ABSTRACT

This introduction covers some key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book challenges the implicit notions inherent in most existing International Relations (IR) scholarship and instead presents the subject as seen from different vantage points in the global South. It examines the ways in which world politics have been addressed by traditional core approaches and explores the limitations of these treatments for understanding both Southern and Northern experiences of the "international." The term global South is used in this textbook not only as a geopolitical label, but also as a distinctive political positionality and an ethical subjectivity. At the heart of the debate about the need to globalize International Relations and to make it more inclusive, lies a critique of Western-centrism or Eurocentrism, two terms that are often conflated. In the specific case of IR, authors such as Steve Smith also refer to the American-centrism that characterizes the field in order to describe US dominance,.