International Relations (IR) in Pakistan

Abstract

This study explains ‘why’ the Eurocentric worldview continues to dominate the field of International Relations (IR) by providing an introspective point of view on the disciplinary limitation, in the specific case of Pakistan. To unravel the dominating intellectual arrangement and underlying invisibilities in the discipline and critically study the continuing ethnocentrism in the discipline, the research navigates within the ambit of the notion of Eurocentrism. For IR academics in Pakistan, Eurocentrism in the field is, number one, ‘externally imposed’ due to the structural barriers that are actively working at the international level of knowledge production and marginalizing Pakistani contributions from the field’s center, and number two, ‘self-imposed’ in the form of the continuing ‘intellectual dependency’ on the existing state of IR. The latter is found to be a consequence of both ‘normative’ and ‘domestic structural’ factors. A serious consequence that a Eurocentric IR holds for Pakistan and the discipline of IR in Pakistan is the dominating representation of ‘Pakistan’ as a product of Western conventional wisdom in mainstream IR scholarship. Linked to the anti-Pakistan narratives in the core IR scholarship is the significantly alarming role of India that makes the description of ‘Pakistan’ a combined Western and Indian political and intellectual output in the field. Precisely in this regard, the study further elucidates ‘why’ such negative interpretations about Pakistan continue to dominate the mainstream IR discourse. While noting that IR scholars and academics from around the world are searching for their own voice and re-examining their traditions to diversify the sources of knowledge that inform IR thinking, on the whole, this research presents what the problem of a ‘Eurocentric IR’ means ‘for’ and ‘to’ the discipline of IR in Pakistan by employing the views of Pakistani IR academics gathered through qualitative interviewing. In the end, this study presents prospects for alternative/homegrown thinking in the field of IR in Pakistan.