Seeing IR Differently: Notes from the Third World (Tickner, 2003)
Purpose and Thesis
The article argues for the importance of distinct non-core and non-Western perspectives in critical interpretations of International Relations (IR).
It analyzes why third world scholarship is largely invisible within core IR, and how features like culture, everyday life, and hybridity create readings of IR that differ fundamentally from core perspectives.
It reexamines key IR categories—war and conflict, the state, sovereignty and autonomy, and nationalism—from third world loci of enunciation to show how these readings complement and refine prevailing global politics understandings.
The piece positions third world knowledge as a necessary element to observe global problems more fully, arguing for inclusion of multiple know-hows scattered worldwide rather than universal knowledge projects.
It offers a theoretical program to shift the locus of theory production and to challenge who gets to speak IR.
The IR Field in Crisis: Gatekeeping and the Case for Difference
Over the last decade, IR studies have produced three complementary literatures:
Post-positivist critiques of unilinear, cumulative knowledge and the silencing of marginal voices.
Historiography and sociology of science analyses on how social factors shape IR knowledge.
Analyses of national variants (US/Europe privileging) that map the field’s regional specificities.
A fourth literature has emerged: the need to think differently about IR in non-core settings, challenging the mismatch between standard IR terminology/theories and third world realities.
Despite calls for opening the discipline, there is a paradox: active calls for inclusion have not been matched by concrete efforts to map or incorporate third world know-hows.
Gatekeeping persists: a small set of core-country academics mostly define the field; publishing patterns show US/European dominance; standard IR terms and theories are often ill-suited to third world realities.
Foundational references highlight that the discipline has remained centered on core epistemologies, even as reforms call for cosmopolitanism.
Tickner argues for a reorientation of the field that includes non-core perspectives as essential to understanding world politics, rather than as marginal or exotic viewpoints.
Gatekeepers and Access in IR
Gatekeeping is enacted through three constructs used to describe IR: paradigm, social system, and social practice.
Barriers to third world participation include:
Dominant publishing patterns favor core scholars and rationalist modes of thinking.
Journals often resist country-specific or non-core theoretical contributions; when they publish third world work, it is commonly within narrow national or regional frames.
Language and linguistic norms act as entry barriers; English-language prestige lines shape what is considered acceptable IR language.
Financial resources and structural inequalities restrict participation in ISA meetings, editorial boards, and research funding.
The ISA (International Studies Association) is intended to promote global knowledge exchange, but most topics discussed align with core scholarship; financial constraints in the global South impede participation.
Core journals’ theoretical emphasis marginalizes more speculative or non-Western epistemologies.
The “language of IR” is itself a barrier: Western academic conventions shape what counts as legitimate IR discourse.
Even postcolonial/post-positivist scholarship remains situated within the core, limiting transformative potential.
Locus of Enunciation: Culture, Hybridity, Everyday Life
Tickner argues that shifting the locus of theory to the periphery reveals different global problems and assumptions overlooked by core IR.
Three features shape third world readings: culture, hybridity, and everyday life.
Culture
Culture is central to knowledge formation; worldviews shape the questions asked, the problems highlighted, and the methods used (standpoint epistemology).
Different cultures ask different questions about the environment due to their worldviews and positionality in the world, affecting what counts as legitimate knowledge.
Power differentials within and between cultures can legitimize some knowledge while marginalizing others (cultural essentialism, neutrality claims).
Examples and sources show how Confucian, Islamic, Hindu, and other non-Western epistemologies influence IR thinking and moral frameworks.
Universality claims in modern science are culturally contingent; neutrality is not universal but a Western construction.
Non-Western cosmogonies link knowledge more closely to action and community; Shariah or Islamic thought provide frameworks that differ from secular, universalist approaches.
Key references include Harding on standpoint theory and Mignolo on border thinking and vernacularization.
Hybridity
Hybridity describes the intermingling of identities and knowledge systems produced by transnational flows (imperialism, globalization).
García Canclini’s concept of Latin American culture as hybrid circuits explains coexistence of modern democratic forms with traditional power relations.
Bhabha’s notion of third spaces emphasizes negotiation and alterity in colonial encounters, creating new agency for postcolonial subjects.
Hybrid, border thinking is a mode of thought on the fringes of dominant knowledge that is not wholly outside yet not fully inside the core.
Intellectual activity in the global South is often hybrid: culturally specific yet informed by dominant centers; Appadurai’s vernacularization describes how global ideas are re-inscribed locally with new meanings.
Latin American IR history shows a hybrid synthesis: combining realist assumptions with regional theories (e.g., ECLA, dependency theory) to develop regional autonomy critiques.
The revival of Confucianism in East Asia is cited as an example of how local values interact with global institutions, shaping unique capitalism forms and challenging unilinear global capitalism.
Everyday Life
Everyday life shapes knowledge production because lived conditions influence problem framing.
Real-world conditions in the periphery (war, poverty, censorship, limited library and internet access) produce different intellectual environments and constraints.
The Colombian context offers concrete examples of war, violence, and US military presence that motivate distinctive IR reflections.
