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AT: Racial IR
Sustainable Critique
Valid, descriptive understandings of international relations are an essential prerequisite to emancipatory critique and epistemic decolonization – instead of favoring political paradigms based on commitment to the oppressed, you should prioritize objective social inquiry.
Jones 04 [Branwen Gruffyd Jones, senior lecturer in International Political Economy @ Goldsmiths University of London, “From Eurocentrism to Epistemological Internationalism: power, knowledge, and objectivity in International Relations”, August 2004, http://www.csog.group.cam.ac.uk/iacr/papers/Jones.pdf ; 7/17 EB]
The ‘common-sense’ view pervading recent discussions of epistemology, ontology and methodology in IR asserts that objectivity implies value-free neutrality. However, objective social inquiry has an inherent tendency to be critical, in various senses. To the extent that objective knowledge provides a better and more adequate account of reality than other ideas, such knowledge is inherently critical (implicitly or explicitly) of those ideas. 30 In other words critical social inquiry does not (or not only) manifest its ‘criticalness’ through self-claimed labels of being critical or siding with the oppressed, but through the substantive critique of prevailing ideas. Objective social knowledge constitutes a specific form of criticism: explanatory critique. The critique of dominant ideas or ideologies is elaborated through providing a more adequate explanation of aspects of the world, and in so doing exposing what is wrong with the dominant ideology. This may also entail revealing the social conditions which give rise to ideologies, thus exposing the necessary and causal relation between particular social relations and particular ideological conceptions.
In societies which are constituted by unequal structures of social relations giving rise to unequal power and conflicting interests, the reproduction of those structured relations is in the interests of the powerful, whereas transformation of existing structured relations is in the interests of the weak. Because ideas inform social action they are casually efficacious either in securing the reproduction of existing social relations (usually as an unintended consequence of social practice), or in informing social action aimed at transforming social relations. This is why ideas cannot be ‘neutral’. Ideas which provide a misrepresentation of the nature of society, the causes of unequal social conditions, and the conflicting interests of the weak and powerful, will tend to help secure the reproduction of prevailing social relations. Ideas which provide a more adequate account of the way society is structured and how structured social relations produce concrete conditions of inequality and exploitation can potentially inform efforts to change those social relations. In this sense, ideas which are false are ideological and, in serving to promote the reproduction of the status quo and avoid attempts at radical change, are in the interests of the powerful. An account which is objective will contradict ideological ideas, implicitly or explicitly criticising them for their false or flawed accounts of reality. The criticism here arises not, or not only, from pointing out the coincidence between ideologies and the interests of the powerful, nor from a prior normative stance of solidarity with the oppressed, but from exposing the flaws in dominant ideologies through a more adequate account of the nature and causes of social conditions 31 .
A normative commitment to the oppressed must entail a commitment to truth and objectivity, because true ideas are in the interest of the oppressed, false ideas are in the interest of the oppressors. In other words, the best way to declare solidarity with the oppressed is to declare one’s commitment to objective inquiry 32 . As Nzongola-Ntalaja (1986: 10) has put it:
It is a question of whether one analyses society from the standpoint of the dominant groups, who have a vested interest in mystifying the way society works, or from the standpoint of ordinary people, who have nothing to lose from truthful analyses of their predicament.
The philosophical realist theory of science, objectivity and explanatory critique thus provides an alternative response to the relationship between knowledge and power. Instead of choosing perspectives on the basis of our ethical commitment to the cause of the oppressed and to emancipatory social change, we should choose between contending ideas on the basis of which provides a better account of objective social reality. This will inherently provide a critique of the ideologies which, by virtue of their flawed account of the social world, serve the interests of the powerful.
Exemplars of explanatory critique in International Relations are provided in the work of scholars such as Siba Grovogui, James Gathii, Anthony Anghie, Bhupinder Chimni, Jacques Depelchin, Hilbourne Watson, Robert Vitalis, Sankaran Krishna, Michel-Rolph Trouillot 33 . Their work provides critiques of central categories, theories and discourses in the theory and practice of IR and narratives of world history, including assumptions about sovereignty, international society, international law, global governance, the nature of the state. They expose the ideological and racialised nature of central aspects of IR through a critical examination of both the long historical trajectory of imperial ideologies regarding colonized peoples, and the actual practices of colonialism and decolonisation in the constitution of international orders and local social conditions. Their work identifies the flaws in current ideas by revealing how they systematically misrepresent or ignore the actual history of social change in Africa, the Caribbean and other regions of the Third World, both past and present – during both colonial and neo-colonial periods of the imperial world order. Their work reveals how racism, violence, exploitation and dispossession, colonialism and neo-colonialism have been central to the making of contemporary international order and contemporary doctrines of international law, sovereignty and rights, and how such themes are glaring in their absence from histories and theories of international relations and international history.
