Globalizing Political Theory

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel is focused on the significance and necessity of Globalizing Political Theory. The papers on the panel are drawn from our recent edited volume on this topic (Routledge, 2023). The papers on the panel argue that globalizing political theory requires decentering the geographic, linguistic, and epistemological hubs of global debate away from North America and Europe, the primacy of the English language, and the assumptions of liberalism, to expand the focus to multiple parts of the world, languages, ideologies and modes of thinking. In this more expansive context, what does it now mean to think politically in an increasingly global world? What role has political theorizing had in localizing global questions and globalizing local issues? Globalizing political theory in this way reveals how theory is deeply embedded in local networks of power, identity, and structure and how these converge and diverge with the global. We argue that political theory is an active and immersive practice, which consistently seeks to find new ways to illuminate global questions and explore their intersection with the local. Katherine Gordy and Smita Rahman’s paper serves as an introduction to the topic and focuses on the methodology of globalizing political theory and offers two different case studies (on Sayyid Qutb’s project of religious renewal and Che Guevara’s political economy) to illustrate this approach. Tiffany Willoughby-Herard’s paper focuses on democracy and protest in a globalizing context, by exploring the role of storytelling by elders and community members in shaping political consciousness. To do so, it focuses on the South African feminist sociologist Fatima Meer in the context of cross-generational anti-apartheid activism by the Indian South African community. Vicki Huseh’s paper highlights the work of Haunani-Kay Trask, one of the most influential thinkers in contemporary indigenous politics, as an example of globalizing political theory. In doing so, it argues that Trask’s work and activism on sovereignty, land reclamation, and cultural survival constitute an “archipelagic” form of political theory that connects indigenous island communities around the globe. Thomas Meagher’s paper focuses on the writings of Walter Rodney and Samir Amin, both Marxist thinkers from the Global South, to explore the conditions of global underdevelopment and highlight the possibilities for decolonizing the global political economy. To do so, it analyzes Rodney;s work to analyze the role that underdevelopment plays in producing Euromodern hegemony and explores Amin’s work on Eurocentrism to highlight the role of colonization and enslavement played in developing an intra-European capitalist system. Finally, Jimmy Casas Klausen’s paper argues that in wake of global political decolonization movements, North Atlantic whiteness was constructed through the racialization of Neo-Malthusian concepts of overpopulation, uncontrolled economic development, and overconsumption and overproduction. In doing so, they contributed to new global forms of racialization and the emergence of Whiteness as an international moral power. Taken together, the focus on the global/local relationship highlighted by these papers provides a generative way for practitioners of political theory to expand their knowledge outside of the Western canon, explore different methodological approaches to the study of political theory, and actively engage with a multiplicity of global perspectives.

Sub Unit

• Division 42: Critical Political Science (formerly New Political Science)

Individual Presentations

• What Does It Mean to Globalize Political Theory? - Katherine Adams Gordy, San Francisco State University; Smita A. Rahman, DePauw University

• Democracy and Protest: Children, Parents, Storytelling Political History - Tiffany J. Willoughby-Herard, University of California-Irvine

• Indigenous Politics, Knowledge, and Action in the Work of Haunani-Kay Trask - Vicki Hsueh, Western Washington University

• Walter Rodney and Samir Amin: From Underdevelopment to Global Decolonization - Thomas Meagher, Sam Houston State University

• Neo-Malthusianism Whiteness as International Moral Power after Decolonization - Jimmy Casas Klausen, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro

Chair

• Smita A. Rahman DePauw University

Discussant

• Katherine Adams Gordy San Francisco State University