‘Which Part of Your Work is IR?’ on Western Dominance and the Discipline of International Relations in Indonesia

Abstract

This article aims to analyse the foundations of Western dominance in the discipline of International Relations (IR) in Indonesia. Drawing on a contextualized autoethnographic reflection of learning and researching IR in Indonesia during my undergraduate studies between 2008 and 2013, I argue that Western dominance in Indonesian IR discipline is not simply characterized by imposition of a certain academic tradition from the West but also reproduced in everyday academic discourse and naturalized through institutional practices of power. Drawing on my autoethnographic reflections, Western dominance has been maintained and naturalized through everyday exclusionary practices in IR discipline. I encountered this exclusionary practice through a gatekeeping question that was often asked during my time as an undergraduate student and researcher in Indonesia: ‘which part of your work is IR?’. This gatekeeping practice is rooted in the larger history of bureaucratization and state co-optation of Indonesian academic community, which is still perpetuated by the government. Nevertheless, this Western epistemic dominance has been resisted through non-academic spaces. Through this contextualized autoethnographic reflections, I offer some rethinking of Global IR project by highlighting internal hierarchy and Western dominance in the discipline of International Relations, as well as resistance against it by non-academic communities.

Introduction

This article problematises the widely perceived ‘Western dominance’ in the study of International Relations (IR). Since Hoffmann (1977) denounced IR as an Anglo-American social science, there have been call for deeper engagement between Western and non-Western IR scholarship to transcends the distinction between West and non-West and aspire for greater inclusiveness and diversity within the International Relations disciplines (Acharya, 2014; 2016) ¹ . Global IR scholarship seriously aims to tackle Western dominance in the discipline ² . Related to this, several scholars have argued that IR lacks geographic diversity, which leads to the dominance of scholarship from several geographic areas (primarily North America and Western Europe) in IR knowledge production, combined with the dominance of English as linguistic medium (Kristensen, 2015; Lohaus & Wemheuer-Vogelaar, 2021). From a different perspective, Alejandro (2018) shows that IR scholars in non-Western countries do actually produce their own perspective and internationalise it in a ‘multi-polar’ way, in which IR scholars engage not only with Western scholars, but with diverse regional and international counterparts ³ . More specifically, Indonesian scholars have discussed how Indonesian academics attempt to challenge ‘Western-centric’ IR traditions through promoting ‘Global IR’ and highlighting ‘non-Western’ IR discourses (Wicaksana & Santoso, 2022; Sebastian & Lanti, 2009; Maliki, Suryana, Azwar, and Sulaiman (2021)).

This article proposes a different view of ‘Western dominance’ in Indonesia by drawing on my experience in engaging with the IR academic discipline in Indonesia, where I learned the foundations of IR as an undergraduate student and later worked as a researcher for a decade. I argue that Western dominance in Indonesian IR discipline is not simply characterized by imposition of a certain academic tradition from the West but is also reproduced in everyday academic discourse and naturalised through institutional practices of power in Indonesia. ⁴ By reproduction of Western dominance, I mean the practices of establishing Western forms of knowledge as a primary of point reference to establish academic discipline of International Relations. The first section of this article suggests that ‘Western dominance’ is reproduced by local scholars to establish the discipline from ‘Western’ point of reference, primarily the IR academic works in the United Kingdom and the United States. Moreover, Western dominance also entails the naturalisation of Western knowledge as a dominant academic discourse through certain everyday practices of power. The second section shows that Indonesian IR institutions naturalise Western dominance by excluding works that do not adhere to already existing epistemological and methodological foundation – as developed in the West – through a simple question: ‘which part of your research/work is IR?’. Nevertheless, as I will discuss in the third section, some Indonesian IR scholars attempt to resist this Western dominance through academic and non-academic practices of resistance, albeit with limited outcomes.

To substantiate the argument, I employ a contextualized autoethnographic approach by primarily drawing on my personal experience in engaging with IR academic community in Indonesia between 2008 and 2013, when I learned IR as an undergraduate student in Indonesia. As Bleiker and Briggs (2010) have suggested, autoethnographic approach intends to explore ‘how the self can become a more legitimate source of knowledge about International Relations’.. Similarly, Inayatullah (2010) also argues that exploring selves and others through autoethnographic/autobiographic approach would uncover world historical process in a unique and creative way. My intention in writing this piece is to analyse gatekeeping and exclusion in academia, and a contextualized autoethnography will help me to unpack these gatekeeping and exclusionary practices by reflecting on my personal experience. ⁵

Reproducing Western Dominance

I begin with the broader historical context of the academic discipline of International Relations in Indonesia. Disciplinary IR has been institutionalized in Indonesia as a part of postcolonial statebuilding project. The first International Relations Department in Indonesia was established in 1957 at Gadjah Mada University – my alma mater– with previous attachment to the Academy of Political Science when Gadjah Mada University was established in 1949. Gadjah Mada University is the first University in Indonesia, which was established during early independence era to educate early postcolonial leaders and bureaucrats in Indonesia, and to break away from Dutch colonialism to forge a new nation state (Fakih, 2020: 101).

