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"This book offers readers an alternative history of the origins of the discipline of International Relations. Conventional, western histories of the discipline point to 1919 as the year of the 'birth of the discipline' with two seminal initiatives - setting up of the first Chair of IR at Aberystwyth and the founding of the Institute of International Relations on the side-lines of the Paris Peace Conference. From these events, International Relations is argued to have been established as a path to create peace in the post-War era and facilitated through a scientific study of international affairs. International Relations was therefore, both a field of study and knowledge production and a plan of action. This pathbreaking book challenges these claims by presenting an alternative narrative of International Relations. In this book, we make three interconnected arguments. First, we argue that the natal moment in the founding of IR is not World War I - as is generally believed - but the Second Anglo Boer War. Second, we argue that the ideas, methods and institutions that led to the making of IR were first thrashed out in South Africa - in Johannesburg, in fact. Finally, this South African genealogy of IR, we show in the book, allows us to properly investigate the emergence of academic IR at the interstices of race, Empire and science"--

This journal article reflects on the conceptualization of a three-day meeting convened to open space for thinking differently about the city of Johannesburg, South Africa, and to begin to explore the possibility of working beyond the constraints of standard urban studies and regimes of spatial planning through which the city is conventionally viewed and researched. The incentive underpinning the 2015 Performative Urbanisms workshop was the desire to find areas of correspondence and overlap in the often widely separated realms of scholarly research and grassroots urban activism. To this end, a group of international and Johannesburg-based academics, writers, artists, analysts, and activists came together to explore a range of themes around the city and its visual, spatial, textual, and especially performative, representations, in the context of its functioning as a global city in comparative perspective. As the contents of this Special Issue show, the workshop provided space to consider diverse research methodologies, creative writings, and artistic strategies aimed at moving beyond formulaic constructs of Johannesburg, and instead to offer an accounting of its novelties, complexities, and originalities.

Prefigurative politics is a resurgent concept, seeking to explain a diverse array of social phenomena, from Occupy Wall Street to car-sharing cooperatives. The driving force behind these activities is said to be a combination of dashed hopes for a better post-Cold War world and the widespread negative social impacts of neoliberal globalization. Although located in the Global South, Southern Africa is not immune to these pressures and processes. Indeed, the region is rife with a number of activities and organisations demonstrating features of prefigurative politics. Taken together, however, it is unlikely that these activities constitute a 'prefigurative moment' in the region's politics. So ubiquitous in theory and practice is the idea of the modern Western state as locus of 'a better life for all' that prefigurative impulses are quickly colonized by state-centered, mainstream actors, forces and factors. At present, significant student movements are underway in South Africa, #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall, suggesting possibilities for meaningful change not through disengagement from the state, but by directly confronting it in deliberate and coordinated ways. This demonstration of what A.O. Hirschman calls 'voice' is dissimilar to the general trends of 'exit' or 'loyalty' among individuals, groups and communities across the region. While all of these activities are indicative of a strong desire for a better life for all, transformational change in southern Africa requires strategic political thinking and action. Only the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall student protests suggest movement, albeit nascent, in this direction. ; peerReviewed ; publishedVersion

Prefigurative politics is a resurgent concept, seeking to explain a diverse array of social phenomena, from Occupy Wall Street to car-sharing cooperatives. The driving force behind these activities is said to be a combination of dashed hopes for a better post-Cold War world and the widespread negative social impacts of neoliberal globalization. Although located in the Global South, Southern Africa is not immune to these pressures and processes. Indeed, the region is rife with a number of activities and organisations demonstrating features of prefigurative politics. Taken together, however, it is unlikely that these activities constitute a 'prefigurative moment' in the region's politics. So ubiquitous in theory and practice is the idea of the modern Western state as locus of 'a better life for all' that prefigurative impulses are quickly colonized by state-centered, mainstream actors, forces and factors. At present, significant student movements are underway in South Africa, #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall, suggesting possibilities for meaningful change not through disengagement from the state, but by directly confronting it in deliberate and coordinated ways. This demonstration of what A.O. Hirschman calls 'voice' is dissimilar to the general trends of 'exit' or 'loyalty' among individuals, groups and communities across the region. While all of these activities are indicative of a strong desire for a better life for all, transformational change in southern Africa requires strategic political thinking and action. Only the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall student protests suggest movement, albeit nascent, in this direction.