Race in the Ontology of International Order
| Author | Branwen Gruffydd Jones |
| Date | 01 December 2008 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00710.x |
| Published date | 01 December 2008 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Race in the Ontology of International Order
Branwen Gruffydd Jones
Goldsmiths, University of London
The current world order is characterised by profound global inequality, depicted throughreference to the
developed and developing world. The racialised character of global inequalities in power is rarely
acknowledged, however. Explicit racial discourse has been removed from the institutional form of the
modern world order,and this apparent transcendence of race is mir rored in the lack of attention to race
within mainstream scholarship in International Relations (IR). This is in part because of the empiricist
assumptions underlying much IR scholarship,which reflect the non-racialised appearance of the modern
world order.While the question of race has been exposed by critical strands of IR scholarship, such
critiques have focused largely on discursive dimensions of race. This article argues that critical analysis of
global racism and racial oppression must go beyondthe limits of discur sivecritique. It is necessary to grasp
the non-discursive dimensions of racial power, in order to explain the reproduction of racial inequality
by an international order formally committed to racial equality. This,in turn, requires an expanded theory
of social ontology. Critical realism develops a theory of social ontology which provides a basis for
differentiating between various dimensions of racial oppression. The critical realist theory of social
ontology highlights the significance of the relations structuring societal interaction with nature,which are
fundamental in determining distributions of social power within society. A survey of the long global
history of colonialism reveals that the relations structuring societal interaction with nature on a global
scale have been built upon a basis of racialised dispossession. The article argues that the racialised
structures of social power produced through centuries of colonial dispossession remain entrenched,
despite the formal transcendence of racism in modern institutions of international order. Thus a realist
ontology provides the basis for revealing the endurance of race in the structures of international order.
[T]he southern, developingThirdWorld is for the most part the colored world,and
... it is marginalized, disproportionately poor and relatively powerless. The critical
question is the extent to which the divergence in wealth, technology, power, and
indeed, voice are predicated on the contingent, fluctuating and very complex
concept of race (Gordon, 2000, pp. 830–1).
The modern global condition is characterised by stark and growing inequalities,
along multiple dimensions of social being (Sutcliffe,1998). According to the United
Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report of 2005:
One in five people in the world – more than 1 billion people – still survive on less
than $1 a day, a level of poverty so abject that it threatens survival.Another 1.5 billion
people live on $1–$2 a day. More than 40 per cent of the world’s population
constitute, in effect,a global underclass, faced daily with the reality or the threat of
extreme poverty.... More than 850 million people,including one in three preschool
children, are still trapped in a vicious cycle of malnutrition and its effects. ... More
than 1 billion people lack access to safe water and 2.6 billion lack access to
improved sanitation (UNDP, 2005, p. 24, emphasis added).
Academic scholarship and policy literature have over several decades generated a
proliferation of terminology to define and measure the various gradations of
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00710.x
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2008 VOL 56, 907–927
© 2008The Author.Jour nal compilation © 2008 Political StudiesAssociation
social inequality on a world scale, enabling distinctions between developed,
middle-income,developing, less developed and least developed countries; relative,
chronic, absolute and ultra poverty; human secur ity and insecurity; vulnerability
and social exclusion and so on.
The concept of race is largely absent from the mighty edifice of scholarly and
institutional discourse concerned with global poverty and inequality, however,
even though the majority of the world’s poor are non-European and non-white.
While making no direct reference to this, the UNDP report nevertheless
observes:
In an increasingly knowledge-based global economy about 115 million children
are denied even the most basic primary education. Most of the children who are
not enrolled in school are in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia ... On average, a
child born in Mozambique today can anticipate four years of formal education.
One born in France will receive 15 years at vastly higher levels of provision.
Average schooling in South Asia, at eight years, is half the level in high-income
countries. ...We may live in a world where universal rights proclaim that all people
are of equal worth – but where you arebor n in the worlddictates your life chances
(UNDP, 2005, p. 25).
The voluminous literature on global poverty rarely acknowledges its racialised
dimension. More generally, the question of race has been of only marginal
concern to the discipline of International Relations (IR). The absence of
concern with race in mainstream IR scholarship is in part a reflection of the
institutional appearance of contemporary international order. The formal legal
regimes and institutions of international order rest on and uphold norms of racial
equality and universal human rights. Antony Anghie has emphasised:
one of the most notable aspects of the complex relationship between race and
international law is the extent to which the character of that relationship has
apparently changed over the past one hundred years. In short, at the beginning of
the twentieth century,international law explicitly furthered racism whereas now, at
the beginning of the new millennium, international law appears forcefully com-
mitted to the eradication of racism (Anghie, 2000, p. 887).
How, then, is it possible to conceptualise the place of race in international order
in a way which can grasp the actuality of a starkly racialised structure of global
inequality? While mainstream approaches in IR have little to say about race, a
growing critical literature has considered various dimensions of race in interna-
tional relations. Yet existing critiques have for the most part focused on discursive
aspects of racial power, and conceptualised race and racial oppression in relation
to identity. Questions of subjectivity, consciousness, identity and ideology are
clearly important aspects of racial power and oppression. However, this article
argues that it is necessary to go beyond the limits of discursive critique, and to
develop an understanding of race and racial oppression which encompasses
structural dimensions, in order to account for the way in which global racial
908 BRANWEN GRUFFYDD JONES
© 2008The Author.Jour nal compilation © 2008 Political StudiesAssociation
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2008, 56(4)
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