The study of International Relations, originally, served as ideological tool not only to understand world politics, but also to provide critical understanding of the world that is also relevant to inform policymakers on what should be done in dealing with global political dynamics, especially to support Indonesia’s diplomatic activism at that time. As I have discussed elsewhere (Umar, 2019a), Indonesia has also contributed to the transformation to international order through the Bandung Conference and UN Decolonization Resolution (1960). Regarding this, during Sukarno era, the University also became a training site for diplomats, who were to be sent to diplomatic posts in embassies or international organizations, which made IR important to provide knowledge for diplomat training in Indonesia (Fakih, 2020, Wicaksana 2018).

However, in 1965–66, a considerable political change occurred in the country, when Sukarno was toppled down by Suharto after a series of political crises. Suharto brought about a very different approach to Indonesia’s foreign policy. Whilst still distancing Indonesia with the global political contestation at that time, Suharto introduced a more Western-leaning foreign policy approach with the emphasis on security on development. During his 32-year long tenure as President, Indonesia became more passive in international approach whilst prioritizing domestic interests over international adventurism (Winanti and Alvian, 2021; Umar, 2019b).

It was during Suharto era that Western dominance became a dominant approach in Indonesian social scientific discourse, including in IR. Suharto restructured Indonesia’s Higher Education institutions to support Indonesia’s development project in ways that follows the patterns of economic development in the West (Heryanto & Lutz, 1988). IR – and further social science disciplines – was institutionalized as an academic discipline in Indonesia to support state-led modernization and development during the New Order era. This institutionalization of Western dominance was also coincided with the Cold War in the 1970s (Global South Review Editors, 2019). Domestically, the institutionalization of IR was a part of Suharto’s consolidation and struggle for power in his early ‘New Order’ era, and IR played an important role to navigate Indonesia’s foreign policy amid the global Cold War turbulence (Hadiwinata, 2017).

The consequence of state control in Indonesia’s Higher Education was co-optation and systematic marginalization in determining what should and should not be studied in the university. One example of this state control and co-optation is the missing Marxist and critical perspectives in Indonesia’s IR discourses, especially before 1998. Indonesia experienced a massive elimination of leftist intellectuals and knowledges during the purge of the Indonesian Communist Party in the 1965–66, which also led to the ‘intellectual cleansing’ of academics affiliated – or linked with – the communist movement (Wahid, 2018a). Afterwards the Indonesian government restructured academic communities, imposed controls, and censured academic works to only discuss issues that were approved by the Indonesian government, which was centred on development (Wahid, 2018b). The missing critical perspectives established the condition for further bureaucratization and state co-optation of Indonesian academic communities, which consequently sustained gatekeeping practices and academic hierarchy in Indonesian social science (Nugroho, 2005, see also Farid, 2005).

From this brief historical analysis, it could be seen that Indonesian IR had undergone transformation from becoming a primary site for postcolonial statebuilding during Sukarno and early independence era to support Western-style development and modernization during Suharto’s New Order. This transformation, in turn, created the foundation for ‘Western Dominance’ in Indonesian IR scholarship. I argue that, from my personal reflection that I will explore below, ‘Western dominance’ has also been reproduced and naturalized in Indonesian academic discourse through the pedagogical practice, primarily by introducing and teaching Western IR academic tradition (particularly those developed in Britain and the United States in the 1970s) to Indonesian students and academic staffs (Hadiwinata, 2009: 61).

Naturalizing ‘Western Dominance’

Western dominance, nevertheless, is also naturalized through academic practice. I will illustrate this through my experience engaging with IR academic tradition in Indonesia. I began my undergraduate training in 2008 at a prestigious and old Indonesian university. During the first semester, I and other IR students in my cohort were slowly introduced to key texts to study IR in Introduction to International Relations. ⁶ Our first principal reading was Hans J. Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations (Morgenthau, 1948). It was a similar text that has been taught since the 1950s, and it was (during my time) still being taught as the primary reference for Introduction to International Relations (Wicaksana, 2018). Reading Morgenthau at the first year gave me sense about the nature of the discipline: it is a discipline that was developed in the United States and it is a discipline that puts the emphasis on sovereign states. This image gave the impression that IR is all about international system inhabited of sovereign states, whose interests were primarily shaped by material interests.

