Avatars of Eurocentrism in the critique of the liberal peace

Recent scholarly critiques of the so-called liberal peace raise important political and ethical challenges to practices of postwar intervention in the global South. However, their conceptual and analytic approaches have tended to reproduce rather than challenge the intellectual Eurocentrism underpinning the liberal peace. Eurocentric features of the critiques include the methodological bypassing of target subjects in research, the analytic bypassing of subjects through frameworks of governmentality, the assumed ontological split between the ‘liberal’ and the ‘local’, and a nostalgia for the liberal subject and the liberal social contract as alternative bases for politics. These collectively produce a ‘paradox of liberalism’ that sees the liberal peace as oppressive but also the only true source of emancipation. However, the article suggests that a repoliticization of colonial difference offers an alternative ‘decolonizing’ approach to critical analysis through repositioning the analytic gaze. Three alternative research strategies for critical analysis are briefly developed

The Afrocentric Project: The Quest for Particularity and the Negation of Objectivity

This article is a philosophical critique of a very controversial paradigm within Africana Studies. The methodology employed in this paper is a philosophical critique of the epistemological and ontological underpinnings of Afrocentricity. The quest for a distinctive (metaphysical) Africanist perspective has cast Afrocentricity as a subjectivist approach to affirming the integrity of an Africana existential condition. While in the course of African American intellectual history a number of scholars and thinkers have supported the notion of an unique Black metaphysics, Afrocentricity brings to the table a particular approach to the tradition of affirming an African metaphysical exclusivism. What I mean by the quest for particularity is the notion that there is a unique Africana presence in the world, such that it stands antithetical to the European/Western experience. I explore what I call weak Afrocentricity, i.e., a cultural determinism demarcating the African and European experience. Afrocentricity, in positing a cultural relativism, renders that not only is Eurocentrism a false universality, but that universality per se is false. This denial of universality (at the ontological level ) has as a corresponding category the negation of objectivity (at the epistemological plane). I examine the works of two leading Afrocentric proponents, Molefi Asante and Marimba Ani, arguably two of the most significant contributors to the philosophical foundations of Afrocentricity

Alternative discourses in Southeast Asia

This article brings into focus the question of alternative discourses in the social sciences. Alternative discourses are works that attempt to debunk ideas that have become entrenched in the social sciences, partly as a result of colonialism and the continuing Eurocentrism in the social sciences. In the context of Southeast Asia as well as much of the non-Western world, alternative discourses in the social sciences could also be referred to collectively as counter- Eurocentric social science. This paper discusses the emergence of alternative discourses in Southeast Asia, the defintion of alternative discourse, and the future of these discourses in our regio

Symposium on Indigenous Scholarship: The Centrality of Culture and Indigenous Values

The trend of globalization has led to a strong demand for the culture-specific or emic approach in scholarly research. It is the purpose of this paper to provide an opportunity for scholars to have their voices on the issues of indigenous scholarship. The paper consists of four essays examining the theme from four aspects, namely, the centrality of culture and communication, the Asiacentric communication paradigm, the development of Chinese communication theories, and an indigenous view of the study of resilience. It is hoped that the paper will contribute to the better understanding of indigenous scholarship and further provide a possible direction for the future investigation in this line of research

Global law and human rights: Marxist reflections. How can a political account of human rights avoid Eurocentrism?

My recent book The Degradation of the International Legal Order? attempts a political account of human rights, and engages with the work of China Miéville and Susan Marks, as well as the extraordinary opus of Alain Badiou. The book has been well received. Sympathetic reviews by Robert Knox and Upendra Baxi have levelled a number of constructive criticisms, and this paper seeks both to grapple with the issues raised and to take the project forward. What is at stake is the concretisation of a thoroughly materialist, properly communist historicisation of human rights, as a contribution to contemporary struggles. In particular, is this project in any sense necessarily Eurocentric

Book review: Syed Farid Alatas and Vineeta Sinha, Sociological Theory Beyond the Canon

No abstract available

Derrida and Europe beyond Eurocentrism and anti-Eurocentrism

Simon Glendinning argues that Derrida’s views on Europe are more complex than has often been appreciate

Racist Aspects of Modern Turkish Nationalism

Peer reviewedPostprin