First-world scholars may enjoy ample research funding and mobility but face their own boundaries and privilege, which can obscure critical problems in the everyday world.
The argument emphasizes that genuine understanding requires attention to local working conditions and lifeworlds, not just abstract theory.
Reframing Core IR Categories from a Third World Perspective
Tickner examines four core topics from third world perspectives to show complementary insights:
War and conflict
The state and sovereignty
Autonomy
Nationalism
These readings reveal how non-core bodies of knowledge illuminate dynamics that core IR often misses or misinterprets.
War and Conflict: From Inter-State to Intra-State and Global Linkages
Traditional IR emphasizes interstate war, balance of power, and deterrence.
However, most armed conflicts (1945–1998) occurred within states (intra-state), especially in the global South; approximately ext{99%} of armed conflicts occurred in non-core settings according to Holsti’s framing (contextualized in the text).
Mary Kaldor’s concept of “new wars” highlights identity-based violence (ethnic, religious, linguistic) and globalized war economies that blur the lines between war and commerce, state capacity, and criminal networks.
The core literature’s emphasis on great powers obscures the primary expressions of political violence in much of the world; third world perspectives stress the local, regional, and transnational causes of conflict.
Third world readings argue for using longue durée and context-specific analyses to understand roots of conflict (state-making, external coercion, colonial legacies, global economic structures).
Local knowledge is crucial for understanding conflict types and roots; universal labels risk flattening diverse conflict dynamics.
The literature on war in the third world is growing and important, but still dominated by Western scholars who rarely base arguments on indigenous sources.
Specific cases: colonial legacies, state-building processes, and the relationship between political exclusion and the emergence of armed movements; global capitalism and structural adjustment shaping conflict; the role of external actors in perpetuating or transforming wars.
The State and Sovereignty: Autonomy, Weak States, and Quasi-States
The dependency perspective shows sovereignty as a condition manipulated by external forces; third world states often face hollow or vacuous sovereignty.
State weakness is framed by legitimacy, socio-political cohesion, and institutional capacity; many third world states lack a robust “idea of state” or national identity.
Robert Jackson’s concept of quasi-states: states that are sovereign in recognition but lack internal legitimacy and capability; they operate under negative sovereignty (territorial integrity, non-intervention) rather than positive sovereignty (reciprocal relations, governance within borders).
The literature critiques the Western state model when applied to non-Western settings where the state’s role is occluded or substituted by other actors (armed movements, regional powers, international financial institutions, non-state actors).
The modern state’s boundaries often clash with pre-colonial and post-colonial political identities in Africa and India, where unity in diversity coexists with ongoing religious, ethnic, and regional tensions.
Dependency theory links state weakness to external capitalist structures that erode internal legitimacy, constrain domestic policy, and perpetuate underdevelopment.
Autonomy is foregrounded as both a domestic capability and an international posture:
From inside the state (national viability, domestic resources, socio-political cohesion).
From outside (the ability to resist external control, defend sovereignty, maneuver in the international system).
Internal autonomy (national viability) and external autonomy (autonomy in foreign relations) are presented as central to development and to resisting the dominating logic of global capitalism.
The concept of non-alignment is framed as an example of autonomy, illustrating the link between internal development and independent international action.
Latin American debates on autonomy emphasize structural features (national viability and international permissibility) and the importance of elite commitment to autonomy-maximizing strategies.
The periphery’s autonomy is seen as a political instrument for safeguarding development and sovereignty, rather than a mere juridical status.
Nationalism and the Post-Colonial Nation
Post-war, nationalism re-emerged as a central issue after Cold War dynamics; nationalism is often seen as destabilizing for global order yet is a fundamental driver of political identity in non-core settings.
The literature critiques universal Western secular nationalism and argues that nationalism in the global South often blends imitation and rejection of modernity, tradition, and colonial legacies.
Confucianism in Chinese nationalism shows how cultural identity and moral principles shape political life and national unity differently from Western liberal nationalism.
Islamic nationalism faces a tension between state-centric modern politics and religious communities (umma) grounded in Sharia and religious unity; modern secular nationalism can conflict with religious identities, leading to various reformulations (Islamic modernism, reformist movements, and postcolonial syncretism).
Partha Chatterjee’s arguments highlight that nationalism can be produced in spaces separate from the formal state (the imagined community of the nation may diverge from the formal nation-state).
Anti-colonial nationalism often involves imitation of certain modern practices while preserving essential cultural and spiritual identities, creating hybrid nationalisms that defend local sovereignty against external domination.
The everyday lifeworld—religious practices, educational traditions, and local cultural forms—shapes nationalist imaginaries and articulations of statehood.
The Case for Third World Knowledge and the Trading Zone
The argument for third world knowledge rests on the idea that global problems require diverse epistemologies and knowledge practices beyond core IR.
Post-positivist approaches acknowledge the artificial borders of IR and stress multiple perspectives, but often remain inaccessible to non-core scholars due to specialized language and paradigms.
