Decentering International Relations

Reviews

'The most innovative and urgent book about international relations theory and practice I've read in decades' - Cynthia Weber, Lancaster University

''Nayak and Selbin effectively engage all of us as students, as people trying to make more reliable, less blinkered sense of international politics. Their style is accessible, the questions they pose crucial. They challenge each of us to seriously think about who 'we' are when we talk about 'them.' That's IR at its best.' - Cynthia Enloe, author of Nimo's War, Emma's War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War

This is a refreshingly unusual book on International Relations. It asks all the right questions, not only about world politics but about the ways they are seen and theorised. Disquisitions on theory tend to be ponderous and demanding, but the almost chatty style of the authors is not only light but almost wickedly humane. It is a book against obfuscation, on behalf of clarity, against the reification of the world into the vocabulary of an elite species, but expert in what that vocabulary should have demanded - shedding light upon the world instead of the genealogy of vocabulary.
- Stephen Chan, SOAS and author of The End of Certainty

'Critical projects in International Relations in recent decades have identified biases and exclusions in the discourse and practice of the discipline. Nayak and Selbin, however, articulate IR as 'centered' in a way that is creative, comprehensive, lucid, and accessible. This book is an impressive contribution for that reason alone, but all the more impressive because it goes further - it not only talks about critical theorizing as a transformative project, but also transforms IR (by 'decentering') in critical terms. This text is engaging and stimulating, and IR is better off for its existence' - Laura Sjoberg, University of Florida

'This superb book audaciously undermines International Relations theory conceived in Western conceit. Without denying Western power, the book asks whether the peoples of the world wake each day forming privileged opinions about us, presuming to give us their prescriptions for what they think we should do.' - Richard Peet, Professor of Geography at Clark University and author of Unholy Trinity

'Nayak and Selbin's well-crafted new volume contributes to the small but growing literature that seeks to 'decenter, unsettle, relativize and provincialize' the pseudo-universalisms of a profoundly (neo)colonial International Relations (IR) discipline fundamentally rooted in and reproductive of the self-understandings of the U.S./North/West. Starting from four central (sets of) concepts - indigeneity, human rights, globalization, and peace and security - the authors not only expose the workings of the hegemonic politics of the largely Anglo-American IR discipline, but convincingly deploy those concepts as sites at which radically to politicise, rethink and reconstruct an 'insurgent IR'.' - Jutta Weldes, University of Bristol

'Nayak and Selbin engage in an important debate which for too long has taken place on the peripheries of our discipline. The North/West’s domination of International Relations has enabled these states to perpetuate a status quo that preserves and accomplishes their interests. If International Relations is to be truly international or inclusive then we as academics need to determine how narratives within our discipline have resulted in this centredness of IR and how we can begin to decentralise these. This book give impetus to this process, however, it leaves the reader asking many more question which is, I believe, exactly what the authors want.' - Jacqui Ala, International Relations, University of the Witwatersrand