‘Eurocentrism’ in the Field of International Relations (IR)

The field of International Relations (IR) adopts a ‘Eurocentric’ gaze in envisioning world politics. With Eurocentric biases contaminating IR, the discipline is identified as being parochial and not representative of the non-Western realities. Various scholars from around the world have questioned the Western dominance in IR and have made a call for widening the existing boundaries of the discipline.1 Accordingly, many have become critical of IR knowledge and have shifted their focus towards the understudied dynamics of the non-West. Theoretical innovations from Africa have come to the fore.2 Realism has been modified to suit Third World’s unique security plight. The analytical output is called subaltern realism, which ‘draws upon the experience of subalterns in the international system.’3 Chinese scholars are talking about a reformist China using its potential to develop an ‘IR theory with Chinese characteristics’4 and Japanese scholars are shedding light on distinct theorists and theories of IR existing in Japan even before the Second World War.5

Scholars are also assessing the possibility of developing non-Western, homegrown alternatives to IR. In the broader Asian context, different contributors to Acharya and Buzan’s volume, suggest through their work, the interest of the Asian states in having theories suitable to their experiences but that Asian scholars are yet to come up with indigenous approaches.6 In the South Asian context, Behera notes that the epistemological boundaries of the discipline of IR are set by the core knowledge claims and the value system of the realist tradition. The underlying positivist foundation makes the critical assessment of major disciplinary concerns or the deconstruction of key IR concepts irrelevant.7 Concerning the case of India, Audrey Alejandro deconstructs the narrative of Western dominance in IR and reveals the difficulty in producing counter-hegemonic discourse from the Global South while citing reasons such as the disinterest of Global South scholars in local theorization.8 Such works, despite being deficient in proposing alternative approaches offer important perspectives on the challenges in formulating non-Western IR theories and concepts and contribute immensely in terms of pushing the debate on ‘global-izing IR’ forward.

Keeping the above developments/realities in mind, we must dissect the concept of Eurocentrism. We must first note that the terms ‘Eurocentrism’ and ‘Western-centrism’ are often used interchangeably and in a manner where the latter provides coverage to the former. However, by specifically employing the term ‘Eurocentrism’ one automatically considers ‘the West’ as being comprised of ‘Europe and/or Europe-derived entities’9 or as the European colonial diaspora in a post-colonial world.10 This is indicative of the continuation of a nonexistent world in the present time. The term Eurocentrism has been defined by various scholars in different ways. For instance, Buzan and Little refer to Eurocentrism as ‘the propensity to understand world history and international politics past and present as if they were merely offshoots of European history and Westphalian forms of international relations.’11 For others, Eurocentrism is an embracement of all Western things.12 Relatedly, Eurocentrism can be described ‘as a set of practices – scientific, cultural, political – which overtly (mostly in the era of colonial imperialism) or tacitly (mostly in the postcolonial era) seek to establish and maintain the primacy of post-Enlightenment European political and epistemic culture at the expense of alternative political systems and epistemologies’13 or ‘the sensibility that Europe is historically, economically, culturally and politically distinctive in ways that significantly determine the overall character of world politics.’14 These understandings portray Europe as the central point of focus in world politics, providing as a result, a very restricted and biased canon for conceptualizing world politics.

The notion of Eurocentrism is based on critical approaches namely post-colonialism, neo-Gramscianism, post-structuralism and subaltern studies – each bespeaks power relations and the infamous relationship between power and knowledge. Critical approaches are predominantly concerned with the agency of the periphery in world politics and they pose a significant challenge to the mainstream IR for its enduring Eurocentric perspective and the exclusion of relations of inequality and dominance between the West and non-West.15 The critical approaches that constitute the framework of Eurocentrism can not only be utilized to understand what ‘Eurocentrism’ in IR means but also how the body of discourse constituting the field of IR can be de- and re-constructed in order to move beyond what is identified as a ‘Eurocentric discipline of IR.’ Hence in being anti-Eurocentric one can remain within the confines of the conceptual grids of Eurocentrism.

However, with the adoption of critical approaches, in being reflexive and engaging with ‘difference’ while holding an emancipatory stance, all of this might get comprised (and it often does) by the ‘enduringly Eurocentric gaze’ one adopts. That is to say that despite studying the West critically, the West is fetishized as a hyper-agential actor in world politics, and the non-Western agency is neglected hence reinforcing Eurocentrism,16 which one seeks to counter in the first place. For Kuru, mostly, analyses that grant European (and Western) actors a notable role in the global political order are viewed as being ‘Eurocentric’. This problem, he argues, becomes more obvious with anti-Eurocentric scholarship, ‘which demonstrates an unending circle of intra-IR disciplinary blaming and bashing.’ According to him, the main problem with critics of Eurocentric IR is ‘their tendency to overstate the impact of Eurocentrism as an ideology by confusing it with a more geo-historically situated form of Eurocentric world order’. The former ‘sees Europe, or a more global West as the only active subject of world politics’ and the latter views ‘Eurocentrism as a picture of the world that derives from the significance of European powers at a certain point in time, basically from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries.’17 It is due to this perception that critics of Eurocentrism (anti-Eurocentrics) overemphasize the degree of Eurocentrism in IR.

Contrary to that, Wallerstein holds a favorable view towards the hyper-agential power accorded to Europe in IR as for him, ‘if we insist too much on non-European agency as a theme, we end up whitewashing all of Europe’s sins, or at least most of them’ and ‘[b]y denying Europe credit [for the creation of the modern world], we deny European blame [for crimes committed against non-Western peoples].’18 Hence to achieve a genuinely anti-Eurocentric envisioning of world politics, the Western autonomy and hyper-agency need to be retained. Stated in this context, ‘anti-Eurocentrics’ can rightly be referred to as ‘anti-Eurocentric Eurocentrics.’19 Therefore, one can be Eurocentric and critical of the West at the same time, and ‘Eurocentrism’ as a conceptual framework captures both aspects comprehensively.

Currently, the discipline of IR provides a skewed image of world politics. By using the conceptual framework of Eurocentrism, one can expose the systematic distortion of knowledge in the field and escape from the trap of Eurocentric bias in IR. The non-West or periphery cannot and should not entirely disengage from the Eurocentric intellectual IR traditions. We must not ‘de-learn’ in order to ‘re-learn.’ Instead, our aim should be to be critical of the existing body of knowledge and discourse in IR and to contribute to the field through alternative and indigenous-sourced thinking. This will make IR more diverse and relevant to the peripheral context as well.

About the Author

Mahnoor Hayat Malik

The author is a Junior Research Fellow at Roads Initiative.

1 Amitav Acharya, “Dialogue and Discovery: In Search of International Relations Theories Beyond the West,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 39, no. 3 (2011): 619-637; Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan, “Conclusion: on the Possibility of a Non-Western IR Theory in Asia,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 7, no. 3 (2007): 427-438; Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan, “Preface: Why is there no Non-Western IR Theory: Reflections on and from Asia,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 7, no. 3 (2007): 285-286; Ching-Chang Chen, “The Absence of Non-Western IR Theory in Asia Reconsidered,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 11, no. 1 (2011): 1-23; Walter D. Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom,”Theory, Culture & Society 26, no. 7-8 (2009): 159-181; Ersel Aydinli and Gonca Biltekin, Widening the World of International Relations: Homegrown Theorizing (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018); Ingo Peters and Wiebke Wemheuer-Vogelaar, Globalizing International Relations: Scholarship Amidst Divides and Diversity (Springer Nature, 2016).