An Intellectual Confession from a Member of the "Non-White" IR Community: A Friendly Reply to David Lake's "White Man's IR". Issue 1 (2nd November 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Eun, Yong-Soo
• Is Part Of: PS, political science & politics. Volume 52:Issue 1(2019)
• Page Start: 78
• Page End: 84
• Publication Date: 2018-11-02
• Subjects: Political science -- Periodicals; 320.05
• DOI: 10.1017/S1049096518001208
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1049-0965

Abstract

ABSTRACT: David Lake wrote that International Relations (IR) 1 will be a more diverse and better field of study if we embrace varied "life experiences and intuitions, " especially those of "marginalized" scholars, about politics and how the world works. Although concurring with his admonition, I also believe that his call for "greater diversity" in IR and his approach to realizing it need to be subject to critical scrutiny, being reconsidered in terms of reflexivity—more specifically, self -reflection by "marginalized" scholars. For this reason, as a "non-white" scholar working in a "non-Western" (or, in Lake's words, "underrepresented") IR community, I want to make my own confession to better understand what is at stake in promoting diversity in the academy from a different angle.