Post-colonial critiques have introduced marginalized concerns into core scholarship, but third world perspectives still struggle to be integrated on equal terms.
The author argues for a “trading zone” – a fluid, interdisciplinary space where multiple subcultures and epistemologies can coexist and exchange ideas.
The trading zone would help clarify what IR is, who counts as legitimate IR speakers, and which questions are seen as legitimate; it would facilitate real exchange rather than hierarchical dominance.
In practical terms, the trading zone would require changes in funding, publishing, and professional norms to value non-core knowledge on its own terms.
The goal is a more inclusive discipline that can address global problems with a plurality of epistemologies, rather than requiring non-core voices to fit core frameworks.
Post-Positivist and Postcolonial Angles: Limits and Complementarities
Post-positivist approaches stress the constructed nature of knowledge and the need to acknowledge multiple epistemes; they emphasize the artificiality of borders within IR.
Post-colonial critiques have successfully introduced concerns of identity, history, and marginalization into core IR but may still be mediated by core discourse and languages.
Tickner argues that while these approaches are valuable, they alone cannot fully address how the global South experiences IR; third world scholarship should transcend these frameworks to produce more locally grounded analyses.
The unity of these approaches lies in their shared recognition of power asymmetries in knowledge production; their limits arise when they fail to translate peripheral insights into actionable, transformative practice within the core.
Practical Implications and Real-World Relevance
A more inclusive IR would better explain ongoing conflicts, state formation, regional dynamics, and globalization processes in non-core settings.
Recognizing third world readings can illuminate causal mechanisms behind state weakness, internal wars, and regional power shifts that core IR theories miss.
It would also encourage more policy-relevant insights for global governance, development, and conflict resolution that account for local contexts and non-Western moral frameworks.
The envisioned trading zone would facilitate equity in scholarly participation, influence grant-awarding decisions, and diversify editorial boards and reviewing practices.
Key Theoretical Anchors and Notable Concepts (with cross-references)
Paradigm, social system, social practice (three ways of describing IR’s structure) as gatekeeping mechanisms. See footnotes and literature by Vásquez, Wæver, Smith, etc.
Realism and its persistence as a discursive framework shaping IR’s discourse and practice; the persistence of a realist language despite critiques.
Luhmann’s social systems theory: self-reference, autopoiesis, and the way a system observes and reproduces itself; binary coding channels the system’s interaction with the environment.
The concept of autonomy and its dual inside-outside dimensions: domestic capacity to govern and international capacity to act without external domination.
The idea of non-alignment as a practical articulation of autonomy.
Hybridity and border thinking (García Canclini, Bhabha, Mignolo) as theoretical tools for analyzing postcolonial knowledge production and exchange.
Vernacularization (Appadurai) as the process by which global knowledge is adapted to local contexts with new meanings.
The notion of “third space” (Bhabha) as a site of negotiation and agency beyond binary colonial/postcolonial positions.
The concept of “ergodic” or decolonial knowledge production as a form of resistance to universalist IR frameworks.
Important studies and voices cited include: Holsti; Waltz; Ayoob; Kaldor; Palacios; Mbembe; Sunkel; Cardoso and Faletto; Jaguribe; Jaguaribe; Dunn and Shaw; Euben; Appadurai; Chatterjee; Hashmi; Tibi; Chan; Chan and Xinning; and many others.
Conclusion: A Call for Listening and Reorientation
Tickner closes with a pragmatic and political call: IR will be more robust and legitimate if it opens to third world interpretations and redefines what counts as valid knowledge.
A productive dialogue with third world thinking requires a distinct political economy of knowledge production, reevaluating what counts as acceptable IR, and rethinking who can participate in the discipline.
The trading zone concept provides a constructive metaphor and practical program for reorganizing IR inquiry around multiplicity rather than monolithic universals.
The aim is not to subordinate core IR to third world knowledge, but to reframe IR as a genuinely cosmopolitan field that learns from multiple, locally grounded epistemologies to better understand global politics.
About the Author and Context
Arlene B. Tickner, Professor of International Relations, Universidad de los Andes and Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia.
The article reflects on the state of IR in the early 2000s, addressing debates about post-positivism, postcolonial theory, cosmopolitanism, and the inclusion of Latin American and other non-core voices in global IR discourse.
Related Notions and Suggested Readings (selected)
Post-positivist and postcolonial IR literatures as foundational context: Smith (Self-Images of a Discipline), Wæver (Sociology of a not-so International Discipline), Holsti (The Dividing Discipline).
Cosmopolitanism and critical reflexivity in IR: Hayward Alker, Thomas Biersteker; Lapid and Kratochwil; Mignolo; Appadurai.
Realism, power politics, and the critique of universal validity: Vasquez; Guzzini; Elshtain.
Third World autonomy and state theory: Jaguribe; Jaguaribe; Tickner (Hearing Latin American Voices in IR); Dunn and Shaw; Cardoso and Faletto; Osaghae; Mbembe.
War, peace, and modern warfare in the global South: Ayoob; Kaldor; Palacios; Osaghae; Kaul; Osbaldo Sunkel.