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Interdisciplinary migration research is currently witnessing an increased interest in the impact of colonialism, decolonization, and expertization on present-day integrationism and racism. Tracing the genealogy of current ways of framing, categorizing, and governing groups viewed as "migrant Others" forms part of a reflexive research agenda that analyses migration as a product of changing constellations and categorizations. The article takes up this interest in the recent (and sometimes less recent) past in migration research. Bringing this interdisciplinary body of work into conversation with historical scholarship, we discuss how migration scholars make use of historical genealogies and we identify three different ways of relating the past to the present in debates about current migration and border regimes: We distinguish between what we term an anthropological "deep history" mode, a "genealogical" mode, and a "contrapuntal" or "disruptive" mode. This article argues for a careful, reflexive use of the past. We contend that both the alterity of past discourses and practices and their persistence and lasting impact can help us better make sense of the present in critical migration research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I historicize decolonial theories within the context of epistemic contestations and knowledge production in Africa. I offer a critical appraisal of decolonization as simulated within Western academic institutions and argue that the current tempo of decolonization movements is by no means an accident of history; it is, in fact, a residual narrative of colonial epistemology. I offer internal critique and discuss the limitations of decolonization as an intellectual strategy, before addressing how Western academics have appropriated the discourse in a manner fitting an intellectual crusade. The decolonial scholar is, at the same time, perpetuating the mandate of colonial epistemology by substituting coloniality with subjective displacement. Finally, I suggest a modest proposal for adopting a new framework that admits the epistemic virtues of decolonization while eschewing its limitations and internal contradictions. My argument is that decolonization studies, as understood in contemporary African philosophy, has remained afflicted with the same disease it seeks to cure by (i) uncritical affiliation with historical generalizations, (ii) failure to recognize that history is no location of innocence and (iii) recolonization of non-Western ontologies through epistemic imperialism and network legitimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The core concern is the 'decolonial turn' which is said to be taking place in a number of universities and other institutions. In this context, attempts are being made to unmask the colonial ideologies and common sense rooted in various disciplines including social work. The article examines key terms such as 'Decolonisation', 'Eurocentrism', 'Coloniality' and 'Decoloniality'. In conclusion, some of the obstacles that may be encountered by those aiming to decolonise social work are discussed and possible ways forward are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coloniality and Eurocentrism are entrenched in the field of international justice, reproducing a harmful dominant culture within international justice non-governmental organizations ('IJ NGOs') that influences how practitioners behave, interact with each other, and respond to violence and harm. The article argues that this dominant culture prioritizes punitive approaches to violence over more life-affirming forms of justice and accountability that centre healing and community. Drawing on experiences and conceptual frameworks illustrating dominant oppressive global systems and corresponding social behaviours, the authors critically examine the harms caused by the dominant culture that prevents authentic engagement with a community-led vision of systemic justice that seeks to transform the systems of oppression at the root of violence. Writing from the vantage point of their collective process of co-learning and reorientation and drawing on critical and feminist thought and praxes — including embodiment, abolition, and transformative justice — the authors offer potential ideas and practices that could contribute towards a counterculture in international justice. The article provides initial reflections on a practical framework that could reorient international justice communities of practice towards life-affirming and transformative approaches to justice that centre community-building, collective care, and solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article makes a case for the productive synergy between positive organizational communication scholarship (POCS) and critical scholarship, which have been often viewed as incompatible. The article opens with an overview of POCS and its key critiques from critical audiences, which allows us to unpack the metatheoretical assumptions driving each research tradition. Next, the article discusses the limits of relying only on a Eurocentric definition of the "positive." Notably, this article delineates how Buddhist philosophies refresh our understanding of the "positive" and challenge existing ways of thinking and problem-solving in organizational communication. We apply the Buddhist-inspired people-conditions-goals framework to a case study on the 2022 University of California system strikes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is Christendom in international relations? We argue that Christendom does not equate to a long-lost historical empire but an enduring imaginary of a political order where government secures the church and the church ministers to government. Such imaginaries have taken a diverse range of historical and geographical forms, which have barely been explored in International Relations (IR). They may be state-centric or decentered. As intellectual historians of the discipline have demonstrated, international relations was founded on a Christendom ontology and theology, and then rapidly forgot that fact. One major feature of this forgetting is a narrow historical conception of Christendom—its equation with Latin Christendom—in contrast with the wealth of scholarship in the humanities, which has revealed various conceptual forms and discursive practices of Christendom from at least the fourth century CE to the present. The effect of this narrowness has been to confirm IR's historical Eurocentrism and prevent it from exploring the international politics of Eurasian, Eastern Orthodox forms of