This week on Midnight Oil, we speak to Zachariah Mampilly, Marxe chair of international affairs at the City University of New York’s Marxe School of Public and International Affairs. He studies issues of rebel governance and political violence and Critical State readers will remember his recent article with Nimmi Gowrinathan on civilian political power under the rule of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka. He spoke with Critical State about his efforts as a researcher and educator to wrench the study of international relations away from its obsession with those atop the international politics and security food chain, and recenter discussions around how people and governments in the “global south” interact with the international order.

As a scholar with roots in the global south,, I am drawn to questions of international order and how it affects communities in what we used to refer to as the “third world.” My research takes place in Africa and South Asia, where I’ve examined how states and non-state actors attempt to challenge their uneven incorporation into global capitalism and the Western liberal order. At the level of the state, I am interested in both historic and contemporary efforts by governments in the third world  to develop alternatives to the existing world order. And at the level of non-states, I’m interested in how ordinary people try to challenge their incorporation into the international order through both violent and non-violent resistance.

So to come to your question, the hardest problem I focus on is what the shifting global order means for the countries of the global south. Postcolonial or decolonial theory has done wonders in exploring both how the existing world order has its roots in European colonial domination. And how the afterlives of colonial rule extend into the contemporary period. But as much as I’ve been influenced by those frames, I find them severely lacking in understanding the current disposition.

Undoubtedly, we are living through an era that is witnessing the decline of the Euro-American dominated global order. But what comes next? And what does it mean for ordinary people in Latin America, Africa and Asia? I don’t think we can simply adapt existing theories to contemporary dynamics and assume that will tell us something meaningful. We need to instead start by looking at how the lives of people across the global south are being transformed by political and economic forces that they have had little say in shaping.

To give two examples, climate change is a global phenomenon, but its impact is felt most among populations that have done the least to deserve it. Yet it is clear, any resolution will require the greatest sacrifices be made precisely by these populations, whether in terms of livelihoods, health or even the ability to remain in their own countries. Or consider the triumph of global capitalism, which has successfully coopted elites from across the global south  in ways that complicate simple binaries of the West and the Rest. Africa alone has seven of the 10 most unequal countries in the world, yet the conversation around inequality is largely centered on its impact on the capitalist democracies of the West. So any talk of fundamental global challenges must start with Africa, Asia and Latin America, rather than the current approach that emphasizes Europe, North America and to a lesser degree, East Asia.

I’d like to think I contribute in two ways. First, as a scholar and educator, I try to reframe conversations around inequality, democracy and global order from the perspective of the global south. I work to center the voices of intellectuals and activists from the global south rather than pushing a Western perspective onto them. In my new position at the City University of New York, I am working to build a new Master’s in International Affairs program at the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs that is breaking from legacy international affairs programs that almost solely focus on the work of Western scholars and theories. Instead, I am interested in bottom up approaches to global order that deemphasize governments, multinational corporations or institutions like the United Nations and International Monetary Fund to instead center the experiences of social movements, refugees and even rebel groups in constructing a new world order.

Second, I work directly with social movements to forge transnational connections and to provide them with material and intellectual support. This has proven remarkably challenging. Western foundations often speak of wanting to support social movements, but really they are more likely to support formalized nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). NGOs can play an important role, but are often limited politically by their structural position within the international order. Figuring out how to provide direct support to activists is incredibly difficult, but an essential task as they are often the only actors able to articulate truly independent solutions to our common challenges and who can mobilize the population from the bottom up to enact them.