Avatars of Eurocentrism in international political economy textbooks: The case of the Middle East and North Africa

Abstract

The project to decolonise the curriculum revolves around rethinking margin and centre of the discipline. To the extent that the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is at the margin of international political economy (IPE), it is the ideal entry point to decolonise the curriculum. I conduct a summative content analysis of the six most commonly used IPE textbooks. To what extent do they reproduce or challenge Eurocentric tropes in their treatment of MENA? The region is largely absent from IPE textbooks, suggesting it is accorded little agency in the making of the global political economy. To the extent that it is ‘brought in’, it is ‘ghettoised’ in a specialist chapter. A qualitative content analysis suggests the authors avoid overt orientalism but exceptionalise the region as a failure with too little democracy and economic growth and too much war. They acknowledge the role of continued colonialism in these failures but also deny agency of the colonised. They miss an opportunity to de-provincialise the Middle East by fostering ‘ecologies of knowledge’. The article provides an analytical framework for research on how IPE textbooks treat other world regions and of syllabi.