Christendom, and signs of new imaginaries of Christendom emerging in the Global South. But such neo-Christendoms—which imagine government as re-centered on the church—raise the possibility of the emergence of modern variations of the legitimized violence associated with Latin Christendom. Alternative theologies of post-Christendom—imagining the church as politically active but decentered from government—indicate that such an imaginary is contested not just beyond but within Christian theology. The paper provides a new definition of Christendom and re-evaluation of its afterlives for the study of religion and theology in international relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I argue that interepistemic thinking is characteristic of Africana spirit-based epistemologies and that such thinking is essential to the construction of the pluriverse. I demonstrate that the spiritual basis of many Africana epistemologies facilitates interepistemic thinking and the making of a more equitable, functional, and healthy "modernity." This is despite narratives of modernity, such as that of Max Weber, that are embedded in a secular-rationalist ideology, which tend to mark spirituality as an invalid means of accessing, representing, or (re)producing truth, marking it as "primitive," destined to disappear, and as incompatible with the so-called modern world. For this reason, decoloniality as it applies to an analysis of Africana spirit-based epistemologies must demonstrate the limited, Eurocentric nature of the secular-rationalist paradigm. I support these arguments through an analysis of the role of interepistemic thinking in the spirit-based epistemologies apparent in what are commonly referred to as African diasporic religions. In doing so, I will also offer a critical perspective on the application of religion as a conceptual category to the realities of the peoples of the African diaspora, following important recent scholarship in the study of religion. I will begin with a review of the nature of the pluriverse and a brief description of Nelson Maldonado-Torres's (2008) critique of secularism, followed by an analysis of interepistemic thinking as it can be observed within Africana spirit-based epistemologies, and conclude with an explanation of how this may inform a critical reconsideration of the epistemic bases that undergird the modern/colonial world system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Afterward is in response to an invitation by EJIL to engage with Tony Anghie's Foreword in the same journal entitled 'Rethinking International Law: A TWAIL Retrospective'. I join in conversation with Anghie to further expand and amplify the redemptive potential of TWAIL, through a focus on human rights. I tease out and amplify a robust account of what constitutes an 'alternative vision' found in TWAIL as an epistemological inquiry that reflects a yearning to break free of the Eurocentric discourses that continue to structure human rights and the human subject. It also draws attention to the transformative and revolutionary vision of the project available in the aftermath of the critiques of traditional international law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we examine the YouTube channel Railways Explained and its video on the Jakarta–Bandung High-Speed Railway (JBHSR). By stressing tensions among China, Indonesia, and Japan surrounding the JBHSR project, the video, we argue, managed to divert the audience's attention away from its Eurocentric representation to a socially constructed Asian drama. Drawing upon Foucauldian poststructuralism, we then demonstrate how the Asian drama, narrated through three forms of otherness—ideological (Japan/Indonesia vs. China); developmental (Japan/China vs. Indonesia); and a geopolitical imaginary (the West vs. Asia)—revealed the perpetuation of Eurocentric hegemony in the knowledge of science and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although firmly established as a global norm, the Women, Peace and Security Agenda (WPS) has been largely driven by the global North attempting to solve insecurities in the global South. Postcolonial feminist research shows that this western-centrism and colonial legacies continue to dominate both WPS practices and knowledge production. This article focuses on WPS in central Europe, a previously ignored 'non-region' that remains outside the North–South divide. Combining postcolonial and decolonial approaches with feminist institutionalism, we interrogate what WPS becomes in the Czech, Polish and Slovakian contexts characterized by illiberal populist and anti-gender governance and politics. Building on interviews with key stakeholders, on document analysis and our own encounters, we argue that the three countries understand WPS as key to their western belongingness and reliability as international partners. As a result, they replicate rather than challenge 'western' WPS thinking. The resulting National Action Plans are centred around women's participation and security problems 'out there'. This lack of localization enables them to stay immune to the anti-gender alliances, but limits the engagement of feminist civil society. Amidst Russian imperial aggression, central Europe's WPS agendas serve as mere paper tigers and are failing to address the multitude of domestic and regional gendered insecurities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes that the Indian Partition of 1947 could be classified as a form of "decolonizing genocide." It draws upon the original Lemkinian criteria for genocide in order to re-examine aspects of Partition violence. The author thus discusses the need to expand the existing terminology and frameworks that scholars have previously used to analyze the Partition; examines the different state and non-state groups involved, and how the climate of decolonization enabled different state and non-state groups to mobilize in various forms and degrees; and studies the victim groups, particularly, women and their experiences of sexual violence. From the case of Indian Partition, this article argues that the conditions present during decolonization help to perpetuate a specific kind of organized violence, carried out by state, quasi-state, and non-state agents, which is genocidal in both its logic and nature. Thus, re-examining Indian Partition as decolonizing genocide allows us to move beyond Eurocentric and state-oriented definitions of genocide in order to create a more effective approach towards understanding mass violence in decolonizing and postcolonial societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions about diversifying the