Challenging International Relations’ Conceptual Constraints: The International and Everyday Life across Borders in Southern Africa

Year 2021, Volume: 18 Issue: 70, 121 - 134, 13.08.2021

Karen Smıth

https://doi.org/10.33458/uidergisi.985971

Abstract

One of the critiques of International Relations (IR) is that the discipline’s discursive boundaries are particularly
rigid and continue to be shaped and maintained by dominant Western-centric concepts and discourses. This
paper explores the apparent dichotomy between how concepts like ‘the international’ are interpreted by IR
scholars and the experiences of ordinary people on which these concepts are imposed. How people engage with
borders will be used as an illustration, with borders being regarded by IR scholars as constituting important
boundaries that are essential to the field’s understanding of the world as consisting of neatly separated sovereign,
territorial states. Two examples that highlight the arbitrary nature of national borders in Africa draw these
assumptions into question and suggest that defining what does or does not constitute the international is, in
reality, much more complex than suggested by the theoretical abstractions found in standard IR texts.

Keywords

The International, Africa, Borders, Everyday Life, Chewa

Uluslararası İlişkilerin Kavramsal Kısıtlamalarına Meydan Okumak: Güney Afrika’da Sınırların Karşı Tarafında Uluslararası Olan ve Gündelik Yaşam

Abstract

Uluslararası İlişkilere yöneltilen eleştirilerden biri, disiplinin söylemsel sınırlarının bilhassa katı olduğu ve
Batı merkezli egemen kavramlar ve söylemler tarafından şekillendirilmeye ve korunmaya devam ediyor
olduğudur. Bu makale, ‘uluslararası’ gibi kavramların uluslararası ilişikiler alanındaki bilim insanları tarafından
nasıl yorumlandığı ile bu kavramların dayatıldığı sıradan insanların deneyimleri arasındaki açık ikilemi
araştırmaktadır. İnsanların sınırlarla nasıl ilişki kurdukları, disiplinin dünyayı özenle birbirinden ayrılmış egemen,
teritoryal devletler olarak ele alan anlayışına esas teşkil eden ve uluslararası ilişkiler akademisyenleri tarafından
önemli kurucu hudutlar olarak ele alınan sınırlar bağlamında, bir örnek olarak kullanılacaktır. Afrika’daki ulusal
sınırların keyfi doğasını vurgulayan iki örnek bu varsayımları sorgulamakta ve neyin uluslararasını oluşturup
oluşturmadığını tanımlamanın, aslında standart uluslararası ilişkiler metinlerinde göründüğünden çok daha
karmaşık olduğunu göstermektedir.