Since the first year, I was primarily taught to understand how the state interacts with other states in an international system. I also learned about transnationalism in world politics, politics of international trade, global politics of the environment, or corruption as a global issue, which leads us to delve deeper into diplomacy and international institutions, peace studies, and international political economy. As I went to the more advanced semester, I was taught that there are also multiple actors in the international realm, but it was usually categorized as non-state actors. After learning the foundation, I began to learn about theory in the Third Year. I was introduced to a wide range of IR theories through the standard textbook, from realism, liberalism, constructivism, and critical theory (Burchill et al, 2009). As the usual way of learning IR theory, the book posits critical theory, postcolonialism, and feminism at the bottom of the syllabus, while realism, liberalism, and constructivism are usually located at the ‘top three’ of the perspectives. ⁷

The emphasis on ‘perspectives’ in the teaching and learning of IR theory becomes a standard way to understand IR theory. Many text-books on International Relations Theory in Indonesia, even those written in Indonesian language, reproduces this ‘perspectival’ way of understanding IR, with some later scholars add a chapter on ‘non-Western IR theory’. ⁸ Here, IR theory is understood in terms of perspectives, with three mainstream perspectives like realism, liberalism, and constructivism discussed at the beginning of the book, and some ‘critical’ perspectives and non-Western theories occupy the later part of theory book. This typical composition resonates with what Agathangelou and Ling (2004) considered as ‘House of IR’, where some perspectives dominating the ‘house’ and others are placed at the margins.

Besides the Western style of teaching and learning IR, there was also a strong emphasis on distinguishing IR from other Departments. The Faculty of Social and Political Science at the University consists of 6 Departments: International Relations, Politics and Government, Sociology, Social Development and Welfare, and Management and Public Policy. There was a strong emphasis to distinguish IR works from other departments, and there was a norm of asking question to students who want to write a thesis (both in Undergraduate and Postgraduate levels): ‘which part of your research is IR’? ⁹ Students should be able to convince the faculty members that our research is a part of IR academic discipline, in terms of scope and research.

I experienced this when I wrote a thesis on the Muslim Brotherhood’s thoughts and movement, which overlapped with Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. When I proposed the thesis to the committee member, one standard question that they asked was exactly the question as to which part of my research is IR, and not a thesis from other Departments. Asking the question has two consequences. First, it narrows down IR’s disciplinary boundary within the existing methodological approaches, which forced students to think disciplinarily before working out with their undergraduate thesis. In this case, when students wanted to gain insights from different academic disciplines, they must convince readers that their thesis are aligned with IR academic tradition and, if necessary, invoking any IR perspectives. Thus, the arguments that students make – and scope of their research – are often limited and confined within IR theoretical perspective. Moreover, the desire to distinguish IR with other disciplines (particularly Department of Politics and Government) often led to the creation of an artificial boundary between ‘national’ (issues confined within Indonesian territorial boundaries) that belong to other disciplines and ‘international’ issues that lies outside Indonesia. ¹⁰

Second, the question also inevitably discourages works that is considered not belong to IR disciplinary boundaries. Questions such as ‘which part of your research is IR?’ discourage creative engagement with alternative perspectives outside IR, thus creating very narrow boundaries for IR discipline. Moreover, such question also resonates with the existing problems of ‘what counts as IR’ and ‘what is not’, which excluded or delegitimate some scholarship because they do not embrace a specific set of methodological understanding (Tickner, 1997; Keohane, 1998). In this context, creating a solid disciplinary identity inevitably led to the creation of disciplinary boundaries, which was produced through gatekeeping practices. ¹¹

This personal experience illustrates a gatekeeping practice, in which students should adapt to existing ‘norms’ in the IR academic discipline and put aside styles of work that does not conform to those norms. The question was also asked to IR students across different universities. In my case, this gatekeeping practice is reflected by a question such as “which part of your work is IR?“, which is intended to establish a sense of belonging and attachment towards IR discipline for all IR students. The gatekeeping practices were maintained in a global south country like Indonesia, with senior “authorities” in the IR academic community operate as ‘gatekeepers’ to the academic community (Fredua-Mensah and Afia, 2016).