discipline of international relations (IR) are often met with limited evidence in practice. Employing the concepts of epistemic oppression and academic dependency, this article contributes to filling the existing knowledge gap by examining what the pedagogical practices of IR professors, particularly in terms of syllabi design and content, tell us about the state of disciplinary diversity. The article examines results from a preliminary study that analyzes different graduate-level IR syllabi from leading universities in the Global North (represented by United States and United Kingdom) and Global South (Africa in particular) in order to determine how their design, including required readings and other pedagogical choices in the classroom, contributes to the explicit diversity needed to push IR beyond its usual canon. The findings suggest that although more perspectives have become accepted or recognized, what is considered essential for graduate students to study and further propagate is still primarily mainstream. Another point is that what has become known as "critical IR" cannot automatically be equated with diversity. This means there is the need to further interrogate and open up more avenues that go beyond what can be characterized as a "critical canon" of IR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theorising a non-Eurocentric "global international relations" has been a main preoccupation of scholars associated with international political sociology (IPS). In this article, I argue that scholars within the IPS tradition have provided a powerful critique of, but no clear alternative to, Eurocentrism. This is partly attributable to their insufficient problematisation of the historical narratives that propel capitalism backwards into history. By problematising "presentist" conceptions of capitalism, I show that a critical dialogue between IPS and "political Marxism" helps to introduce an alternative foundation for anti-Eurocentrism, which shifts our focus from "capitalist modernity" to "radical modernity". Radical modernity resists hierarchical colonial ontologies by emphasising the universality of egalitarian social patterns rooted in our common, non-capitalist past. I contend that radical modernity is an enduring legacy that is found universally, transmitted interactively, and revitalised continuously across time and space, hence providing an alternative base on which to theorise and globalise the "international" in a non-Eurocentric way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will discuss non-Indigenous designer engagement with Indigenous knowledge systems and the tensions that surround these areas of design practice historically. Scholarly literature demonstrates the way in which a Eurocentric design sensibility dominates design discourse and how, more recently, the discourse has shifted to first, the decolonization of design and the recognition of Indigenous design without influence or input from non-Indigenous participation and secondly, a process of collaboration which recognizes Indigenous led, Indigenous determined outcomes. Examining the argument of 'whiteness' which explains that non-Indigenous and Indigenous collaboration will demonstrate colonial power structures, this article will refer to the International Indigenous Design Charter, a document created to address this tension and guide designers on best practice protocols when working with Indigenous knowledge systems in professional design practice. The International Charter offers a way to restore historical narratives and leads us to understand that attention should move away from design outcomes to one where there is a focus on the design process. This would ensure self-determination and empowerment of Indigenous communities and will challenge the dominance of Eurocentric design sensibilities by providing the opportunity for new voices in the evaluation of design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the early years following Ghana's political independence from British rule, calls were made for university education to have 'an African character'. As a field steeped in Eurocentric narratives, how did the Classics survive, and how did classicists respond to the politics of Africanization? This paper draws on the political contexts under which secondary and tertiary education in Ghana underwent reforms to discuss the threats and challenges these reforms posed to the sustenance of the field of Classics, and the decolonization strategies classicists adopted during the calls for Africanization in university education. The paper suggests that the idea of 'world civilization' which does not consider one civilization as superior over another cemented decolonization efforts in the early post-independent era, and helped classicists meet the conditions of 'relevance' in the African context through comparative studies. Current attempts at decolonizing Classics in Africa would benefit from these strategies if applied to both research and curriculum development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media misinformation is widely recognized as a significant and growing global problem. Yet, little is known about how misinformation spreads across broader media ecosystems, particularly in areas with varying internet access and connectivity. Drawing on research in northern Ghana, we seek to address this gap. We argue that 'pavement media'—the everyday communication of current affairs through discussions in marketplaces, places of worship, bars, and the like and through a range of non-conversational and visual practices such as songs, sermons, and graffiti—is a key link in a broader media ecosystem. Vibrant pavement and traditional media allow for information from social media to quickly cross into offline spaces, creating a distinction not of the connected and disconnected but of first-hand and indirect social media users. This paper sets out how social, traditional, and pavement media form a complex and deeply gendered and socio-economically stratified media ecosystem and investigates its implications for how citizens differentially encounter, process, and respond to misinformation. Based on the findings, we argue that efforts intended to combat the spread of misinformation need to move beyond the Western-centred conception of what constitutes media and take different local modalities of media access and fact-checking into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing community of international relations (IR) scholars who argue for the importance of investigating Global South approaches to IR scholarship, making room for theories and concepts that challenge