Amitav Acharya, “Ethnocentrism and Emancipatory IR Theory”, in Samantha Arnold and J. Marshall Bier, eds. Displacing Security, (Toronto: Centre for International and Security Studies, York University, 2000): 1-18., 2000
This is Amitav Acharya's earliest writing on non-Western IR (now Global IR), showing how and why ... more This is Amitav Acharya's earliest writing on non-Western IR (now Global IR), showing how and why IR theory and discipline suffers from Western dominance and needs to include more ideas and contributions from the Global South. Written in 1999 and published in 2000, it was well before this subject of became more fashionable in the 2000s.
The discipline called International Relations has seen endless contestations and compromises involving one school deconstructing, exposing, and seeking to overcome the imperfections, dominations, and exclusions of another. The early debates were known as 'inter-paradigmatic,' and pitted the Idealists against the Realists, the behaviouralists against classical approachists, and pluralists against structuralists. More recent debates have been less grandiose, but equally vicious: between neo-liberals and neorealists over relative gains; between rationalists and constructivists over identity and interests; between positivists and post-positivists on epistemology and ontology. Whatever the outcomes of these debates and their implications for IR theory-building, one thing is missing from the picture: a concern with the persisting ethnocentrism of the field and the willingness of theorists to deal with it beyond a most superficial sort of acknowledgement. The aim of this chapter, written from the perspective of someone who has become more interested in IR theory after overcoming a great deal of initial reluctance, is not to start a new debate, and certainly not another inter-paradigm debate. Rather, the chapter's intent is to underscore this critical flaw in the discipline, and urge on the view that the theoretical debates in IR should not just be about a 'search for thinking space,' but also about overcoming alienation.
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world order. Briefly put, my argument is that far from
leading a revival of Western power and prestige, the
war has hastened the end of the LIO and accelerated
the transition to what I have called “a multiplex world.”2
The discipline called International Relations has seen endless contestations and compromises involving one school deconstructing, exposing, and seeking to overcome the imperfections, dominations, and exclusions of another. The early debates were known as 'inter-paradigmatic,' and pitted the Idealists against the Realists, the behaviouralists against classical approachists, and pluralists against structuralists. More recent debates have been less grandiose, but equally vicious: between neo-liberals and neorealists over relative gains; between rationalists and constructivists over identity and interests; between positivists and post-positivists on epistemology and ontology. Whatever the outcomes of these debates and their implications for IR theory-building, one thing is missing from the picture: a concern with the persisting ethnocentrism of the field and the willingness of theorists to deal with it beyond a most superficial sort of acknowledgement. The aim of this chapter, written from the perspective of someone who has become more interested in IR theory after overcoming a great deal of initial reluctance, is not to start a new debate, and certainly not another inter-paradigm debate. Rather, the chapter's intent is to underscore this critical flaw in the discipline, and urge on the view that the theoretical debates in IR should not just be about a 'search for thinking space,' but also about overcoming alienation.
The discipline called International Relations has seen endless contestations and compromises involving one school deconstructing, exposing, and seeking to overcome the imperfections, dominations, and exclusions of another. The early debates were known as 'inter-paradigmatic,' and pitted the Idealists against the Realists, the behaviouralists against classical approachists, and pluralists against structuralists. More recent debates have been less grandiose, but equally vicious: between neo-liberals and neorealists over relative gains; between rationalists and constructivists over identity and interests; between positivists and post-positivists on epistemology and ontology. Whatever the outcomes of these debates and their implications for IR theory-building, one thing is missing from the picture: a concern with the persisting ethnocentrism of the field and the willingness of theorists to deal with it beyond a most superficial sort of acknowledgement. The aim of this chapter, written from the perspective of someone who has become more interested in IR theory after overcoming a great deal of initial reluctance, is not to start a new debate, and certainly not another inter-paradigm debate. Rather, the chapter's intent is to underscore this critical flaw in the discipline, and urge on the view that the theoretical debates in IR should not just be about a 'search for thinking space,' but also about overcoming alienation.
Papers by Amitav Acharya
The basic argument is that the future of world order will depend not just on the distribution of power among nations, but more so on the distribution of power within them. Social hierarchies, including those based on race, gender, class and religious identity, hold the clue to the relative power and influence between nations in the 21st century. To capture this, this article in Foreign Affairs, part of a special issue on “What is Power?” proposes a new concept of power: “Power Within”.
