Subduing Globalization: The Challenge of the Indigenization Movement

Abstract

More than two decades ago, Stanley Hoffmann described the discipline of international relations (IR) as a peculiarly “American social science” (Hoffmann, 1977). He maintained that, traditionally, analysis of the international system had been equated with the study of US foreign policy — not surprising us, given that scholars residing in the United States do much of the theorizing in IR. Ironically, however, IR scholars continue to view their discipline as a “global” social science within which theories and research methodologies can supposedly travel from one culture and location to others with little difficulty. Of late, postmodernist IR theorists have questioned the notion of IR as a “global” social science, insisting that all scholarship is radically situated within cultural and temporal frameworks. Postmodernists claim that there is no neutral vantage point or absolute standard of scientific objectivity from which scholars can observe human behavior.KeywordsKnowledge IndigenizationInternational RelationWestern ModernityIndigenization MovementAmerican Social ScienceThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.