the discipline's Eurocentricity, and debating the merits and pitfalls of globalizing IR by including perspectives from various Global South locations. In addition to acknowledging this existing critical scholarship that aims at resisting mainstream epistemologies and methodologies of knowing and doing IR, this article's central contribution is to probe the epistemic hegemony and knowledge-production hierarchies that are emerging from within the Global South. The article does not seek to uncover the truth about the representation of Global South actors by Global South IR communities. Instead, it is interested in demonstrating how epistemic hegemony and knowledge-production hierarchies do not exist only in relationships of exclusion and Othering but also in relations of inclusion and Selving. We illustrate our argument with an analysis of the representations of "Africa" in China-based IR intellectual communities. We find that Chinese discourses on solidarity, friendship, community, and shared history lead to a narrative of sameness and Selving whereby Chinese postcolonial experiences are taken to be expandable and applicable to other developing states, making Chinese perspectives seem representative of others, thereby silencing and representing African voices at once. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engaging organizational communication and rhetorical studies subfields, we develop a case for decolonial and Indigenous approaches that offer texture and depth. In the process, we flip the existing topographic "map" of the field and shift Eurocentric canons undergirding cultural and critical Communication Studies. Drawing on vignettes from our fieldworks, we argue for a decolonial critical intervention to affirm marginalized voices, experiences, and theories. Our focus demonstrates how Indigenous methods and decolonial theories advance more responsible engagements with Indigenous epistemologies. Providing a theoretical challenge to the occlusion of indigeneity, we offer a conceptual praxis-oriented mode of theory building that engages communities toward creating Indigenous Communication futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This forum article is an attempt to engage in a recent exchange between Figueiredo and Martinez and Kubota whose articles were published in this journal. Bearing out the tenets of the latter author's claims regarding how to confront the dominance of white Euro-American hegemonic knowledge, Figueiredo and Martinez proposed an additional insightful way of challenging the dominance of this knowledge, namely by unmasking and exposing one's own loci of enunciation. I take up the notion of the locus of enunciation further by not just simply conceiving it as a way , but rather as a resistant tactic. Construed in the latter sense, the article argues that scholars from the Global South do not passively and uncritically accept Eurocentric epistemologies as the sole universal and legitimate knowledge. Instead, they are capable of not only negotiating and appropriating the established knowledge, but also performing their agentive capacity from their specific geo-political and body-political positionalities to resist the dominion of Eurocentric epistemological practices, as well as to elevate and legitimate their own ecology of knowledges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deconstructing International Relations (IR) episteme acknowledges its generation of power imbalances in security knowledge that relegate African experiences to the margins of global politics. Central to this process of relegation is a pervasive 'methodological whiteness', which, while eliding coloniality and racism, projects white experience as a universal perspective. Accompanying this Eurocentric bias has been the intrusive projection of the Weberian state as the most effective site for security governance and conflict prevention on a continent with states that are characterized by a hybridity of political orders, which deviate substantially from the ideal-type state that they seek to mimic. Not only has this resulted in disastrous policies in many parts of Africa, but critical questions arise as to the relevance of conventional IR and security studies as neutral sites for dispassionate knowledge production and policy-making on African security, thereby necessitating alternative perspectives. This article reflects on the ways in which IR and security studies have been responsible, in part, for the production of a racialized mode of security knowledge generation that obfuscates the security policies and experiences of people in African locales. It draws on insights from post-colonial discourses and the episteme of alternativity to explore how the study of events and processes in Africa in a theoretically conscious manner could advance IR scholarship as a whole. It contends that incorporating African experiences as they manifest through hybrid security orders can broaden the empirical base for IR theorizing about security since they offer another perspective outside the conventional western assumptions and experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After decades of investigation, leading scholars conclude that the founding novel of francophone African literature was likely written by Europeans. Camara Laye's The Dark Child (1953) was sold as an autobiography and became the most read African novel in French. The idyllic narrative that African critics accused of colonial apologetics is now accused by Western scholars of being the product of an anti-independence conspiracy supported by François Mitterrand. When claims of ghost-writing were still dismissed as petty African jealousy, Laurent Chevallier relocated Laye's childhood story to present-day Guinea with an analogous film adaptation that both builds on and parallels the novel. The French director introduces L'enfant noir (1995) not as his own interpretation but that of Laye's relatives who also act in his film. Although Chevallier sells his story as authentically local, his Eurocentric adaptation of gender, polygamy, and reproduction has provoked accusations of Western plotting against African values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International relations (IR) defines itself as a discipline by adhering to a Westphalian narrative centered on 1648. The following paper argues that IR should broaden its engagement with history to consider the international prior to 1648 and to examine global and transnational historical accounts that challenge the states in anarchy framework. This paper examines how pre-modern history is often used within IR as a foil for which