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A Non-Eurocentric Approach to Sovereignty

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Peer-reviewed

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Article

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Authors

Zarakol, Ayse 

Abstract

The idea that the concept of sovereignty emerged (first and exclusively) in Europe is so ingrained that most scholarship dealing with this issue does not even specify that its arguments are derived from European materials only. This is not to say that the sovereignty literature makes any explicit claims about the emergence of sovereignty outside of Europe (or even lack thereof); it is disinterestedly silent about other regions. This silence is then inevitably filled in the reader’s imagination with the usual assumption of the non-West temporally lagging behind the West on this issue as well. To their immense credit, organisers of this forum have not rested on such a problematic trope and have tasked me with discussing “sovereignty outside of the West”. I will therefore focus on the broad issue of how thinking comparatively and beyond the West can radically change our thinking about modern sovereignty.

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International Studies Review

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Publisher

OUP

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