How not to Globalise IR: ‘Centre’ and ‘Periphery’ as Constitutive of ‘the International’

Year 2021, Volume: 18 Issue: 70, 13 - 27, 13.08.2021

Pınar Bilgin

https://doi.org/10.33458/uidergisi.960548

Cited By: 5

Abstract

Scholars who adopted de-centring as a strategy for globalising IR have embraced the notions of ‘centre’ and
‘periphery’ to highlight structural inequalities between North America and Western Europe and the rest of the
world in the production of knowledge about world politics. In doing so, however, de-centring IR scholarship
has portrayed the ‘periphery’ as if it is a new entrant to the ‘international’. Yet, such a presumption is not in
the spirit of globalising IR, which views the periphery as the ‘constitutive outside’. By re-visiting the 1970s’
centre-periphery approaches, the paper highlights the limitations of the de-centring approaches insofar as they
have not always been attentive to the critical concerns of earlier theorisations about ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’, and
underscores the need for studying the periphery as ‘constitutive outside’. The periphery is ‘outside’ by virtue
of having been left out of those mainstream narratives that the centre tells about the international; it is also
‘constitutive’ because those ideas, practices, and institutions that are typically ascribed to the ‘centre’ have been
co-constituted by centre and periphery in toto.

Keywords

Center, Periphery, Constitutive Outside, Decentering IR, Global IR

Uluslararası İlişkiler Nasıl Küreselleştirilmez: ‘Uluslararası’nın Kurucusu Olarak ‘Merkez’ ve ‘Çevre’

Abstract

Merkezsizleştirmeyi uluslararası ilişkilerin küreselleştirilmesi için bir strateji olarak benimseyen araştırmacılar,
dünya siyaseti hakkında bilgi üretiminde Kuzey Amerika ve Batı Avrupa ile dünyanın geri kalanı arasındaki
yapısal eşitsizlikleri vurgulamakta ‘merkez’ ve ‘çevre’ nosyonlarına sarıldılar. Fakat bunu yaparken ‘çevre’yi sanki
‘uluslararası’na yeni katılmış gibi sundular. Oysa ki böylesi bir kabul, çevreyi ‘kurucu dış’ olarak gören uluslararası
ilişkileri küreselleştirme yaklaşımının ruhuna aykırıdır. Bu makale 1970’lerin merkez-çevre yaklaşımlarını
yeniden değerlendirerek, merkezsizleştiren yaklaşımların daha önceki ‘merkez’ ve ‘çevre’ kuramsallaştırmalarının
eleştirel dertlerine dikkat etmedikleri ölçüde sınırlı kaldıklarını vurgulamakta ve çevrenin ‘kurucu dış’ olarak
çalışılması gerekliliğinin üstünde durmaktadır. Çevre, merkezin uluslararası hakkında sunduğu ana akım anlatılar
tarafından dışarıda bırakıldığı için ‘dış’tadır; ancak aynı zamanda da ‘kurucudur’ zira tipik olarak ‘merkez’e
atfedilen bu düşünceler, uygulamalar ve kurumlar merkez ve çevre tarafından birlikte oluşturulmuştur.

Keywords

Merkez, Çevre, Kurucu Dış, Uİ’yi Merkezsizleştirme, Küresel Uİ

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