Homegrown Theorizing: Knowledge, Scholars, Theory

Year 2018, Volume: 7 Issue: 1, 69 - 86, 16.06.2017

Deniz Kuru

https://doi.org/10.20991/allazimuth.321993

Cited By: 4

Abstract

In recent years,
the discipline of International Relations (IR) has entered another of its turns:
the homegrown turn. This new turn focuses on possible contributions to IR
theorizing using non-Western knowledge and/or scholarship. This article
deconstructs the idea of homegrown theorizing by focusing on its constitutive
part, dealing separately with the aspects of knowledge, scholar, and theory, questioning
thereby the differing meanings of homegrownness. Such an approach provides an
initial framework that accomplishes two things: First, the paper discusses today’s
core Western IR community and its disciplinary sociology in terms of the main
factors engendering present critiques of its scholarship. Second, it then
becomes possible to pay attention to peripheral non-Western IR’s position at a
time of gradual post-Westernization, both world politically and within the
discipline. Engaging with the pitfalls of Western IR and elaborating on the reasons
not only explains the emergence of IR’s homegrown turn, but also provides the
basis for understanding how scholars engaging in homegrown theorizing can learn
from the (past) mistakes of core scholarship. Dealing with the impact of
globalization, Eurocentrism, presentism, and parochialism as the main problem
areas of (Western) IR, the article concludes by providing a list of lessons to
be taken into account when engaging in homegrown theorizing within the periphery.

Keywords

Homegrown theorizing, disciplinary sociology, non-Western IR, post-Western IR

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