International Affairs Conference 2024: The West or the Rest? – Identity, Ideology, Institutions
In May 2024, the Standing Committee for International Affairs presented their annual conference on “The West or the Rest? – Identity, Ideology, Institutions” which interrogated concept of “the West” in international affairs, particularly in relation to positioning and identity. You can read more about it here.
Ireland has historically found it relatively easy, while primarily seeing itself as a democracy and market economy, to avoid the problematic historical legacies many “Western” countries face as former imperialist powers. Ireland has maintained relatively good relations and open dialogue with the decolonized nations which constitute the so-called “global south”.
Ireland has thus, until now, been spared the diplomatic problems associated with the concept of “the West” in international politics – such as the negative reaction it inspires in many non-European countries through its implied culturally exclusivist claims on “freedom and democracy” and “the international community”. Ireland’s own cultural identity has recently been further diversified by multiple multi-cultural contributions to Irish society. This adds to the complexity of how Ireland self-identifies and positions itself in a postcolonial world that still retains deeply embedded imperial identities, knowledges and international relations.
These were the issues explored during this booked-out event, supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs, on the 1st of May 2024. Tánaiste Micheál Martin’s speech exploring the conference themes can be read on the official website of the Irish Government.
Several papers from the conference will be published as part of the RIA’s Irish Studies in International Affairs journal, which will be launched as part of the 2025 conference.
Reflecting on the conference, organiser and member of the Standing Committee for International Affairs Professor Kiri Paramore said:
“This year’s conference topic invited papers and contributors focussing on international issues beyond Europe. The conference saw the RIA transformed for the day into an international event space hosting discussion on a truly global array of topics. The Tánaiste’s speech, reflecting on his visit to the Gaza border just days earlier, was complemented by academic papers on Africa and Asia’s role in the non-aligned movement, contemporary Asian IR practice, and the history of transnationalism in the Asia-Pacific and beyond. The floor debate provoked active engagement by a number of Dublin-based diplomats, including the Ambassador of Japan, who was joined by several other Ambassadors attending the conference.”
The programme from the 2024 event can be viewed below.
Session 1: “The West and the Rest” in International Relations
- Chair: Rory Montgomery, MRIA
- M. Satish Kumar (Queens University Belfast): “Inconvenient truths, pluralism and diversity: why history and culture matter”
- Jivanta Schottli (Dublin City University): “An Indian view of the world? Applying relationality as a lens”
- Jan Niklas Huhn (Siegen University): “The Rest is not the West: Othering and identity formation in the Non-Aligned-Movement”
Keynote: Tánaiste Micheál Martin TD, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister for Defence.
Plenary: Naoise Mac Sweeney, author of The West: A New History of an Old Idea (W.H. Allen, 2023)
Chair: Kiri Paramore
Session 2: Beyond the West/Rest Dichotomy: Ireland and the World
- Chair: Una Murray
- Jon Davidann (Hawaii Pacific University): “A critique of Westernization”
- Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain (Maynooth University): “The West, the East and the Post-Colonial Excuse”
- Manimporok (Brown University): “The Rest, the West and the Ugly”