Keywords

Uluslararası Olan, Afrika, Sınırlar, Gündelik Yaşam, Chewa

References

• Abrahamsen, Rita (2016). “Africa and International Relations: Assembling Africa, Studying the World”, African Affairs, Vol. 116, No. 462, p. 125-139.
• Agnew, John (2008). “Borders on the Mind: Re-framing Border Thinking”, Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 1, No. 4, p. 175-191.
• Amadife, Emmanuel N. and James W. Warhola (1993). “Africa’s Political Boundaries: Colonial Cartography, the OAU, and the Advisability of Ethno-National Adjustment”, Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, Vol. 6, No. 4, p. 533-554.
• Anderson, James and Liam O’Dowd (1999). “Borders, Border Regions and Territoriality: Contradictory Meanings, Changing Significance”, Regional Studies, Vol. 33, No. 7, p. 593-604.
• Asiwaju, A.I. (ed.) (1985). Partitioned Africans: Ethnic Relations Across Africa’s International Boundaries, 1884-1984. London, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers.
• Barkawi, Tarak and Mark Laffey (2002). “Retrieving the Imperial: Empire and International Relations”, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 31, No. 1, p. 109-127.
• Bartselson, Jens (2017). “From the International to the Global”, Andreas Gofas, Inanna Hamati-Ataya, and Nicholas Onuf (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of the History, Philosophy and Sociology of International Relations. London, SAGE, p.33-55.
• Benyera, Everisto (2019). “Borders and the coloniality of human mobility: A view from Africa”, Innocent Moyo and Christopher Changwe Nshimbi (eds.), African Borders, Conflict, Regional and Continental Integration. London, Routledge, p. 11-29
• Bigo, Didier and R.B.J. Walker (2007). “Political Sociology and the Problem of the International”, Millennium, Vol. 35, No. 3, p. 725-739.
• Bilgin, Pinar (2014). “Critical Investigations into the International”, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 6, p. 1098-1114.
• Bilgin, Pinar (2016). The International in Security, Security in the International. London, Routledge.
• Blaney, David and Arlene Tickner (2017). “International Relations in the Prison of Colonial Modernity”, International Relations, Vol. 31, No. 1, p. 71–75.
• Brambilla, Chiara (2007). “Borders and Identities/Border Identities: The Angola‐Namibia Border and the Plurivocality of the Kwanyama Identity”, Journal of Borderlands Studies, Vol. 22, No. 2, p. 21-38.
• Clapham, Christopher (1996). Africa and the International System: The Politics of State Survival. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
• Comaroff, Jean and John L. Comaroff (2012). Theory from The South: Or, How Euro-America is Evolving Toward Africa. Boulder and London, Paradigm.
• Darby, Phillip (2006) Postcolonizing the International – Working to Change the Way We Are. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press.
• Davidson, Basil (1992). The Black Man’s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State. New York, Random House.
• Davis, Alexander, Vineet Thakur and Peter Vale (2017). “Imperial mission, ‘scientific’ method: an alternate account of the origins of IR”, Millennium, Vol. 46, No.1, p.3-23.
• Dobler, Gregor (2010). “On the Border to Chaos: Identity Formation on the Angolan-Namibian Border, 1927–2008”, Journal of Borderlands Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2, p. 22–35.
• Dunn, Kevin and Timothy Shaw (eds.) (2001). Africa’s Challenge to International Relations. Houndsmills, Palgrave.
• Gasparini, Alberto (2014). “Belonging and Identity in the European Border Towns: Self-Centered Borders, Hetero-Centered Borders”, Journal of Borderlands Studies, Vol. 29, No. 2, p. 165-201.
• Goettlich, Kerry (2020). “The Rise of Linear Borders”, The Oxford Research Encyclopedia, International Studies. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
• Herbst, Jeffrey (1989). “The Creation and Maintenance of National Boundaries in Africa”, International Organization, Vol. 43, No. 4, p. 673–692.
• Herbst, Jeffrey (1992). “Challenges to Africa’s Boundaries in the New World Order”, Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 46, No. 1, p. 17-30.
• Ikoma, Francis (2012). “Africa’s International Borders as Potential Sources of Conflict and Future Threats to Peace and Security”, Institute for Security Studies, Paper No. 233,https://media.africaportal.org/documents/Paper_233.pdf (Accessed 10 August 2020).
• Imbo, Samuel Oluoch (1998). An Introduction to African Philosophy. Boston, Rowman & Littlefield.
• Jackson, Robert H. and Carl G. Rosberg (1982). “Why Africa’s Weak States Persist: The Empirical and the Juridical in Statehood”, World Politics, Vol. 35, No. 1, p. 1-24.
