Conference Program

Discipline of IR is seen as theoretical contribution of Global North.However, there are contributions in the field of IR in Global South as well.World has diverse knowledge systems and different ways of understanding the self and realities around.It is in this background that paper tries to argue; we have our own resource to understand/theorise IR as a discipline in the Global South and it’s time we explore it.Global South needs to critically engage with ‘available’ western knowledge and unravel the possibility of creating new and possibly, alternative knowledge/perspectives in IR.The paper explores alternative methods to understand IR.

There is a lack of serious/critical engagement with Nehru’s contribution in IR.It reflects how non-Western perspectives have been marginalized.Nehru’s contribution needs to be revisited and analysed.His worldview represented idealism predominantly, yet realism can also be traced.Nehru linked the domains of policy making as well as intellectual analyses/assessment in IR. Paper explores some of these issues.

Constructing conceptual framework of IR,Nehru played significant role in India’s foreign policy. His theoretical formulations included Panchsheel, Non-Alignment,colonialism and racism. He differed with the existing dominant IR paradigm,avoided the power blocs, advocated ‘One World’,and founded NAM.Critical of power politics,he advocated collective security arrangements, democratizing & ‘humanizing’ IR and strong international institutions.

Paper examines how a critical rethinking of Nehru’s ideas and contribution of Indian IR can help in creating alternative imaginations of IR.While reexamining our own traditions, there is a need to explore the possibility of a truly inclusive discipline, recognizing its multiple and diverse foundations.

The pervasive oversight of Sub-Saharan Africa within mainstream international relations theories has long been a subject of lamentation in scholarly discourse, as noted by Sahw and Dunn (2001). Numerous proposals exist on how to rectify this omission, often centered on the premise of integrating Africa into the prevailing discourse to enhance its comprehensiveness (Smith 2009, Tieku 2013). In contrast, Afrocentric perspectives take a more radical stance by rejecting engagement with Eurocentric discourse altogether. This text rejects the proposal of a complete break from the existing theoretical discourse. The article starts with a brief reflection on the systemic marginalization of sub-Saharan Africa in the field of international relations theory and then proposes the adaptation of the dependency theory to current conditions. The article starts with a brief reflection on the systemic marginalization of sub-Saharan Africa in the field of international relations theory and then proposes the adaptation of the dependency theory to current conditions.

This paper examines how Islamist intellectuals in Turkey have embraced the standard of civilization in the liberal international order. While Islamists have often been associated with anti-Westernism and discussed as a chief part of the “clash of civilizations”, they have also formulated their own shortcuts to embrace the Western hegemony in international relations. This paper demonstrates in what ways several Turkish Islamist intellectuals have understood the liberal international order as a singular civilization in both the heydays of the Cold War and the post-Cold War context. They have identified a hierarchy of the West in international relations, but they have not seriously problematized this hierarchical order. This paper argues that Turkish Islamists have historically endorsed and bandwagoned onto the standard of civilization in international relations in four main ways: a commitment to the Turkish membership in the Western alliance as the recognition of Turkey’s membership in the Western-dominated international society, a formulation of anti-communism and -Sovietism as civilizationism in the singular, an Islamization of the standard of civilization, and a support for Turkey’s membership in the European Union. In so doing, this paper shows how the intellectuals of the Global South can reproduce the standard of civilization.

The focus on “Globalizing IR” has become prominent in current discussions within the realm of International Relations. This paper aims to contribute to this discussion by underscoring the importance of engaging with popular culture in this endeavor. To do so, it examines a prominent yet understudied political cartoon magazine, namely al-Mudhik al-Mubki, produced in the French mandate of Syria during the intricate years between the two world wars. By taking colonized actors as “thinking subjects,” we look at how they expressed, represented, and navigated their colonial experiences. Our analysis of the political cartoons reveals three manifestations of the agency of the colonized. First, they pointed to the hypocrisy of the colonizer through the example of the violation of the right to free speech for the people of the mandate. Second, they challenged the colonizer's denial of politics in Syria by reclaiming the parliament and the constitution. Third, they problematized the colonizer’s representation of the colonized as lacking competency by ridiculing the colonial relations of superiority and inferiority. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for the “Globalizing IR” debate in general, and for knowledge production in the discipline, in particular.

Despite efforts at disciplinal decolonization, International Relations (IR) remains to be predominantly fixated with the territorial, sovereign, Westphalian nation-state. This understanding of the state perpetuates colonial legacies that erases indigenous cosmologies. Chong (2012) has shown how pre-modern societies, like the Sultanate of Melaka, understood international politics as “inter-societal relations” where culture and morality takes precedence over geo-political considerations. Inspired by this approach, this paper examined how Mindanao indigenous communities viewed the world and the structure of their social relations. An important repository of worldviews, though neglected in IR, is epics. Two exemplary Mindanao epics were analyzed: Agyu of the Manobo and Darangen of the Maranao. The analysis contrasted the ontology of the Westphalian state with the borderless and mandalic networked world of Mindanao epics. As such, this paper critiques the underlying and predominant Western bias of IR by providing non-European alternatives to foundational texts. By using epics, the paper seeks to break the “primitive” tag on indigenous cultures that has hindered them from contributing to global discourses. The hope is to contribute to a richer conceptualization of the international system and world orders; moving away from imperial European constructs by which Mindanao and even the whole world has been understood.