Race Feature in the Contemporary Study of International Relations Assessment Answer

Introduction

Mainstream international relations (i.e. IR) research disregards race despite its centrality to international politics. When it comes to answering crucial issues about international security as well as organization, the "big three" IR paradigms—realism, liberalism, and constructivism—are hampered by their racialized and racist intellectual foundations. Rejecting the as-given state of anarchy while insisting that anarchy, security, as well as other concerns, are created by society through common thoughts, histories, and experiences, constructivism is best suited to address race and racism (Zvobgo and Loken, 2020). The theory of democratic peace (i.e. IR) contends that democracies are less apt to wage war than nondemocracies, but historical evidence does not support this. This is due to the fact that non-European countries did not voluntarily embrace the European principles of statehood as well as sovereignty that were established in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.

When international relations (IR) scholars do address race, it is typically in the context of overtly racist topics like colonialism. When explaining development as well as globalization, textbooks that gloss over historical and contemporary slavery obscure the facts and deny the harms of state-building. It is impossible to separate race and the prejudices of historical statecraft from the study as well as the practice of international relations in the present day. Race has shaped and will continue to shape perspectives on international and domestic threats, politics abroad, international reactions to immigrants and refugees, and the availability of health care and environmental stability. While 12% of academics in comparative politics and 14% in U.S. politics identify as people of colour, only 8% of international relations (IR) scholars do so. The common and corrosive propensity among white academics to presume that scholars of colour focus on race, ethnicity, as well as identity politics within a U.S. or area-studies context is largely to blame for this discrepancy. Overt prejudice against scholars of colour is a problem within ISA along with other academic organizations.

Nearly 40% of professors organize their classes by traditional paradigms, while 26% don't use paradigmatic analysis at all, perpetuating research and professional inequalities. Scholars of international relations (IR) should prioritize three initiatives to combat these issues: addressing racial and ethnic discrimination in the field; incorporating scholarly works on race into undergraduate and graduate classes; and opening up more entry points for relevant research and for nonwhite students. Professional international relations (IR) organisations need to become more welcoming of people of different backgrounds and perspectives in academia. These are simple and achievable steps, but they require the will and effort of those in places of power.

In the research paper [Danewid, 2020], Racialized kinds of displacement, dispossession, and police brutality are all a part of the global city's past and contemporary imperial terrain. The Royal Borough for Kensington and Chelsea, the municipality which controlled Grenfell Tower, failed to install smoke detectors, sprinklers, or adequate exits before a renovation project clad the building in cheap, flammable materials. Neoliberal ideology as well as class violence were held responsible for the fire's rapid growth. To honour the "ghosts of Grenfell," Lowkey has published a new song. This piece contends that academic research on global cities as well as neo-liberal urbanism suffers from a similar pattern of racial erasures as the disregard of race in conversations about Grenfell.

This article delves into the distinctly racial logic for neoliberal city administration and contends that a racial theory of capitalism is necessary to comprehend the violence of neoliberal urbanism. This article looks at the imperial economics of neoliberal urbanism as a lens through which to analyze the instincts-constitution of the Western "homelands" and colonial frontiers. There is much to be gained by urban studies as well as global city scholarship from a regular involvement with this literature, the article contends, and the racial logic about Grenfell Tower is a prime example. A neoliberal mode of urban governance characterized by redevelopment, urban expansion and real-estate speculation is the outcome of the world economy's structural transformation and the acceleration of economic globalisation. This has produced global cities. Mohammed al-Haj Ali, a 23-year-old Syrian immigrant, perished in the fire at Grenfell Tower, where many people from North Africa lived. According to the work of Cedric Robinson and Aimé Césaire, the colonial enterprise was never a "constitutive outside," but rather a "terrific boomerang" of political technologies, rationales, and institutions.

The research, [Zhang, 2020] delves into how Chinese Internet users construct ethno-racial and political identities in opposition to the 'inferior' non-Western other through the rhetoric of the 'Western-style' right-wing populism. Postmaterialist ideals like feminism, environmentalism, and LGBT rights are often cited in opposition to baizuo, along with racial nationalism and realist authoritarianism. A form of ethno-nationalist exclusivism, realist authoritarianism sees people of different cultural backgrounds as "fundamentally threatening the stability of a homogeneous nation-state." Due to the inherent connection between racism and an autocratic worldview, the two often go hand in hand. By excluding individuals of colour from left politics as well as mobilizing resentful feelings against Western hegemony and white supremacy, the word "white left" is used to establish a "chain of equivalence" between anti-elitism, anti-Western attitudes, and other far-right ideologies.

While economic globalization has been linked to the development of right-wing populist parties in Europe and the United States, in China, hostility toward liberal values on social media is linked to anti-Western sentiments and disagreements with the liberal order's normative hierarchy. Even as it challenges the Euro-American hegemony, this discourse reinforces Eurocentric ideas about race, nation, and development while also stifling internal diversity [Baylis, 2020].

