Taking Indigenous Politics Seriously in the Study of World Politics: Marking the Boundaries of Global Political Analysis.

The dominant school of international relations theory holds that only states are important in world politics, a reading of world politics that is closely linked to the way that school conceptualizes the state as a reified body. This is a problem because such an analysis misses crucial global political happenings and possibilities. While this school has been critiqued of late from many perspectives, this paper focuses on the particular challenge of indigenous politics and argues that case of indigenous politics provide a particularly perspicuous example to unpack the conceptual confusion surrounding the concept of the state. The paper begins with close readings of key works of Kenneth Waltz and Hedley Bull, and then goes on to consider the implication of an anthropological theory of culture for these authors' theories. The paper discusses how and in what ways indigenous politics are international and discusses the significance of this fact with reference to two contemporary cases: the Oka "crisis" and the Zapatista movement. In conclusion, it is argued that indigenous politics reveal hidden realities and possibilities of world politics, as well as an alternative understanding of certain state practices. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]