western modernity and its superiority is defined. It concludes by arguing for the need to re-read the processes of modernity and imperialism that are commonly seen as the prelude to the familiar Eurocentric stories told in IR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The argument of this paper is that many texts of the Western literary canon rather than being vehicles of establishment values are critical of these values. Teaching these texts allows educators to challenge the interests of those who hold power in society as well as conventional sexual morality and gender stereotypes. Many important works of literature, in addition to denouncing hypocrisy, self‐righteousness and all forms of exploitation, undermine occidental cultural preconceptions regarding the status of European civilisation and attitudes to religion and male–female relations. Yet there is an ambivalence in some texts that deal with racism and Europe's colonial legacy, and this ambivalence is also considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article centers marginal organizational actors—the disenfranchised of the Global South—to remedy their theoretical erasure and disrupt the Anglo-American grand narrative of organizational communication. This task is urgent amidst discussions of decolonization and whiteness in the discipline. We reengage Western theory on liquidity, hereby conceptualized as shape-shifting and adaptive organizing, moving like a liquid at the margins. We draw on fieldworks in Nigeria and Liberia to unearth three properties of liquidity in postcolonial contexts: motion, solvency, and permeability. Motion refers to movement, solvency refers to the ability to dissolve into one's surroundings, and permeability refers to organizing that infiltrates life and vice versa. This article bears three theoretical contributions. First, it provides a blueprint to dislodge Eurocentric biases (Anglo-American) in organizational communication theory. Second, it models what decolonizing theory may look like. Finally, it provides more complex, nuanced, and inclusive theoretical accounts of liquidities in global landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As international relations has started to grapple with its geo-cultural parochialism, the focus has been on its "Western-centrism" and on how "non-Western" international relations might be different. This article argues that attempts to deprovincialize "Western" (i.e. Euro-American) international thought do not always revolve around "non-Westernness," a negation with often cultural-civilizational connotations, but also deploy a North/South worlding that is more bound up with imperial-colonial experience and a "peripheral" concern with economic insertion into the core. Based on interviews with scholars, diplomats, and foreign policy intellectuals in Brazil, the paper explores the different ways "the South" is deployed—as (post)colonial subjectivity, as problematique, as relation, as outside, and as political move—to provide an alternative intervention into the debate on "Global IR." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Calls for a more "global" international relations (IR) based on theories grounded in world rather than Western histories have highlighted the Eurocentrism of history within the discipline. Global IR literature, however, neglects the role of tempocentrism in fostering that Eurocentrism. Tempocentric IR portrays the past as an extrapolation of the (Eurocentric) present, suggesting an inevitability and normality to Western dominance of international relations and obscuring non-Western significance. It also deprives IR theory-building of a broader pool of examples to inform existing theories. This article locates those centrisms in the textbooks of the discipline, while drawing on interdisciplinary research to reveal the disproportionate influence of the first years of higher education on students' future worldviews. It is here that students are exposed to a historical grand narrative that establishes the boundaries of their inquiries and outlines what is, and what is not, significant. For a more "global" IR, therefore, it is suggested that textbook historical narratives require reconstructing in two ways. First, textbook history should be presented through connections and relations rather than substances. Second, historical chapters should reveal the multiple layers of time, including the deeper past, that have been instrumental in constituting the international relations of today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How to write non-Eurocentric histories has long been a concern in the humanities and the social sciences. Attempts at writing non-Eurocentric histories of the international have been trapped in an absence/presence dichotomy and made making present what was absented from the story of the international their main focal point. The article aims to contribute to these discussions through pointing to the limitations of existing approaches that focus on revealing entanglements and offering an alternative framework for writing "connected histories of the international." The article will proceed in four sections. The first section will provide a definition of Eurocentrism and elaborate on the way in which writing "connected histories" was offered as a solution. The second section will discuss how Eurocentric narratives have been critiqued within history and International Relations through "entangled narratives." The third section will introduce the notion of "abyssal lines" and underline how the focus on entanglements has impoverished our understanding of Eurocentrism and the solutions on offer. The final section will illustrate the alternative framework being proposed for writing connected histories of the international (co-present and coeval narratives) that underlines the locations and times of progress and change through a discussion of the Haitian Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the turn of the twentieth century, two architects—Itō Chūta in Japan and Rajendralal Mitra in Bengal—sought to counter Eurocentric accounts of aesthetic modernity by insisting on the inclusion of Japanese and Indian building traditions in the world history of architecture. In different and indeed opposing ways, they mobilized the idea of classical Greece; while Itō saw ancient Japanese buildings as directly influenced by Greek models, Mitra denied any such connections. Beyond these differences, however, both scholars were aligned in their effort to use references to "Greece" in order to claim equivalence for their native architecture on a world stage. While invoking a Eurocentric