The Myth of Decolonization and the Global South: Mapping Coloniality through Pakistani International Relations

In recent years, scholars of International Relations have increasingly turned their attention to the question of how to decolonize knowledge. While emerging debates and initiatives mark a critical step toward exposing the discipline’s embedded power structures, there remains a striking lack of systematic empirical research into how these asymmetries are reproduced and experienced within the Global South itself. This book explores the coloniality of power and knowledge in Pakistan through an examination of Pakistani International Relations. It not only unveils the hegemonic processes embedded within the western capitalist structures of knowledge production but also explores how the eurocentrism of International Relations in Pakistan is sustained and maintained through a coloniality of knowledge and power which is designed to promote western epistemologies and emulate western standards. This book, consequently, provides a view of epistemic oppression from below. In doing so, it is an initial attempt to explore how the process of decolonization can begin to address the issues embedded in the coloniality of knowledge demonstrated through an exploration of the International Relations discipline in Pakistan.

Dr. Ahmed W. Waheed is the Executive Director of ROADS Initiative, Pakistan and an Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Policy and Global Affairs, City St. George’s University of London. He has a PhD in Political Science from Queen Mary University of London and is the author of the books The Wrong Ally: Pakistan’s State Sovereignty under US Dependence and Constructing ‘Pakistan’ through Knowledge Production in International Relations and Area Studies.