Scholars can use the current COVID-19 pandemic to reevaluate the politics of disaster and examine new questions about its origins, responses, and aftereffects. Critics say open economy politics has fostered an intellectual monoculture as well as insularity, but it's helpful for conceptualizing the politics of typical, cross-border economic flows. Conditions brought on by crisis politics make it unlikely that the micro-foundations for open economy politics will endure. Politics in an open economy presumes predictable interest aggregation, but political leaders have more sway over policy results in times of crisis and institutions have less. COVID-19's politics are best understood as crisis politics, with threats, uncertainties, and time pressures varying across and among crises [Lipscy, 2020].

The urgency, unpredictability, and stakes of a crisis can change based on the nature of the underlying policy issues and the measures taken to address them. The most crucial aspects to consider are the threats, uncertainties, and time constraints that lead up to crises, the methods used to respond to them, and the lasting impacts on society. While uncertainty is a barrier to crisis avoidance, understanding past crises can lessen anxiety and raise awareness, making it easier to enact protective measures. The spread of a crisis can be halted through international collaboration, but this approach has the potential to backfire if it paralyzes institutions or encourages the growth of redundant, uncoordinated international organizations. Structures can amplify and weaponize rationalist beliefs, turning hegemonic stability theory as well as neoliberal institutionalism into a theory of hegemonic stupidity.

Uncertainty is a major contributor to crisis reaction variation, especially when governments are dealing with a novel or previously unseen crisis. As a result, the first to respond to a pandemic may suffer from an unfair deficit. Countries that acted quickly, like China, South Korea, & Japan, were able to respond to COVID-19 more successfully than those that waited. Perceptions of threat influence how voters as well as policymakers view an exogenous shock, such as COVID-19, and thus how quickly policy is enacted in reaction to it. Crisis leadership and ad hoc making choices can amplify leaders' roles and the scope of their influence, but they can also foster bureaucratic & organisational pathologies which stymie effective reactions.

Changes in political and economic systems are possible results of the chances presented by crises. A disaster's stakes, unknowns, and time constraints determine how much of a transformation takes place. External factors, such as product price shocks, will also play a role in determining how much of an impact COVID-19 will have on society. Long-term effects on the environment, work-life balance, as well as political territory may result from policy shifts made possible by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, COVID-19 also has an opportunity to embolden autocrats and weaken democratic organizations at home and abroad. Political science needs to expand its means of rapid review and dissemination of research findings, and the international order needs to change to improve crisis surveillance, prevention, as well as reaction.

In the face of worldwide catastrophes, BIPOC futurisms reframe whiteness as an institution of dominance and reject homogenous concepts of 'humanity' to imagine more honest and vibrant futures. The arts, social arranging, spiritualities, and other aspects of BIPOC futures are all open-ended movements that directly tackle global catastrophic risk. They feature a wide range of characters, embody various conceptions of subjectivity as well as agency, and frequently defy categorization by conventional gender, age, or species. Instead of relying on top-down policymaking, Brown proposes a "emergent strategy" based on decentralized action, small-scale interventions, and adaptability in the midst of uncertainty. By fostering forms of autonomy to be solidarities across communities as well as multi-species worlds, BIPOC futurists work to rescue Black and Brown bodies as well as their distinct forms of agency compared to instrumentalization inside systems of Euro-centric power [Mitchell and Chaudhury, 2020].

Using multiple cosmologies, including deep time, behaviours in which the Western ideas of 'past,' 'present,' and 'future' do not apply, and the coexistence of various intersections of time-space, BIPOC communities assert chronological sovereignty by inhabiting different temporalities or rejecting imposed ones. While denying the idea of a "pre-industrial" or "hunter-gatherer" existence, BIPOC futurists embrace the opportunities of Ancestral futures contracts, envisioning thriving modern lifeways based on ancient forms of expertise, laws, as well as the reversal of pathways of oppression. Instead of trying to get rid of white people, BIPOC future fantasies focus on building strong mobilities which enable and will continue to render BIPOC communities resilient and adaptable in the face of calamity. The collapse of whiteness as a global power formation is the primary focus of apocalyptic conversations on the 'global catastrophic risk,' 'human extinction,' and other similar large-scale threats. In response to white supremacy, BIPOC futurists construct alternative realities that are nonlinear and multitemporal. The world-building and flourishing depicted in the writings of BIPOC futurists far outstrip the doomsday scenarios predicted by white thinkers.

Bibliography

Baylis, J., 2020. The globalization of world politics: An introduction to international relations . Oxford university press, USA.

Danewid, I., 2020. The fire this time: Grenfell, racial capitalism and the urbanisation of empire. European Journal of International Relations , 26 (1), pp.289-313.

Lipscy, P.Y., 2020. COVID-19 and the Politics of Crisis. International Organization , 74 (S1), pp.E98-E127.

Mitchell, A. and Chaudhury, A., 2020. Worlding beyond ‘the’‘end’of ‘the world’: White apocalyptic visions and BIPOC futurisms. International Relations , 34 (3), pp.309-332.

Zhang, C., 2020. Right-wing populism with Chinese characteristics? Identity, otherness and global imaginaries in debating world politics online. European Journal of international relations , 26 (1), pp.88-115.

Zvobgo, K. and Loken, M., 2020. Why race matters in international relations.

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