How to remedy Eurocentrism in IR? A complement and a challenge forThe Global Transformation

Abstract

While IR’s Eurocentric limits are usually acknowledged, what those limits mean for theorizing about the international is seldom clarified. InThe Global Transformation, Buzan and Lawson offer a ‘composite approach’ that goes some way towards addressing IR’s Eurocentrism, challenging existing myths about the emergence and evolution of the international system and society. This paper seeks to push the contribution made by Buzan and Lawson in two further directions: first, by underscoring the need to adopt a deeper understanding of Eurocentrism; and second, by highlighting how this understanding helps us recognize what is missing from IR theorizing – conceptions of the international by ‘others’ who also constitute the international. I illustrate this point by focussing on a landmark text on Ottoman history, Ortaylı’sThe Longest Century of the Empire.