standard to battle Eurocentrism may sound paradoxical, this article shows that a confluence of global forces went into the making of this late Victorian moment of imperial universalism. The globality of the standards both actors referred to should not be imagined as the result of a gradual spread and diffusion from a European center. Rather, actors constantly invented and co-produced these standards as they resonated both with global change and with social dynamics locally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this response to the roundtable, Burton emphasizes the unsettled and unsettling character of domesticity and challenges facile definitions of its global history. She offers ways of reading the essays in pairs, backwards and forwards in time, and together as a kind of prospective course syllabus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Located geographically in the East, but often identified with the West, Japan's role as a world power over the last century and a half remains curiously inconsistent in mainstream international relations (IR). By examining Japan's often under-appreciated role in the international history of wealth and power, we argue that this tells us more about the distorting impact on IR theory of Eurocentrism and realism than it tells us about Japan's role in world history. Symptomatic of these distortions are Japan's exclusion from or marginalization within, the first round of modernization before 1914, and the accompanying under-recognition of its role as a model and hub for Northeast Asia's capitalist development. Also occluded is Japan's key post-1945 role in both underpinning America's superpower status, and promoting the capitalist world order in Asia. Mainstream IR theory provides poor foundations for both academic and policy analysis of Japan's important world role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of China’s rise has urged some to look for International Relations (IR) theories with ‘Chinese characteristics’. A number of these have been associated with the ‘relational turn’. Yet, attempts to bring the Anglophone and the Sinophone strands of the relational turn have failed to transcend the bifurcating metanarrative of the mainstream. To rectify this trend, the analysis engages the literatures on guanxi, the relational turn, and Chinese IR and develops a normative claim about the underlying relationality of knowledge production in post-Western IR. The contention is: (i) that the criticism of substantialism offered by the Anglophone literature on the relational turn fails to overcome its Eurocentrism; (ii) that by subscribing to the epistemic duality of the West vs. the non-West, the Sinophone literature has aborted the political promise of the concept of guanxi. The study deploys guanxi to amplify the intrinsic relationality both of global life and the realms of IR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the biggest challenges facing the post-1945 liberal international order are the need to genuinely embrace ethno-racial diversity and to reduce class-based inequalities. However, this is problematic because the liberal international order's core foundational principles, and principal underpinning 'theory' (liberal internationalism), are Eurocentric, elitist and resistant to change. Those core principles are subliminally racialized, elitist and imperial. They are embedded in post-1945 international institutions, elite mindsets, and in the institutions of the US foreign policy establishment--which are seeking to incorporate emerging power elites, willingly, into the US-led order. As illustration, this article considers examples that bookend the US-led system: wartime elite planning for global leadership; the role of the United Nations in Korea from 1945 to 1953, where it served as the primary instrument for the creation and incorporation of (South) Korea into the US-led order; and several US state-linked initiatives in China over the past several decades, including the Ford Foundation. The article compares the contemporary and historical evidence to liberal internationalist claims, as well as to claims implied by work on 'ultra-imperialism', based on Karl Kautsky's and Antonio Gramsci's ideas of hegemony. The article concludes that elite incorporation--by a combination of coercion, attraction and socialization--is the principal goal of the US-led order, as opposed to embracing diversity and moving towards genuine change felt at a mass level. Hence, we should expect domestic and international political crises to deepen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on this journal's recent debates about the need for "global" international relations (IR), this article calls attention to the overlooked significance of two important Latin American thinkers from the interwar years: Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre and José Carlos Mariátegui. We argue that the study of their thought--and the debates between them--has much to contribute to current efforts to build a more global international political economy (IPE) whose classical intellectual foundations are less dominated by American and European scholarship. Through a detailed analysis of their thinking, we show how Haya and Mariátegui generated some highly innovative ideas about many IPE issues including the following: the negative impacts of imperialism on their region; the roles of class, race, culture, and indigenous peoples in anti-imperialist politics; the relationship of imperialism to the stages of capitalism; the regulation of foreign investment, economic regionalism, and the Eurocentric biases of IPE thought. We show how many of their ideas foreshadowed the better-known postwar Latin American contributions to IPE of structuralism and dependency theory in ways that have not been fully recognized. We also suggest that their critique of Eurocentrism served as an early precedent for the kind of global IPE that many are seeking to build in the current era. For these reasons, we argue that their work deserves much more recognition from contemporary IPE scholars than it has hitherto received and inclusion among the cannon of classical literature that forms the foundations of the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Critical IR theory's (CIRT) claims to reflexivity, its engagement with "difference," and its emancipatory stance are compromised by its enduringly Eurocentric gaze. While CIRT is certainly critical of the West, nevertheless its tendency toward "Eurofetishism"--by which Western agency is reified at the expense of non-Western agency--leads it into a "critical Eurocentrism." While this