Fourteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

At the center of the question “why is there no non-western international relations theory (IRT)?” lies the fact that the very idea of nation and state and conjunctively, nation-state International Relations (IR) deals with is inevitably Western. While it is true that the non-West adopted or they had to adopt these ideas from the West, it is also true that this epistemological adoption and its ontological implication have never been so easy. On the one hand, it caused direct reliance on the Western knowledge and on the other hand, this reliance suppressed the indigenous thoughts and created an overall ‘academic lethargy’, if not ‘inferiority complex’. Therefore, here in this article we are left to deal with two essential questions. One, of course, derives from the ‘power-knowledge’ nexus thesis of Michel Foucault: To what extent, is the absence of non-western IRT caused by the overwhelming Western Power? And, the second question is actually derived from conventional wisdom as well as historical precedence which is also related to the premise of the first question: How has the West’s scientific revolution been shaping the ideational map in the world affecting socio-political theories including that of international relations?