The Indigenous Dimension of the Intersocietal: Dussel, Exteriority and the Sámi People

• Published in: Millennium: Journal of International Studies
• Main Author: Oksanen, Aslak-Antti
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Eurocentrism; uneven and combined development; Enrique Dussel; Sámi People; Indigenous peoples; Sámi
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1983/a7a7e75a-91c8-4f65-a8f9-0cbd4caa99a3; https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/publications/a7a7e75a-91c8-4f65-a8f9-0cbd4caa99a3; https://doi.org/10.1177/03058298211050671; https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/ws/files/302315799/Full_text_PDF_final_published_version_.pdf

Proponents of uneven and combined development (U&CD) as a theoretical approach to International Relations (IR) have presented it as providing the conceptual means for overcoming Eurocentrism. While the U&CD scholars have made valuable contributions to anti-Eurocentric IR scholarship, this article argues that U&CD has analytical limitations that impede its anti-Eurocentric potential. These limitations derive from U&CD’s reliance on the concepts of ‘development’ and the ‘whip of external necessity’, which require developmental ranking of societies and lock U&CD into a state-centric social ontology. To provide complementary conceptual resources to overcome U&CD’s analytical limitations, this article introduces Enrique Dussel’s liberation philosophy (LP), which can incorporate peoples other than states as agents and entities of global politics through its concept of ‘exteriority’. U&CD and LP are then jointly applied to analyse the relations between the Nordic states and the indigenous Sámi people to assess the approaches’ relative strengths and weaknesses and identify synergies between them. Based on this assessment, the article outlines the potential for synthesising a ‘thin’ version of U&CD with LP, by using the concept of ‘exteriority’ to reorient U&CD’s analytical focus towards people excluded by the states-system.