While International Relations (IR) is a discipline concerned with understanding global politics and the interactions between different societies, it has conventionally overlooked, marginalized, and silenced insights from the Global South. Recently, a strand of scholars has been busy demonstrating how IR is hamstrung by its Western-centrism thereby becoming increasingly irrelevant to the Global South. There is growing agreement that it is necessary to counter this Western-centrism, but much confusion remains about this mission to “globalize IR.” This dissertation scrutinizes the prevalent understandings of this mission and identifies a number of possible ways to continue forward, thereby providing a systematic and comprehensive presentation of this debate. The dissertation also offers tangible examples of how to actually go about globalizing IR; that is, how to acknowledge or include Global South theorizing in IR. Specifically grounded in insights from Latin America, the dissertation presents three different challenges to the mainstream of IR by exploring attempts to imagine politics beyond the traditional boundaries. Overall, the dissertation highlights both the challenges and promises of the globalizing IR debate, and it provides us with guidance on how to move forward and advance the discipline. The make-up of IR is changing, and this dissertation can hopefully help pave the way for a future in which white, Western men are not alone in being heard.

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