Has Africa Got Anything to Say? African Contributions to the Theoretical Development of International Relations

Abstract

This article argues that International Relations (IR) theory has much to learn from African experiences and African scholarship. The African context provides novel political, cultural, social and economic experiences and knowledge that can and should inform IR theory and encourage its further development. This article outlines how African experiences can be incorporated into IR theory as insights or contributions by African scholars (working both within Africa and beyond), insights or contributions by non-African scholars working on Africa and insights gleaned from a close interpretation of African experiences. It demonstrates how scholars can use African experiences to revise, innovate and better inform existing IR theory.

Key Words:

• Africa
• knowledge
• language
• experience
• IR theory
• African voices
• positionality

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the South African National Research Foundation's Thuthuka programme for providing the funds which enabled her to do this research.

Notes

1. From a panel discussion by the same name held at the Frankfurt book fair, 11 October 2007.

2. Some of these include: Neuman (1998), Dunn and Shaw (2001), Aydinli and Mathews (2000), Thomas and Wilkin (2004), Nkiwane (2001a), Lavelle (2005), and La Monica (2007).

3. The issue of constraints was explored in a previous paper (see Smith and van der Westhuizen, 2005) and will therefore not be the focus here.

4. In his reflection on V. Y. Mudimbe's The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge, Jacob Carruthers claims that “the revival of African thought is a job for Africans only; that is only Africans can do it. If Europeans do it, it would only mean that they defeated us again” (1996, p. 9).

5. Scholars such as Hardt and Negri (2000), Lipschutz and Rowe (2005), and Merlingen (2007) have applied Foucault's governmentality approach to the issue of globalisation and ‘empire’. In exploring the phenomenon of persuasion, Lebow (2005) and Hassdorf (2005) draw on Greek philosophy and the work of the French sociologist Bourdieu, respectively. Guzzini (2002) also reflects on Bourdieu, while Hobden and Hobson (2002) look at what they call the Historical Sociology of International Relations. Perhaps the most well-known example of a sociology-influenced study of IR is Wendt's (1999) A Social Theory of International Relations. Beitz (1999) and Walker (1992) both look at the link between political theory and IR, while Bleiker (2000; 2001b) turns to literature in what he calls the “aesthetic turn in International Political Theory”. Significantly, the journal Global Society: Journal of Interdisciplinary International Relations sets out to promote a cross-fertilisation between IR and other fields, in order to address the deficits of existing IR knowledge.

6. Thank you to Tim Shaw for pointing this out.

7. For a discussion of the advantages of interdisciplinarity, see Nissani (1997).

8. Thank you to Scarlett Cornelissen for pointing this out.

9. See in particular Dunn and Shaw (2001) and Neumann (1998).

10. See, for example, Enloe (2000), Hooper (2001), Peterson (1992), Sylvester (2002) and Tickner (1997).

11. For further discussion of the relationship between the domestic and the international, see, for example, Bueno de Mesquita (2002) and Fearon (1998).

12. For further reading on African regionalism, see Bach (1999), Grant and Söderbaum (2003) and Söderbaum and Taylor (2003).