Revisiting IR in a Time of Crisis

Abstract

The sense of crisis, fueled by military conflicts, the failures of neoliberal globalization and ecological degradation, is everywhere. Neoconservative agendas and cuts in educational spending are shrinking space for critical thinking necessary for understanding the impacts of these crises on ordinary people's lives. This article examines some indigenous responses to these various crises. It reexamines IR's Westphalia triumphalist narrative about the origins of the nation-state system from the perspective of those who suffered the consequences of European expansion. Emphasizing the importance of rewriting their histories, indigenous peoples are offering very different models of world order and ways of life that are more sensitive to resource and ecological constraints. Although indigenous women have a complex relationship with feminism, indigenous knowledge is strikingly similar to certain feminist thinking. Indigenous epistemologies are hermeneutic and reflexive, seeking to uncover hidden histories and new knowledge from those whose voices have rarely been heard. The article outlines some visions of world order and national sovereignty offered by indigenous peoples in Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Central and North America, demonstrating parallels with feminist thought. It concludes by reflecting on obstacles, similar to those faced by feminists, standing in the way of alternative forms of knowledge being taken seriously by the discipline of International Relations.

Keywords:

• indigenous knowledge
• financial crisis
• world order
• state sovereignty
• feminism

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this article was given as a keynote address at the International Feminist Journal of Politics annual conference, “Gender and Crisis in Global Politics,” 9–11 May 2014. Thanks to Sandra Harding, Randy Persaud, Lynette Russell and other scholars at the Monash Indigenous Centre at Monash University, as well as the anonymous reviewers of this article, for their helpful comments and suggestions, and to Arlene Tickner and Lily Ling for providing useful references.

Notes on Contributor

J. Ann Tickner is Professor Emerita, University of Southern California and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the School of International Service at American University, Washington, DC. Her principal areas of research include international theory, peace and security, and feminist approaches to international relations. Her publications include Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War World (2001) and A Feminist Voyage through International Relations (2014).

Notes

1 I use the abbreviation “IR” to refer to what has conventionally been defined as the discipline of International Relations.

2 Critical race and postcolonial IR scholars in various locations, have, of course, been engaging these issues for quite some time.

3 For the purposes of this article, these approaches will not be treated separately. Indigenous scholarship, whether or not it defines itself as explicitly feminist, has a strong affinity with certain forms of feminism, particularly with postcolonial feminism. However, many indigenous scholars prefer to use terms such as “decolonialism” or “anticolonialism” to stress that, for indigenous people especially, colonialism has not ended. Indigenous women are affected by both colonialism and patriarchy. Indigenous feminists use an intersectional analysis to challenge both (Green 2007, 23). See also Kuokkanen (2015) for a feminist intersectional framework for understanding gendered violence in indigenous communities.

4 Marshall Beier's edited volume Indigenous Diplomacies highlights some work already done by indigenous scholars in IR. Nevertheless, as he notes, the IR field more generally has been almost completely silent about indigenous people and their international relations/diplomacies, something that he finds surprising given the importance of colonial encounters in IR's history. Beier attributes this, in part, to IR's “authorial voice” whereby even those from critical perspectives speak for Others rather than affirming their ability to speak for themselves. He also suggests that indigenous diplomacies do not fit comfortably into IR's state-centric theoretical framework (2009, 12–15).

5 See, for example, Josephine Flood (2006, 251) who documents the tragic plight of contemporary Australian Aboriginals, whose life expectancy is twenty years less than nonindigenous, stuck at levels not seen in the rest of the population for a century.

6 In the introduction to her edited book, Making Space for Indigenous Feminism (2007), in which St. Denis's chapter appears, Joyce Green notes the paucity of Aboriginal women who identify as feminist. The book is the product of an Aboriginal Feminism Symposium that was held in Canada in 2002. All twenty-four participants were self-defined Aboriginal feminists, although Green reports that the label “Aboriginal feminist” was fraught for symposium participants (Green 2007, 16). Although identifying themselves as citizens of today's sovereign states is problematic for indigenous peoples, Green is a scholar who lives and works in Canada. I use the term “Aboriginal” rather than “indigenous” when the scholars themselves use it – usually those writing about indigenous people who live in Canada or Australia.

7 For an important statement about the racism and gendering of coloniality see Lugones (2010).

8 In this section, I rely heavily on Stewart-Harawira's 2005 text because she situates her analysis in the framework of contemporary crises. It is a framework that I develop more generally in the introduction.

9 In a later piece, Stewart-Harawira (2009) notes an intensification of crises centered on the financial meltdown of 2007–08 and what she describes as the imminent collapse of a global economic system predicated on the exploitation of the poor (209).

10 Stewart-Harawira (2009) reminds us there is not a single indigenous ontology or cosmology. There are, however, broadly similar sets of beliefs and principles that have been passed down by indigenous leaders and scholars in a wide range of different communities (209).

11 These transformational possibilities are explored in some detail in Stewart-Harawira (2005, 244–252).