Conclusion

The overall aim of this book has been to reassess conventional thinking in the study of international relations about how contemporary international society and world order has come into existence. It builds on an initial premise that much of the thinking about world order and international society in the discipline is inherently Eurocentric and, as a consequence, it is argued, any assessment of how the prevailing world order came into being, or how contemporary international society will evolve in the future explicitly or implicitly rest on a whole raft of ideas that can be shown to be profoundly distorted or mistaken about many of the most fundamental features of international relations. On the face of it, this may appear to be an extraordinarily bold, indeed rather rash, claim because the contributors are effectively challenging the orientation and theoretical posture of most thinkers in the field. It is important to acknowledge, therefore, that this book is doing nothing more radical than participate in a very broad movement that is emerging across the social sciences. In other words, there is now a very widespread and growing recognition that Eurocentrism has been endemic in all the social sciences and there are, as a result, very significant debates across these social sciences about the veracity and consequences of this claim. It obviously follows that it would be very strange indeed if the accusation of Eurocentrism could not be made in the field of International Relations. Nevertheless, it is, perhaps, more than a little odd that more has not been made of this factor in the field given the importance that is attached to the issue in other social sciences. ¹