core and periphery

It is rare that a recognized voice from non-Western world makes an impression in International Relations theory. While a few studies have looked at the structural and institutional constraints that contribute to such lack of recognition, part of the problem stems from confusion around the definition of what theorizing out of the non-Western world actually is. Based on a review of studies that embody indigenous conceptualizations of international phenomena in the periphery, we first define such ‘homegrown’ theorizing as original theorizing in the periphery about the periphery. By elaborating on these conceptualizations’ specific methods in building theories, we then provide a typology of homegrown theories and assess each theory building method in terms of its potential for global acceptance and further development. We substantiate our arguments on global acceptance by drawing on a comparison of the citation counts of 18 homegrown theories. In doing so, we try to give voice to some of the most prominent scholarly and intellectual efforts stemming from the periphery, and provide a guide for Western scholars on how to engage with homegrown theorizing in a more intellectually stimulating manner. The article concludes by highlighting a number of critical factors in opening up space for different voices in the world of IR.

Following the Industrial Revolution in England, and the growth of modern industrialized countries, China became a backward country on the margins of modern civilization. China is now in the midst of transitioning to the industrialized nations. this article analyzes the realities of this great transition from the perspective of Gerschenkron backwardness advantage theory, the essence of the advantage of backwardness is that developing countries have a vast space and strong driving force to learn the technology, systems and successful experience from the developed countries when they carry out their own industrialization and modernization. instead, they have a great advantage in backwardness that encourages them to learn from the developed areas and have the potential to catch up with them. since 1978, China has been focusing on technology transfer in order to make this potential advantage to real economic advantage and get great-leap-forward industrialization, and catching up with the United States as the most advanced industrial economy. so still relatively backward comparing with the United States, despite the rapid development in recent years but these do not show that it will not achieve great progress. The findings show that China has narrowed the technology gap with leading countries, and it is close to the frontier of innovation, so unlike in the past It cannot grow rapidly by adopting and embracing cheap technology from the United States, rather, it must bear the heavy costs of R&D in innovation, So China's economic growth will not be as rapid as it has been in the past four decades.

Bio-data is a short genre, highly constrained in terms of length and conventional style, through which a contributor to an academic journal or a conference provides a sketch of one's major academic achievements in a third-person narrative. To examine the possibility and the extent of professional expertise construction in this genre, 512 bio-data provided by the off-networked participants at the 4 th Asia TEFL Conference were analyzed. The results revealed that within this restricted space and style, some off-Center academics, influenced by their awareness of Center-Periphery relations in the academia, strategically manipulated information about self and their accomplishments to increase their chance of inclusion and visibility in the field. In short, they tended to foreground and highlight their relationship with Western academic institutions and figures, on the one hand, and background or even suppress their local experience, on the other.