Reflexive Solidarity: Toward a Broadening of What It Means to be “Scientific” in Global IR Knowledge

Year 2022, Volume: 11 Issue: 1, 107 - 122, 19.01.2022

Yong-soo Eun

https://doi.org/10.20991/allazimuth.1024925

Cited By: 1

Abstract

This article shows that the problem of “West-centrism” in the study of International Relations (IR) is synonymous with the problem of the dominance of positivism, a particular version of science that originated in the modern West. How can we open up this double parochialism in IR? The article calls for reflexive solidarity as a way out. This indicates that on-going Global IR projects need to revamp their geography-orientated approaches and instead seek solidarity with other marginalised scholars irrespective of their geographical locations or geocultural backgrounds to build wide avenues in which not only positivist (i.e., causal-explanatory) inferences but also normative theorising and ethnographically attuned approaches are all accepted as different but equally scientific ways of knowing in IR. As a useful way of going about this reflexive solidarity, this article suggests autobiography.

Keywords

Global IR, non-Western IR, positivism, science, reflexivity, solidarity, autobiography

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