ABSTRACT
The growing intensity of calls for decolonizing International Relations (IR) reflects a restless desire for alternative modes of scholarly and pedagogical practice. Fixing on what alternatives a decolonizing IR offers remains a bit difficult to specify, though growing ink is being spilt towards this end. This chapter offers some preliminary thoughts about re-imagining the object of IR as more encompassing of the human condition in all its variety and interconnection. It organizes this inquiry around three questions: When is IR? Where is IR? What is IR? The answers to such questions are interlinked. The chapter illustrates this in relation to a stereotypically Eurocentric account of the field, identifying the spatial, temporal and social ontological demarcations, however problematic, of IR. It considers two “cases” that might demarcate IR differently: reflections centered on the conquest and colonization of the Americas and model for IR and the spatial, temporal and social ontological specificities of an IR centered on the Silk Road.
