WORLD IN REVIEW
None were in non-western countries. The Times Higher
Education world university rankings for the social sciences
in 2013-2014, meanwhile, list no non-western institutions
until the National University of Singapore, which comes
in tied for 29th. The QS World University Rankings from
2013 for politics and international studies puts only seven
non-western universities in the top 40. Granted, these are
western rankings in western publications, and perhaps this
is an example of western bias in journalism; but it is telling
that non-western rankings of international affairs programs
do not seem to exist. At the very least, western rankings
of university programs reinforce western dominance over
international relations theory.
The western nature of those academics responsible for
international relations scholarship and teaching is noteworthy because of the influence of the identity of a researcher
on the outcomes of research. This is the central argument
of standpoint theory, a school of thought that holds that
those individuals who are marginalized or oppressed gain
This is especially problematic given the growing importance
of knowledge as an economic phenomenon – as a good with
value. Knowledge and information are increasingly sources
of economic worth and measures of economic success.
Whereas Marx proposed a philosophy of historical materialism whereby material factors—such as productive capacity
and technology—are the sources of power and the drivers
of history, we are likely now living in a post-Marxist age of
informationism, in which knowledge and its spread are the
most important sources of power. Examples abound. A 2009
World Bank report found that a 10 percentage-point increase
in high-speed Internet connections is accompanied by an
increase in economic growth of 1.3 percentage-points. The
US budget for intelligence work has risen every year since
2006 and now sits at around US$80 billion per year. A recent
New York Times opinion piece by Karl Taro Greenfeld
highlighted the importance of information gleaned from social media in building social and cultural capital. If the search
for truth drives contemporary history, and westerners dominate the search for truth about
international affairs, then much
of the world has been unjustly
prevented from participating
in an important world-historic
and power-generating process.
Western-skewed international
relations scholarship excludes
much of the world from touching the benefits of the pursuit of
knowledge about the international system, while at the same
time generating an incomplete
picture of world affairs.
This exclusion does not seem
to the result of some intentional
or malicious grand conspiracy. It
would be incorrect to argue that
individual westerners are at fault.
Instead, this problem is the result
of a sort of organic growth, an
unintentional historical process.
In September 2013, a Facebook user logs into his account in Shanghai’s Free Trade Zone
It is more correct to view westafter the Chinese government decided to lift an internet ban on websites like Facebook,
ern dominance of international
Twitter, and the New York Times.
relations theory as a disease that
has infected academia—and
privileged access to knowledge and truth that is routinely
one that harms westerners as well as non-westerners. The
excluded from the mainstream; for example, non-westerners
non-universality of international relations thought prevents
subjected to centuries of western political and military
western theorists from arriving at good understandings of
domination likely have novel and insightful interpretations
the international system and from gaining access to the
of international affairs to offer. Because it fails to take into
truth. The ethnocentrism at play is implicit and harmful
account a wide variety of important perspectives, internato all interested in the pursuit of truth, from any culture or
tional relations theory that is the product of western thought
region. Despite this lack of intentionality or fault, Robert
in western institutions cannot claim to be global theory or
Cox’s insight holds: “Theory is always for someone and for
to be true in any meaningful sense.
some purpose.” International relations theory is by and for
The danger of western bias is that it shuts out those
westerners, even if it is not intentionally so.
alternative perspectives. Limiting the diversity of theory we
Now, perhaps something different is at work. Perhaps
consider in the field of international relations limits the truth
instead of a western bias, international relations theory
we can generate and taints what knowledge we do produce.
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H A R V A R D I N T E R N A T I O N A L R E V I E W • Summer 2014
Photo Courtesy Reuters