Description
This paper explores approaches taken by researchers and teachers of International Relations around the world to the Global IR agenda, which promotes the decentring of Western narratives and epistemologies of world politics. Based on over 30 qualitative interviews with IR academics working at institutions in East Asia, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa, we present a broad picture of the conflicted relationship to dominant forms of knowledge in IR, which are simultaneously recognised as constituting the disciplinary core while presenting only a partial picture of the ‘global’. We consider how local scholars approach and teach the IR canon, the challenges and obstacles involved in developing local scholarship, and the disciplinary gatekeeping experienced by local IR communities. Our research suggests that the Global IR agenda is not simply a theoretical or epistemological question, but a deeply political one. It reveals how presenting a dichotomy between Western and non-Western forms of knowledge can fuel the weaponisation of ‘local knowledge’ in service of nationalistic or hegemonic political agendas or reinforce already existing hierarchies in the production of knowledge about world politics. Only in a few cases are scholars able to utilise the Global IR agenda for overcoming both domestic and international structures of power.
