Who f(o)unded IR: American philanthropies and the discipline of International Relations in Europe

Kuru, Deniz

doi:10.1177/0047117816676307

Cited by 20 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…The decolonial turn has gained notable traction within the field of International Relations (IR) as well. As a social scientific discipline, IR was established in the United States with the aim of advancing US interests on a global scale (Kuru, 2017), leading to a particular vision of coloniality that legitimized imperialism and colonialism (Tucker, 2018). The decolonial turn in IR has emphasized the need to rethink and analyse the world from the perspective of the margins, or the oppressed side of every power relation.…”

Section: Decolonial Turn and The Coloniality Of Powermentioning

confidence: 99%

Colonial continuities in the Kurdish liberation

Sunca

2023

Comm

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This commentary seeks to examine the extent to which Kurdish liberation projects are free from the global colonial continuities. While the discussion on colonialism and Kurdistan typically centres on the Kurds’ relationships with their immediate colonisers, it obscures at least two forms of colonial continuities in Kurdish liberation projects. A decolonial perspective built on the coloniality concept enables these colonial continuities. Firstly, the manifestation of politico-tribal domination in Başûr (South Kurdistan, Iraq) is a common feature of postcolonial states that perpetuates the originally colonial power relations within internal structures. Secondly, the Rojava (West Kurdistan, Syria) revolution, which, despite its extensive criticism of orientalism, inadvertently reproduces the frustration of Rojava’s people arising from the feeling of abandonment, by equating “we fight for humanity” with “we fight for Western values.” The reproduction of internal coloniality and Western superiority are, I argue, inextricably linked to the colonial nature of modern power.

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Section: Decolonial Turn and The Coloniality Of Powermentioning

confidence: 99%

Colonial continuities in the Kurdish liberation

Sunca

2023

Comm

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“…This is particularly true in the specific case of IR, even if the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace preceded the RF in granting some forms of patronage to IR. Among the RF's wide range of IR-related activities were co-financing the International Studies Conference, the earliest IR research centers, and granting fellowships to individual IR scholars (Rietzler 2008, 61;2009;Guilhot 2011cGuilhot , 2017Kuru 2017). In the United States, recipients included New York's Council of Foreign Relations, Yale's Institute of International Studies, and its successor, Princeton's Center of International Studies (Parmar 2012, 76-79;Hauptmann 2020;McCourt 2020), and in Europe, the Royal Institute for International Affairs and, among other smaller operations, the University of Heidelberg and Berlin's Hochschule für Politik (Rietzler 2008, 74).…”

Section: The Rf Realism and Global Irmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Cold War Origins of Global IR. The Rockefeller Foundation and Realism in Latin America

Laiz¹

2022

Preprint

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The literature on global international relations (IR) has argued that the discipline develops in the footsteps of world politics, but no sustained at- tention has been given to more immediate causes such as the funders that pay for IR teaching and scholarship. These donor–recipient relations have only attracted the attention of authors interested in cultural hege- mony and those contributing to the recent historiography of IR. Among the latter, some have studied how during the Cold War the Rockefeller Foundation attempted to buttress classical realism in the United States and Western Europe. This article connects and moves forward IR histori- ography and the global IR literature by shedding light on philanthropic foundations’ attempts to further a specific IR theory—classical realism— and area studies in the global south. The article argues that world poli- tics influenced global IR, but this influence was mediated by highly con- tingent events. Even a proximate cause like science patronage, let alone “world politics,” is not a sufficient cause capable of determining IR the- ories and disciplinary boundaries. Donors may achieve some impact but only under specific circumstances such as the ones explored here, that is, the donor is a unitary actor determined to advance its agenda by resorting to conditionality, alternative donors and funding are scarce, the discipline is either poorly or not institutionalized, and the recipient perceives the donor’s preferences as legitimate. The article uses previously untapped, fine-grained, primary sources to unravel philanthropy’s impact on Latin America’s first IR center. Because science patronage is exposed to many sources of indeterminacy and to contingency, donors cannot determine scholarship, which makes cultural hegemony all but impossible. Still, IR scholars need to study their patrons to understand their discipline, in and outside Europe and the United States.

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