Resisting ‘Western Dominance’

However, there are still some efforts to resist this academic exclusion and gatekeeping by creating alternative pathways to understand Marxist and critical IR perspective outside academic community. Some non-academic outlets, since the 1980s, have begun to cover IR theoretical debates, which involved critically oriented academics scholar-activists to engage in broader topics over contemporary IR. One of them is Prisma, a popular magazine that published ‘critical’ development studies and dependency theory to challenge mainstream development theories. Since 1970s, PRISMA has become an important venue for critical academic thinking in Indonesia during Suharto era, who imposed control over academic community especially in social and political sciences. (Karsono, 2013). ¹²

The post-Reformasi era witnessed the rise of numerous non-academic publishing outlets, such as Indoprogress. 13 The media is an alternative media aiming to provide a venue for critical debate for the Indonesian left, but it increasingly become popular for IR scholars whose works were not accepted in the academic discipline. It also became a venue for young IR students –including myself – who are frustrated with the narrow disciplinary orientation in the IR community to publish their engagements with critical theories of the Frankfurt School, Marxism, and post-structuralism. ¹⁴ The media, therefore, provides some spaces to think IR critically and theoretically by engaging the general public audiences through online and printed media platforms.

More recently, there are also some efforts by younger generations of Indonesian IR academics to discuss International Relations through online discussions, facilitated by independent Youtube channels and podcasts. A notable one is Forum Diskusi Akhir Tahun, in which I also actively involved since 2020. The discussions bring several young IR scholars to engage in Youtube-mediated discussions, for example, by questioning the gatekeeping practices and Western-centric discourses in Indonesia’s International Relations teaching. ¹⁵ One of the issue that we have discussed was the question ‘Which Part of Your Research is IR?’ which apparently was also encountered by many IR students in Indonesia. We critically reflect this question in the context of IR pedagogy, research, and curriculum development in our respective universities, both in Indonesia and abroad.

Thus, these non-academic outlets challenged disciplinary IR narratives and often contested their narrow disciplinary view with broader theoretical perspectives. Nevertheless, these academic spaces are still not formally recognized in Indonesian IR academic community. As they reside outside the university, they struggled to find a way to incorporate their intellectual voices within IR communities. There is only a little recognition of these writings in academic practices. Academics received only little financial incentive when publishing these articles, and these writings would not be counted as proper academic work. Academics also had to use time outside working hour to write productively amid teaching and administrative duties. Nevertheless, we should acknowledge that resistance do exist with their own limitations. Despite these limitations, these alternative views have been able to challenge the narrow disciplinary orientation of formal disciplinary IR in the university.

Conclusion: Rethinking ‘Global IR’

My story brings two insights to broaden our attempts to understand IR in the global south and its global marginalization in mainstream IR discourses. First, in a discipline primarily occupied by dominant Western perspectives, it is essential to understand the marginalization of Global South IR theories through everyday development of knowledge production. As some Indonesian scholars have mentioned, Indonesian IR scholars are not a ‘silent’ subject in IR knowledge production. They also produce knowledge in their languages and actively engage in IR theoretical developments in the global north (Wicaksana & Santoso, 2022: 221). Second, we need to acknowledge that there are internal hierarchies within IR discipline, which has been shaped by gatekeeping practices and institutionalization of Western dominance in the formative years of the discipline in the country. This internal hierarchy has been enacted by global south scholars and preserved by the government to govern academic institutions.

This article problematises what we mean by ‘globalizing’ IR. Since Amitav Acharya outlined the term, the Global IR imagines the study of IR as a story of diversifying IR knowledge amid Western dominance that marginalizes the contribution of the global south scholarship (Acharya, 2014; 2016). While ‘globalizing IR’ as a discipline is an important project to be pursued by IR scholars, simply diversifying knowledge is not enough to challenge the Western dominance in the academy. Marginalization of the ‘global south’ also occurs through the institutionalization of disciplinary IR as an ‘academic discipline’ that mirrors the development in the United States and Europe, a practice that has been reproduced by Indonesian scholars to construct IR as a discipline. Thus, to widen the outreach of Global IR, we need to unsettle the foundation of disciplinary IR and acknowledges multiple academic perspectives within IR and dynamics of everyday knowledge production in the global south (Narain, 2017; Behera, 2016). My contribution also shows that global hierarchy exists in the IR knowledge production, and it was exercised in the everyday knowledge production in the university. For Indonesian scholars, the key to challenge this hierarchy is to widen engagement with their academic and non-academic counterparts globally, particularly with critical IR scholars and academic-activists around the world. ¹⁶ Widening the discipline and abandoning desires to gatekeep in everyday academic practices will be essential to embrace a truly ‘global’ IR scholarship.