International Relations in Africa: not without Indigenous Knowledge Systems

Abstract

The field of International Relations (IR) has come under increasing and sustained criticism for producing and disseminating a particular reading of European history, one rooted in violence, as if it were universal knowledge.Generations ofstudents,academics,practitioners, and policymakers have been taught and socialized into accepting this violent historical experience as the norm and, implicitly, as a reflection of human nature. As a result, the dominant accounts of IR tend to foreground competitive, conflictual, domineering, power seeking, and exploitative behaviours as defining features of international life. This under standing of IR marginalizes and often ignores Indigenous ways of knowing that emphasize relationality, solidarity, mutual care, and cooperative forms of social organization. In this article, we argue that centring Afrocentric Indigenous Knowledge Systems (AIKS), particu larly their conceptualizations of persons in IR scholarship, has the potential to move the field beyond its bleak and violent roots towards a more humane and relationalepistemology. The AIKS-centred approach to IR is better suited to capturing the nuances of contemporary global life while speaking to the lived experiences of Africans and potentially other Indi genous peoples around the world.