Africa's Challenge to International Relations Theory. Edited by Kevin C. Dunn and Timothy M. Shaw. New York: Palgrave, 2001. 242p. $65.00

Africa's Challenge to International Relations Theory, edited by Kevin Dunn and Timothy Shaw, offers a timely reflection on the content and nuance of international relations theory in an era of “the new inequality” (Craig Murphy, “Political Consequences of the New Inequality,” International Studies Quarterly 45 [September 2001]: 347–56). The central question posed by the authors is: How international is international relations theory? In the authors' view, not very much. As a consequence, their objective in the volume is “to replace the dominant/dominating denotative reading of the IR text with a more pluralist connotative reading” (p. 8; my emphasis). Drawing on African experiences in the discipline of international relations, all 13 chapters of this engaging volume take aim at various manifestations of the Eurocentricity and “provincialism” of international relations theory then and now. Very early in the volume, Dunn sets the stage for a deliberate and systematic engagement with the discipline for its relegation of Africa to the footnote of international relations theory (p. 4).