Eurofetishism plays out differently across the spectrum of CIRT, nevertheless all too often the West is treated as distinct from the non-West such that a fully relational conception of the West--one in which the non-West shapes, tracks, and inflects the West as much as vice versa--is either downplayed or dismissed altogether. Our antidote to this problem is to advance such a relational approach that brings non-Western agency back in while simultaneously recognizing that such agency is usually subjected to structural constraints. This gives rise to two core objectives: first, that non-Western agency needs to be taken seriously as an ontologically significant process in world politics, and second, that it needs to be explored in its complex, manifold dimensions. Here we seek to move beyond the colonial binaries of non-Western "silence vs. defiance" and an "all-powerful West vs. powerless non-West." For between these polarities lies a spectrum of instantiations of non-Western agency, running from the refusal to be known and categorized by colonial epistemes to mundane moments of everyday agency to the embrace of indigenous cosmologies through to modes of developmental and global agency. Sometimes these speak back to the West, and at other times they occur for reasons Otherwise. Ultimately we call for a relational sociology of global interconnectivities that problematizes CIRT's Eurofetishization of the West as a separate, self-generating, self-directed, and hyper-autonomous entity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article seeks to reanimate comparative legal scholarship by reorienting it towards decolonizing critique. In his critical assessment of the state of the field, Pierre Legrand suggests that comparative law has become mired in a solipsistic and outmoded style of positivism. Drawing upon theoretical insights from critical theory, Legrand argues that comparative law might render itself more generative and more relevant by engaging in a more contextualized analysis of law and encouraging active interpretation beyond descriptive reporting. This Article extends Legrand’s arguments to suggest that an emancipated, incorporative, and interdisciplinary comparative law might play an important role in decolonizing legal scholarship more broadly. Founded in a commitment to constrain an ethnocentric impulse in legal discourse, comparative law might be expanded to challenge the varieties of Eurocentrism that continue to define legal scholarship and study, while providing hospitable ground for critical and interdisciplinary projects aimed at exploring the colonial roots of both the contemporary nation-state system and globalized racial formations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mindful of the growing interest in non-Western and pre-modern political systems, we propose a framework for the analysis of states, state systems, and international orders. We provide a culturally neutral definition of the state and outline a method for assessing variation in political organization both within and above the state. Our framework cleanly delineates hierarchy from anarchy and can be applied to a diverse set of state systems. We then show how the content of international order inter-relates with system structure and the local density (interaction capacity) of a region. We argue that our framework captures similarities--and exposes differences--between different systems and orders over time and space. It strikes a balance between the traditional focus on the Western experience and the current trend toward regional studies in which it is difficult to accumulate knowledge in a rigorous manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I explore how philosophical thinking about God, reason, humanity and history has shaped ideas of Europe, focusing on Hegel. For Hegel, Europe is the civilization that, by way of Christianity, has advanced the spirit of freedom which originated in Greece. Hegel is a Eurocentrist whose work indicates how Eurocentrism as a broader discourse has shaped received conceptions of Europe. I then distinguish 'external' and 'internal' ways of approaching ideas of Europe and defend the former approach, on which Europe's self-understanding is not a phenomenon purely internal to Europe, but has always been shaped by Europe's relations with non-European cultures. I note Egypt's influence on the ancient Greeks and the role of Europe's colonization of America, and suggest that European civilization could be rejuvenated by more open acknowledgement of these relations with others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article refutes Eurocentric description of precolonial Africa as stateless, politically unsophisticated and essentially undemarcated. This is despite significant ethnographic and oral histories that suggest the opposite. This position has been challenged by the evidence emanating from recent satellite imagery and orthorectified imagery as well as archaeological studies. These findings, it is argued, provide overwhelming evidence of very precise boundary features and markers separating precolonial African cities, states and political groups. For instance, it has been discovered that between Lake Chad and the Atlantic Ocean, in West Africa, there are about 10,000 town and city walls at least 25% of which are on presently deserted sites. The author helpfully identifies specific aspects of the evidential value of the relict wall discoveries such as in dealing with on-going and future self-determination struggles; resolution of international and national boundary disputes; questions relating to the uti possidetis principle; as well as ongoing debates relating to the legal effects of colonial territorial titles and intertemporal law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early empirical research on ethical consumerism--the deliberate purchase, or avoidance, of products for political, ethical, or environmental reasons-was primarily individualistic in nature. Recently, scholars have demonstrated the importance of structural and cultural contexts to the explanation of ethical consumerism, rendering explanations that fail to account for such contexts incomplete. Unfortunately, most of this research has been contained within Europe, limiting potentially important country-level variation. Because theories of ethical consumerism suggest interactive relationships between individual- and macro-level variables, the Euro-centric nature of existing research raises questions about theoretical generalizability across all levels of analysis. This study uses the 2004 citizenship module of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP)--a