Objective social knowledge which accurately depicts and explains social reality has these qualities by virtue of its relation to its object, not its subject. As Collier argues, “The science/ideology distinction is an epistemological one, not a social one.” (Collier 1979: 60). So, for example, in the work of Grovogui, Gathii and Depelchin, the general perspective and knowledge of conditions in and the history of Africa might be due largely to the African social origins of the authors. However the judgement that their accounts are superior to those of mainstream IR rests not on the fact that the authors are African, but on the greater adequacy of their accounts with respect to the actual historical and contemporary production of conditions and change in Africa and elsewhere in the Third World. The criteria for choosing their accounts over others derives from the relation between the ideas and their objects (what they are about), not from the relation between the ideas and their subjects (who produced them). It is vital to retain explicitly some commitment to objectivity in social inquiry, to the notion that the proper criterion for judging ideas about the world lies in what they say about the world, not whose ideas they are.
A fundamental problem which underlies the origin and reproduction of IR’s eurocentricity is the overwhelming dominance of ideas produced in and by the west, and the wilful and determined silencing of the voices and histories of the colonised. But the result of this fundamental problem is flawed knowledge about the world. Eurocentricity is therefore a dual problem concerning both the authors and the content of knowledge, and cannot be resolved through normative commitments alone. It is not only the voices of the colonised, but the histories of colonialism, which have been glaring in their absence from the discipline of International Relations.
Overcoming eurocentricity therefore requires not only concerted effort from the centre to create space and listen to hitherto marginalised voices, but also commitment to correcting the flaws in prevailing knowledge – and it is not only ‘the Other’ who can and should elaborate this critique. A vitally important implication of objectivity is that it is the responsibility of European and American, just as much as non-American or non-European scholars, to decolonise IR. The importance of objectivity in social inquiry defended here can perhaps be seen as a form of epistemological internationalism. It is not necessary to be African to attempt to tell a more accurate account of the history of Europe’s role in the making of the contemporary Africa and the rest of the world, for example, or to write counter-histories of ‘the expansion of international society’ which detail the systematic barbarity of so-called Western civilisation. It is not necessary to have been colonised to recognise and document the violence, racism, genocide and dispossession which have characterised European expansion over five hundred years.
Critical assessments of ontology and epistemology must be formed through an accurate reading of history – absent an incrementalist and conditioned approach to international relations, critique becomes parasitic. Methodological pluralism and contextual understandings of IR are the necessary counteract to Western-dominated modes of inquiry.
Jones 04 [Branwen Gruffyd Jones, senior lecturer in International Political Economy @ Goldsmiths University of London, “From Eurocentrism to Epistemological Internationalism: power, knowledge, and objectivity in International Relations”, August 2004, http://www.csog.group.cam.ac.uk/iacr/papers/Jones.pdf ; 7/17 EB]
The possibility of objective social inquiry in the form of explanatory critique has been defended through philosophical argument about the basic nature of the world and of knowledge (ontology and epistemology). In practice, however, there will always be various constraints which undermine or condition the realisation of this possibility. This is because producing knowledge is a social practice which is not purely cognitive, and is thus subject to a range of non-cognitive as well as cognitive determinations or influences: social science always only happens in a context which is at once always understood, preconceptualised, and codetermined by non-cognitive factors too. So that, on this stance, social theory appears, at its best, in the form of conditioned critique. As critique, it presupposes and engages with those preconceptualisations; as conditioned, it is subject in its genesis, reception and effect, to extra-scientific, extra-cognitive and non-ideational, as well as scientific, cognitive and ideational, determinations (whose critical understanding is itself part of the business of theory). This is of course an implication of historical materialism. (Bhaskar 1986: 170). Different kinds of constraint can be distinguished analytically (in practice such constraints occur simultaneously or in combination). Like any social practice, the activity of producing knowledge is simultaneously a social and a material practice, subject to both social and material determinations and constraints. The discussion here focuses mainly on the social factors constraining the production of objective knowledge. The significance for knowledge production of the enormous international inequalities in material conditions is a very important area of inquiry, but cannot be included within the scope of the current discussion. What kinds of social factors might constrain the process of social inquiry into international relations? One set of constraints arise from the ways in which our location in society influences what we know about society. The kind of objective knowledge being defended here is that which provides a more adequate account of the social world, and, in doing so, provides an implicit or explicit critique of prevailing ideas (ideologies) which misrepresent the social world. Although considerable debate within and between social sciences is conducted primarily at the level of theory or method – for example, the so-called ‘inter-paradigm debates’ in International Relations – where disagreements really matter are ultimately over how we understand and explain concrete events and conditions, and processes of change or lack of change. Here historical knowledge is crucial. Ideologies which misrepresent the world in various ways, and as such are factually wrong, are parasitic for their acceptance on ignorance of what actually is the case. This might sound very simplistic; but how many people are really very well informed about the history and current detail of social conditions in their own country or region – including, very importantly, the international or global constitution of their own history – let alone the histories of ‘other places’? 