“Power within”, as Foreign Affairs editor Daniel Kurtz-Phelan notes, is “the underappreciated strength and influence that a country gains abroad from tackling exclusion and hierarchy at home.” https://www.foreignaffairs.com/issue-packages/2022-06-21/what-power
The article elaborates the implications of domestic social hierarchies and social divisions for national prosperity, social stability and international power. Topics discussed are role of domestic power relations in shaping the world order, effect of income inequality, racial disparities, gender discrimination and religious restrictions on economic activity and efficiency, and importance of the internal distribution of power to building international relations.
As such, “power within” adds a novel idea to the expanding notions of power, such as “hard power”, “soft power” and “smart power”, etc. It goes beyond the relations view of power that is commonplace in the academic and policy literature, focusing on relationships within, rather than between states.
world order. Briefly put, my argument is that far from
leading a revival of Western power and prestige, the
war has hastened the end of the LIO and accelerated
the transition to what I have called “a multiplex world.”2
The discipline called International Relations has seen endless contestations and compromises involving one school deconstructing, exposing, and seeking to overcome the imperfections, dominations, and exclusions of another. The early debates were known as 'inter-paradigmatic,' and pitted the Idealists against the Realists, the behaviouralists against classical approachists, and pluralists against structuralists. More recent debates have been less grandiose, but equally vicious: between neo-liberals and neorealists over relative gains; between rationalists and constructivists over identity and interests; between positivists and post-positivists on epistemology and ontology. Whatever the outcomes of these debates and their implications for IR theory-building, one thing is missing from the picture: a concern with the persisting ethnocentrism of the field and the willingness of theorists to deal with it beyond a most superficial sort of acknowledgement. The aim of this chapter, written from the perspective of someone who has become more interested in IR theory after overcoming a great deal of initial reluctance, is not to start a new debate, and certainly not another inter-paradigm debate. Rather, the chapter's intent is to underscore this critical flaw in the discipline, and urge on the view that the theoretical debates in IR should not just be about a 'search for thinking space,' but also about overcoming alienation.
The discipline called International Relations has seen endless contestations and compromises involving one school deconstructing, exposing, and seeking to overcome the imperfections, dominations, and exclusions of another. The early debates were known as 'inter-paradigmatic,' and pitted the Idealists against the Realists, the behaviouralists against classical approachists, and pluralists against structuralists. More recent debates have been less grandiose, but equally vicious: between neo-liberals and neorealists over relative gains; between rationalists and constructivists over identity and interests; between positivists and post-positivists on epistemology and ontology. Whatever the outcomes of these debates and their implications for IR theory-building, one thing is missing from the picture: a concern with the persisting ethnocentrism of the field and the willingness of theorists to deal with it beyond a most superficial sort of acknowledgement. The aim of this chapter, written from the perspective of someone who has become more interested in IR theory after overcoming a great deal of initial reluctance, is not to start a new debate, and certainly not another inter-paradigm debate. Rather, the chapter's intent is to underscore this critical flaw in the discipline, and urge on the view that the theoretical debates in IR should not just be about a 'search for thinking space,' but also about overcoming alienation.
The basic argument is that the future of world order will depend not just on the distribution of power among nations, but more so on the distribution of power within them. Social hierarchies, including those based on race, gender, class and religious identity, hold the clue to the relative power and influence between nations in the 21st century. To capture this, this article in Foreign Affairs, part of a special issue on “What is Power?” proposes a new concept of power: “Power Within”.
“Power within”, as Foreign Affairs editor Daniel Kurtz-Phelan notes, is “the underappreciated strength and influence that a country gains abroad from tackling exclusion and hierarchy at home.” https://www.foreignaffairs.com/issue-packages/2022-06-21/what-power
The article elaborates the implications of domestic social hierarchies and social divisions for national prosperity, social stability and international power. Topics discussed are role of domestic power relations in shaping the world order, effect of income inequality, racial disparities, gender discrimination and religious restrictions on economic activity and efficiency, and importance of the internal distribution of power to building international relations.
As such, “power within” adds a novel idea to the expanding notions of power, such as “hard power”, “soft power” and “smart power”, etc. It goes beyond the relations view of power that is commonplace in the academic and policy literature, focusing on relationships within, rather than between states.