Description
An inevitable outcome of criticizing the Eurocentrism of the discipline of International Relations (IR) is to feature the international thought of the “non-West”, which constitutes and interprets the international reality. This flourishing enterprise tends to bring up two broad patterns in the non-Western conceptions of the international for discussion: similarity/convergence (with their counterparts’ understandings of the international) and difference/divergence (from those of their equivalents). In other words, the conceptions of the international in the “non-West” are understood in relation to the patterns of similarity and difference. This study is an attempt to identify the modes of the non-Western conceptions of the international: How are these patterns of similarity and difference performed in these conceptions beyond being similar and different? Which forms do difference and similarity adopt in the “non-Western” conceptions of the international? This study identifies five possible modes or performances of similarity and difference as it relates to the non-Western conceptions of the international: authenticity, rejectionism, synthesis, mimicry, and imitation. Put differently, it argues that in the non-Western world, similarity and difference are, for the most part, performed in the form of a push and pull between these five modes.
