Worlding Beyond the West
About the Book Series
Historically, the International Relations (IR) discipline has established its boundaries, issues, and theories based upon Western experience and traditions of thought. This series explores the role of geocultural factors, institutions, and academic practices in creating the concepts, epistemologies, and methodologies through which IR knowledge is produced. This entails identifying alternatives for thinking about the "international" that are more in tune with local concerns and traditions outside the West. But it also implies provincializing Western IR and empirically studying the practice of producing IR knowledge at multiple sites within the so-called ‘West’.
We welcome book proposals in areas such as:
- Critiques of Western-centric scholarship and policy-making.
- The emergence of new theories and approaches from ‘the periphery’.
- The challenges for the discipline at large in accommodating its post-Western phase, and the political and ethical dilemmas involved in this.
- Concrete studies of the results of approaching issues and agendas in ‘the periphery’ with the tools offered by core thinking.
- Work by scholars from the non-West about local, national, regional or global issues, reflecting on the importance of different perspectives and of geocultural epistemologies.
- Studies of ‘travelling theory’ – how approaches, concepts and theories get modified, re-casted and translated in different contexts.
- The meaning and evolution of major concepts in particular regions, such as security thinking, concepts of globalisation and power, understandings of ‘economy’ and ‘development’ or other key categories in particular regions.
- The sociology of the discipline in different places – with a focus on a country, a region, on specific research communities/schools, subfields, or on specific institutions such as academic associations, journals, foundations or think tanks.
- Empirical studies of epistemic practices and the conditions of knowledge production in different Western and non-Western locales and sites.
- Studies of the interaction between different knowledge producers, such as processes of expertise or the dialogue between intellectuals, academics, bureaucrats and policy elites.
Series Editors: Arlene B. Tickner, Universidad del Rosario, Colombia, David L. Blaney, Macalester College, USA and Inanna Hamati-Ataya, University of Groningen, the Netherlands
Founding Editor: Ole Wæver, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Decentring Global Challenges in International Relations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives Beyond the West
1st Edition
Edited
By Debora Valentina Malito, Evangelos Fanoulis
August 21, 2025
This book examines contemporary global challenges from a decentring perspective, advancing an interdisciplinary conversation. International studies scholarship has become increasingly more interdisciplinary and multifocal, especially as the escalation of systemic ecological and economic crises, as ...
Dissolving Master Narratives: Decolonial Reconstellations, Volume Two
1st Edition
Edited
By Laura Doyle, Simon Gikandi, Mwangi wa Gĩthĩnji
April 10, 2025
Dissolving Master Narratives comprises one volume in an unprecedented three-volume set, collectively subtitled Decolonial Reconstellations. Together with Volume One (Dynamics of Deep Time and Deep Place) and Volume Three (Reconceiving Identities in Political Economy), it gathers thinkers from ...
Dynamics of Deep Time and Deep Place: Decolonial Reconstellations, Volume One
1st Edition
Edited
By Laura Doyle, Simon Gikandi, Mwangi wa Gĩthĩnji
April 10, 2025
Dynamics of Deep Time and Deep Place comprises one volume in an unprecedented three-volume set, collectively subtitled Decolonial Reconstellations. Together with Volume Two (Dissolving Master Narratives) and Volume Three (Reconceiving Identities in Political Economy), it gathers thinkers from ...
Reconceiving Identities in Political Economy: Decolonial Reconstellations, Volume Three
1st Edition
Edited
By Laura Doyle, Simon Gikandi, Mwangi wa Gĩthĩnji
April 10, 2025
Reconceiving Identities in Political Economy comprises one volume in an unprecedented three-volume set, collectively subtitled Decolonial Reconstellations. Together with Volume One (Dynamics of Deep Time and Deep Place) and Volume Two (Dissolving Master Narratives), it gathers thinkers from across ...
Russian Westernizers and Change in International Relations: The Promised West
1st Edition
By Andrei P. Tsygankov
June 07, 2024
Russian Westernizers and Change in International Relations summarizes the Westernizing trend in Russian thought from the early nineteenth century to the present day. This book looks at Russian thinkers and politicians who have considered Western/European civilization to be superior to others and ...
Russian Realism: Defending 'Derzhava' in International Relations
1st Edition
By Andrei P. Tsygankov
September 25, 2023
Russian Realism analyzes Russian contemporary geopolitical thinking, or realism, and explores the notion of Derzhava as the foundation of Russian realism. The author defines Russian realists as all those favoring actions by the Russian state in defense of its interests, including protection of ...
The Kyoto School and International Relations: Non-Western Attempts for a New World Order
1st Edition
By Kosuke Shimizu
September 25, 2023
The Kyoto School and International Relations explores the Kyoto School’s challenge to transcend the ‘Western’ domination over the ‘rest’ of the world, and the issues this raises for contemporary ‘non-Western’ and ‘Global IR’ literature. Was the support of Kyoto School thinkers inevitable due to ...
The “Russian Idea” in International Relations: Civilization and National Distinctiveness
1st Edition
By Andrei P. Tsygankov
June 16, 2023
The "Russian Idea" in International Relations identifies different approaches within Russian Civilizational tradition — Russia’s nationally distinctive way of thinking — by situating them within IR literature and connecting them to practices of the country’s international relations. Civilizational ...
Internal Colonialism and International Relations: Tracks of Decolonization in Bolivia
1st Edition
By Ana Carolina Teixeira Delgado
January 09, 2023
This book investigates decolonization as a local process and its connections to international relations, introducing "internal colonialism" as a crucial analytical category for internationalists. Using Bolivia as a case study, the author argues that the reshaping of colonialism and its resistance ...
Globalizing International Theory: The Problem with Western IR Theory and How to Overcome It
1st Edition
Edited
By A. Layug, John M. Hobson
September 30, 2022
Globalizing International Theory adds to the literature on non-Western international relations (IR) theory by probing the question of what it means to globalize international theory. The book starts with the premise that international theory is unfinished, incomplete, and homogenous because it ...
Decolonization, Development and Knowledge in Africa: Turning Over a New Leaf
1st Edition
By Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni
May 06, 2022
This provocative book is anchored on the insurgent and resurgent spirit of decolonization of the twenty-first century. The author calls upon Africa to turn over a new leaf in the domains of politics, economy, and knowledge as it frees itself from imperial global designs and global coloniality. With...
Intersectional Decoloniality: Reimagining International Relations and the Problem of Difference
1st Edition
By Marcos S. Scauso
April 29, 2022
This book assesses diverse ways to think about “others” while also emphasizing the advantages of decolonial intersectionality. The author analyzes a number of struggles that emerge among Andean indigenous intellectuals, governmental projects, and International Relations scholars from the Global ...