Abstract
Proponents of uneven and combined development (U&CD) as a theoretical approach to International Relations (IR) have presented it as providing the conceptual means for overcoming Eurocentrism. While the U&CD scholars have made valuable contributions to anti-Eurocentric IR scholarship, this article argues that U&CD has analytical limitations that impede its anti-Eurocentric potential. These limitations derive from U&CD’s reliance on the concepts of ‘development’ and the ‘whip of external necessity’, which require developmental ranking of societies and lock U&CD into a state-centric social ontology. To provide complementary conceptual resources to overcome U&CD’s analytical limitations, this article introduces Enrique Dussel’s liberation philosophy (LP), which can incorporate peoples other than states as agents and entities of global politics through its concept of ‘exteriority’. U&CD and LP are then jointly applied to analyse the relations between the Nordic states and the indigenous Sámi people to assess the approaches’ relative strengths and weaknesses and identify synergies between them. Based on this assessment, the article outlines the potential for synthesising a ‘thin’ version of U&CD with LP, by using the concept of ‘exteriority’ to reorient U&CD’s analytical focus towards people excluded by the states-system.
Highlights
The adaptation of Leon Trotsky’s idea of uneven and combined development (U&CD) as a theoretical approach to International Relations (IR) has stimulated debate on Millennium: Journal of International Studies 00(0)the discipline’s core purpose, by proposing the dimension of social reality that arises from societal multiplicity as its proper role
Proponents of U&CD have argued that it makes a unique contribution to IR by providing the theoretical means for reconceptualising the intersocietal and for overcoming Eurocentrism
This opens the question: if the intersocietal is to be reconceptualised in non-Eurocentric form, why should it be equated with the inter-state? As the states-system is predominantly a legacy of European colonialism, leaving its centrality unchallenged appears to sidestep a central aspect of the Eurocentrism problematique
Summary
The adaptation of Leon Trotsky’s idea of uneven and combined development (U&CD) as a theoretical approach to International Relations (IR) has stimulated debate on Millennium: Journal of International Studies 00(0)the discipline’s core purpose, by proposing the dimension of social reality that arises from societal multiplicity as its proper role. The U&CD scholars perceive analytical neglect of intersocietal interactions as the foundation of Eurocentrism, as it has sustained the myth of Europe’s autonomously enacted transition to modernity, ostensibly demonstrating the superiority of Western practices and foreshadowing the developmental path all societies are destined to replicate[3] They argue that U&CD provides the conceptual means for overcoming Eurocentrism, as it dispels myths of Europe’s endogenously enacted transition of modernity, by embedding interaction between societies into the concept of development. This in turn entails that all societies follow unique combined developmental paths, ruling out the possibility of humanity’s universal convergence around Westernised modernity, as advocated by Eurocentric ideologies[4]
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