functional to de-exoticize and de-orientalize the deep-seated meaning of AS itself.…”

“…Specifically, this Special Issue includes both contributions considering the ‘IR/AS dialectics’ in terms of disciplinary development (e.g. Dian 2021; Raineri and Baldaro 2021; Costantini and Hanau Santini 2021) and contributions empirically building bridges between IR and AS through case studies (e.g., Selenica 2021; Buscemi 2021). It also includes an article implicitly seeking to see ‘Europe’ with an Area Studies mindset (De Franco 2022), thus de-exoticizing and de-orientalizing the deep-seated meaning of Area Studies themselves.…”

Spaces of (in-)security and intervention: spatial competition and the politics of regional organizations in the Sahel

“…The history of the Sahel is no exception. Alternatively framed as a space connecting or dividing the Mediterranean from Sub-Saharan Africa, the Sahel has been dialectically recomposed by the encounter of 'local' dynamics with 'external' power and disciplining projections throughout its history (Raineri & Baldaro, 2021). In the post-colonial era, the region has passed from being understood as a space of poverty in which to test new development schemes patronized by international organizations (Bonnecase, 2011) to becoming an area identified by its humanitarian crisis, and one in which new forms of governmental rationality may be implemented, mainly through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working alongside local states, even as they implicitly reconfigure their sovereignty (Mann, 2015).…”

Analysing a non-IR field through IR lenses. Education in post-conflict Kosovo

“…This paper argues that education in ethno-national and post-conflict contexts is relevant for both national and international reasons, and without an incorporation of the international within the domestic, it is not possible to understand education's changes and transformations in post-conflict settings. In line with other papers from the Special Issue (Dian, 2021; Raineri and Baldaro, 2021), the paper aims to connect the local to the global and investigate the dynamic interaction between the two through the peculiar and under-analysed lenses of education reform in post-conflict international interventions. The paper asks the following two questions: (1) how do global agendas of peace and security affect education reforms in conflict-affected contexts?…”

“…In light of this Special Issue's expectations, the findings in this paper suggest the importance of incorporating sectors such as education as key dimensions for understanding and grasping change in the international system. The paper highlights the need for studying the global, international, regional, and local as co-constitutive rather than as separate layers, as this Special Issue addresses in a number of papers (Dian, 2021; Raineri and Baldaro, 2021).…”