35 . There is nothing straightforward or easy about becoming well informed about concrete histories. Such an enterprise takes time; and for those unfortunate enough only to speak English, probably requires mastering a different language in the process (which, for Anglophones studying African histories and realities, for example, will probably still only be the colonial European language). We should therefore heed Engels’ observation made in the nineteenth century: The demonstration of the materialist conception even upon a single historical example was a scientific task requiring years of quiet research, for it is evident that mere empty talk can achieve nothing in this context and that only an abundance of critically examined historical material which has been completely mastered can make it possible to solve such a problem. (Engels 1859: 221) To have ‘years of quiet research’ seems a luxury today in the light of competing demands on our time from teaching, the compulsion to publish and keep abreast of disciplinary debates, not to mention family life. We should therefore also heed the advice of Aijaz Ahmad: ‘the ground reality is that there is no alternative to picking up small chunks and doing them well’ (1997: 59-60). Recognising the limits of our knowledge of substantive histories, and attempting to overcome them bit by bit, is surely always better than a false confidence in our authority deriving from lack of awareness of how little we know about the world. These constraints are relevant in all cases regardless of whether the researcher is examining their own or another society. What more specific problems arise when studying societies other than those we come from? What about for example a European IR scholar doing research about Africa – or an African scholar doing research about Europe? 36 Such questions are especially pertinent to International Relations. Given the basic importance of knowing about a place, its peoples and history, it is arguably likely that local intellectuals might be better informed about their own particular people, country or region than foreigners, especially where the question of language is concerned. There is nothing intrinsic about this however; and of course nationality / place of origin are not the only social influences on what we know. Our class position and gender are especially significant in influencing our general outlook, ‘common-sense’ understandings, core assumptions about the world, and what we know about our own society through direct experience. A variety of different social factors will combine to influence and condition the perspective of a particular researcher and thus potentially influence the knowledge they produce. However, initial influences deriving from our social position (in a particular society and in the world), once recognised, can be countered. Social position influences but does not determine the production of knowledge. We are not trapped forever to only produce the viewpoint consistent with our particular social origin or location. A commitment to objectivity in social inquiry, or what I have called ‘epistemological internationalism’, implies ’attempts to escape from the bias of one’s own subjectivity and one’s own historical place’” (Collier 2003: 137). A careful scholar from any part of the world, when studying a society other than their own, must ensure they do not assume that theoretical categories deriving from some particular historically specific process of social change can automatically be applied to the analysis of a different society with its own history; still less should the categories referring to historically specific social forms developed in one society be used as a norm with which to compare and, implicitly or explicitly, evaluate historically specific social forms of another society. Yet these are standard methodological procedures in Western social inquiry. The researcher should endeavour to find out as much as possible about the historical production and current conditions in that society from a variety of sources – by consulting people in that society, by reading literature of that society, local newspapers, and, importantly of course, by reading work produced by that society’s intellectuals. This seems so obvious as not to be worth mentioning; yet it is surprising, for example, how many Western Africanist scholars appear to pay little attention to the work of African intellectuals.. Mahmood Mamdani has criticised: Eurocentrism … has a tendency to view its object as lacking in a capacity to comprehend their own history as a step in taking the initiative to making it. While reading some of the better known Africanist works during a teaching job in the US in 1989, I was struck by how little attempt most Africanists made to read African intellectuals. For I had always taken it for granted that, should I want to study North American society, I would approach it through its own intelligentsia, through their writings, their self-reflection. Matters are different with the Africanist who tends to approach Africa as one would a zoo. For the collectivity of animals, no matter how interesting and intricate its internal organisation, has no capacity for self-reflection and self-transformation! In this sense, Eurocentrism mutilates the experience of both the West and of the rest, mythologizing the former and caricaturing the latter. (Mamdani 1995: 609).
Absent a practice of sustainable critique, emancipatory criticism of international relations oversimplifies the world and falls to unchecked reification.
Levine 12 [Daniel Levine, prof. political science, emeritus, @ University of Michigan, October 2012, Recovering International Relations: The Promise of Sustainable Critique, Oxford UP ; 7/17 EB]
The concept of reification, central to this project, requires some additional elucidation before the path to sustainable critique can be cleared. Social sciences describe human-constructed realities through analogies, whose artificiality is progressively naturalized—lost to intellectual understanding and theoretical consideration—until they come finally to appear “as facts of nature, results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of divine will.” 50 Different moments in theorizing, as chapters 3 through 5 show, set out to undo or criticize an existing theoretical or political common sense, combining long-standing fact-value traditions (captured in IR by the traditions of realism, liberalism, and the like but drawn from normative political-theory traditions of much older vintage) with particular methodological approaches to produce paradigmatic research programs. Each does so by positing its own particular reifications in distinction to others; over time, these, too, are lost to intellectual understanding and theoret

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