• Kayuni, Happy Mickson (2014). The Westphalian Model and Trans-border Ethnic Identity: the Case of the Chew Kingdom of Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia. Unpublished PhD dissertation. Cape Town, University of the Western Cape, Department of Political Science.
• Lapid, Yosef (2001). “Identities, Borders, Orders: Nudging International Relations Theory in a New Direction”, Mathias Albert, David Jacobson and Yosef Lapid (eds.), Identities, Borders, Orders: Rethinking International Relations Theory. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, p. 1-20.
• Levin, Jamie (ed.) (2020). Nomad-State Relationships in International Relations: Before and After Borders. London, Palgrave Macmillan.
• MacKay, Joseph et al. (2014). “Before and After Borders: The Nomadic Challenge to Sovereign Territoriality”, International Politics, Vol. 51, No. 1, p. 101–123
• Mamdani, Mahmoud (1996). Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton and New Jersey, Princeton University Press.
• Mamdani, Mahmood (2015). “Political Identity, Citizenship and Ethnicity in Post-Colonial Africa”. Keynote address at the Conference “New Frontiers of Social Policy”, Arusha.
• Mazrui, Ali (1986). The Africans: A Triple Heritage. Boston, Little Brown & Co.
• Mills, Kurt (1996). “Permeable Borders: Human Migration and Sovereignty”, Global Society, Vol. 10, No. 2, p. 77-106.
• Ndlovu-Gathsheni, Sabelo (2015). “Decoloniality as the Future of Africa”, History Compass, Vol. 13, No. 10, p. 485-497.
• Nkiwane, Tandeka (2001). “Africa and International Relations: Regional Lessons for a Global Discourse”, International Political Science Review, Vol. 22, No. 3, p. 279–290.
• Novak, Paolo (2011). “The Flexible Territoriality of Borders”, Geopolitics, Vol. 16, No. 4, p. 741-767.
• Nugent, Paul and A.I. Asiwaju (eds.) (1996). African Boundaries, Barriers, Conduits and Opportunities. London, Pinter.
• Onah, Emmanuel Ikechi (2015). “Trans-Border Ethnic Solidarity and Citizenship Conflicts in Some West and Central African States”, African Security Review, Vol. 24, No. 1, p. 63-74.
• Reed, Wm Cyrus (1995a). “The Rwandan Patriotic Front: Politics and Development in Rwanda”, Issue: A Journal of Opinion, Vol. 23, No. 2, p. 48-53.
• Reed, Wm Cyrus (1995b). “The New International Order: State, Society and African International Relations”, Africa Insight, Vol. 25, No. 3, p. 140-149.
• Rosenberg, Justin (2017). “The Elusive International”, International Relations, Vol. 3, No. 1, p. 90-103.
• Rosenberg, Justin (2016). “International Relations in the Prison of Political Science”, International Relations, Vol. 30, No. 2, p. 127-153.
• Salter, Mark (2008). “When the Exception Becomes the Rule: Borders, Sovereignty, and Citizenship”, Citizenship Studies, Vol. 12, No. 4, p. 365-380.
• Sambanis, Nicholas (1999). “Ethnic partition as solution to ethnic war: an empirical critique of the theoretical literature”, Policy Research Working Paper No. 2208, The World Bank.
• Seymour, Lee (2013). “Sovereignty, Territory and Authority: Boundary Maintenance in Contemporary Africa”, Critical African Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1, p. 17-31.
• Shepherd, Laura (2017). “Whose International Is It Anyway? Women’s Peace Activists as International Relations Theorists”, International Relations, Vol. 31, No. 1, p. 76–80.
• Shipley, Jesse Weaver, Jean Comaroff and Achille Mbembe (2010). “Africa in Theory: A Conversation Between Jean Comaroff and Achille Mbembe”, Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 83, No. 3, p. 653-678.
• Shiweda, Napandulwe (2011). Omhedi: Displacement and legitimacy in Oukwanyama politics, Namibia, 1915–2010. Unpublished PhD Dissertation. Cape Town, University of the Western Cape, Department of History.
• Udelsmann Rodrigues, Cristina (2017). “The Kwanhama Partitioned by the Border and the Angolan Perspective of CrossBorder Identity”, African Studies, Vol. 76, No. 3, p. 423-443.
• Vitalis, Robert (2015). White World Order, Black Power Politics: The Birth of American International Relations. Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press.
• Walker, R. B. J. (1993). Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
• Wiredu, Kwasi (1996). Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective. Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press.
• Wonders, N.A. (2006). “Global Flows, Semi-permeable Borders and New Channels of Inequality: Border Crossers and Border Performativity”, Sharon Pickering and Leanne Weber (eds) Borders, Mobility and Technologies of Control. Amsterdam, Springer, p.63-86.
• Zeller, Wolfgang (2013). “Introduction to the Special Issue: African Borderlands”, Critical African Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1, p. 1-3.