data set that allows for increased countrylevel heterogeneity while maintaining the highest standards of data quality-to run a series of multilevel, logistic regression models with cross-level interactions between country-level affluence and individual-level predictors. Seven of the eight individual-level predictors analyzed in these interactions are either more influential in high-affluence countries than in low-affluence countries or exhibit statistically uniform effects across the range of affluence. The lone exception is association involvement, which is more influential as affluence decreases. The need to develop interactive models of political participation is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For at least a decade, design historians have been arguing that a global perspective on the discipline is essential. However, despite some initial efforts, the project of a global design history remains in its infancy. In response to the growing interest in globalization, this article considers the potential possibilities and problems in globalizing design history, albeit from a limited, Anglophone perspective. It begins in the first half by reviewing recent debates in historiography over world and global histories, so that we might more confidently position global approaches to design history. The second half of the article assembles initial attempts to globalize design history as well as themes and methods for further research, plotting potential themes and methods for globalizing design history, drawing upon existing scholarship and knowledge. Following historian Jerry H. Bentley, I am proposing design historians both 'globalize history and historicize globalization', in order to ensure the ongoing relevance of the discipline and engage with contemporary developments in other disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay analyzes Fatih Akin's[Fatih Akin] German-Italian drama Solino (2002) as it depicts the phenomena of transnational European identity (with special emphasis on gender), homeplace, and multiculturalism in the era of globalization and ongoing migration. Specifically, this work illustrates how Akin's cinematographic narrative confirms German and Italian Eurocentricity and its well-established system of values as pivotal criteria for currently particularly relevant European multiculturalism. Using the Eurocentric lens of interpretation of globalization, migration, and negotiation of 'self,' 'other,' 'home,' 'passing,' and 'be-longing,' this essay critically analyzes the drama Solino as a cultural and political text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Nairobi Conference presaged a surge of interest in the development of health promotion in sub-Saharan Africa. A number of Africans have asserted that health promotion is underdeveloped in the continent, with the principles of the Ottawa Charter not widely adopted. This paper does not presume to say how health promotion could be developed in Africa, as that is for Africans to decide for themselves. Rather, it debates some issues which the international epistemic health promotion community could address in order to work in solidarity with African colleagues in taking forward the health promotion agenda in their continent. These issues include the Eurocentric nature of health promotion discourse, the different disease burden of Africa and the lack of training capacity in African universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article critiques the book "The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law," edited by Bardo Fassbender and Anne Peters, focusing on the classic doctrine of sources which reportedly emerged in the 19th century, as well as various sources of international law. Eurocentrism and natural law are mentioned, along with positivism and author Koen Stapelbroek and mercantile associations. Religious intervention and the legal aspects of boundaries and territories are examined.

The article critiques the book "The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law," edited by Bardo Fassbender and Anne Peters, focusing on the potential role of Islamic international law in the history of international law. The "American Journal of International Law Symposium on Method in International Law" is mentioned, along with the colonial ideology of Europe's civilizing mission. Legal practices in regions such as Africa, Arabia, and India are examined, along with Eurocentrism.

The article critiques the book "The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law," edited by Bardo Fassbender and Anne Peters, focusing on Eurocentrism and the bilateral and multilateral operations of various independent political entities. The Treaty of Westphalia and the legal practices in India, African, and Arab countries are mentioned. The Ottoman Empire and reportedly unequal treaties in East Asia are examined, along with peace movements and Japanese concepts of territory.

The article critiques the book "The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law," edited by Bardo Fassbender and Anne Peters, focusing on the concept of statelessness, Eurocentricism, and the historiography of international law. Nationality law, the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness are addressed. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is mentioned, along with treaties and wars.

The article critiques the book "The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law," edited by Bardo Fassbender and Anne Peters, focusing on the relationship between globalization and the law, as well as the reported efforts to overcome Eurocentrism in the history of international law. Author Robert Kolb and the rules governing the conduct of warfare outside of Europe are mentioned. The 1949 Geneva Conventions, slavery, and standards of civilization are also examined.

The article discusses the reactions of several lawyers, historians, and political scientists to the authors' book "The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law" as of February 2014, focusing on a workshop which was held in Berlin, Germany to address the authors' legal treatise. It states that several people who have reviewed the book have been critical of the authors' contentions about the global history of international law. Eurocentrism and the United Nations' Charter are examined.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the journal on topics including critiques of the book "The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law," edited by Bardo Fassbender and Anne Peters, Eurocentrism, and the historiography of international law.