The West/Non-West Binary and Marginalization in Global International Relations

Global International Relations (GIR) is grounded in a West/non-West binary on which its denunciation of Western dominance rests. This concerns both the dominance of Western thought and perspectives and dominance in publications. This paper’s core argument is that reliance on the binary prevents GIR from including communities, perspectives, and scholars that already face epistemic marginalization in the IR discipline. This is counter to GIR’s core objective of inclusivity. The argument is three-pronged: First, the reliance on the binary is ontologically unsustainable. Second, through a survey, the paper demonstrates that dominance in publications and editorial board membership is less “Western” than assumed and that there is great variation in terms of the representation of “Western” countries. Third, these two elements that pervade GIR are harmful because they lead to its perpetuating marginalization through the exclusionary and homogenizing effects of the use of the binary. This affects three domains that Global IR ends up overlooking: the liminal semi-periphery, the West subaltern, and the non-West subaltern. The paper concludes that globalizing IR requires the abandonment of binaries in GIR’s conceptualizations of the world and in its categorization of IR scholars and offers preliminary steps for moving GIR forward.