Decentring Global Challenges in International Relations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives Beyond the West

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 well as social, and political challenges in the 21st century have required comprehensive ways of thinking and taking stock of existing ontological and epistemic limitations. A decentring approach is crucial to account for how interdependent relations across states and societies, regions and the globe, shape modernity and its global manifestations are, in an era of growing and persistent crises. The book explains why traditional hegemonic approaches to global challenges are problematic, and conceptualises what a decentring approach to global challenges entails: a deconstruction of traditional and sedimented epistemic underpinnings (implying a rethinking of agency, time, geographies, norms, topics, and loci of public attention) but also an appreciation of the mutually constructed nature of the international. This book will appeal to students and scholars of international relations (IR) and international studies who are interested in decentring, as well as those working for civil society organisations (CSOs), NGOs, and think tanks.

Debora Valentina Malito is an Associate Professor of International Relations at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (People’s Republic of China). Her work combines critical perspectives to the study of global International Relations, conflict and sovereignty. Her current research focuses on global knowledge production, politics of intervention and infrastructures in world ordering.

Evangelos Fanoulis is Lecturer above the Bar in International & Global Politics at the School of Political Science & Sociology, University of Galway (Ireland). His main research interests lie within democracy and populism in Europe, EU foreign policy, and post-structuralist IR theory.