This book explores the possibilities of alternative worldings beyond those authorized by the disciplinary norms and customs of International Relations. In response to the boundary-drawing practices of IR that privilege the historical experience and scholarly folkways of the "West," the contributors examine the limits of even critical practice within the discipline; investigate alternative archives from India, the Caribbean, the steppes of Eurasia, the Andes, China, Japan and Southeast Asia that offer different understandings of proper rule, the relationality of identities and polities, notions of freedom and imaginations of layers of sovereignty; and demonstrate distinct modes of writing and inquiry. In doing so, the book also speaks about different possibilities for IR and for inquiry without it.
1. Introduction: Claiming the International beyond IR, David L. Blaney and Arlene B. Tickner I. Reflections on Critical IR 2. Worlding Beyond the Self? IR, the Subject, and the Cartesian Anxiety, Inanna Hamati-Ataya 3. Claiming the International as a Critical Project, Aslı Çalkıvik II. Alternative Archives of the State 4. Becoming Nāyaka: Sovereignty and Ethics in the Tanjāvūri Āndhra Rājula Caritra, Chris Chekuri 5. Claiming The Early State for the Relational Turn: the Case of Rus’ (Ca. 800-1100), Iver Neumann 6. Sinic World Order Revisited: Choosing Sites of Self-Discovery in Contemporary, Chih-yu Shih III. Alternative International Registers 7. Indigenous Worlding: Kichwa Women Pluralizing Sovereignty, Manuela Picq 8. Black Redemption, Not (White) Abolition, Robbie Shilliam 9. An Accidental (Chinese) International Relations Theorist, Qin Yaqing IV. Writing the International Differently 10. Wresting the Frame, Quyhn Pham and Himadeep Muppidi 11. Distance and Intimacy: Forms of Writing and Worlding, Naeem Inayatullah 12. By Way of Conclusion: Forget IR? Arlene B. Tickner
Biography
Arlene B. Tickner is a Professor of International Relations in the Political Science Department at the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia. Her main areas of research include sociology of IR knowledge in non-core settings, Latin American security and Colombian foreign policy. She is the co-editor (with Ole Wæver) of International Relations Scholarship Around the World (2009) and (with David L. Blaney) of Thinking International Relations Differently (2012).
David L. Blaney is a Professor of Political Science at Macalester College, USA. He works on the social and political theory of IR and IPE (International Political Economy) and questions of culture and identity. His recent books (both with Naeem Inayatullah) include International Relations and the Problem of Difference (2004) and Savage Economics: Wealth, Poverty and the Temporal Walls of Capitalism (2010).
Is "international relations" obsolete? It might well be, unless it demarginalizes the histories, voices and ideas of the non-Western world. This book is a timely and valuable call for a more inclusive and truly global discipline.
Amitav Acharya, American University, USA.
Pioneering scholars, Tickner and Blaney, have produced a truly excellent volume that provides a fitting capstone for the trilogy and which serves admirably to advance the cause of postcolonialism in the Social Sciences.
John M. Hobson, University of Sheffield, UK.
This is a fascinating conclusion to a marvellous trilogy. Claiming the International should be essential reading for all IR scholars, it constitutes a powerful and persuasive account of what worlding IR actually means.
Kimberly Hutchings, London School of Economics, UK.
