Disciplinary Histories of Non-Anglophone International Relations

Abstract

As critics have argued, the International Relations (IR) discipline's history has mainly revolved around founding myths and ideological debates conceived from and for the Global North's perspective. The discipline's history has been particularly Anglocentric in its narrative and its construction of what is considered valuable knowledge. IR's attempt to universalize mainstream paradigms, theories, and methodologies has marginalized the emergence of diverse counter-narratives from non-Anglophone academic communities, especially those from the Global South. For instance, IR scholarship in Latin America and the Caribbean have been projected as secondary and constrained by the development of the discipline in Europe and the United States. In this chapter, I revisit the origins and development of the discipline in Latin America and the Caribbean and the most significant theoretical contributions, such as dependency theory, peripheral realism, and decolonial thinking. Beyond the influence of Western and Anglo-Saxon IR paradigms on Latin American and Caribbean IR, and despite the epistemic and material gatekeepers, theoretical approaches and developments of the discipline in the region are examples of an entangled body of knowledge which mainly rests on interdisciplinarity. I conclude by considering the challenges that must be approached to overcome the Anglocentric geopolitics of knowledge.