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Discussions about diversifying the discipline of international relations (IR) are often met with limited evidence in practice. Employing the concepts of epistemic oppression and academic dependency, this article contributes to filling the existing knowledge gap by examining what the pedagogical practices of IR professors, particularly in terms of syllabi design and content, tell us about the state of disciplinary diversity. The article examines results from a preliminary study that analyzes different graduate-level IR syllabi from leading universities in the Global North (represented by United States and United Kingdom) and Global South (Africa in particular) in order to determine how their design, including required readings and other pedagogical choices in the classroom, contributes to the explicit diversity needed to push IR beyond its usual canon. The findings suggest that although more perspectives have become accepted or recognized, what is considered essential for graduate students to study and further propagate is still primarily mainstream. Another point is that what has become known as "critical IR" cannot automatically be equated with diversity. This means there is the need to further interrogate and open up more avenues that go beyond what can be characterized as a "critical canon" of IR.

While there is scholarship focused on the nexus between resource extraction and development, further examination is needed of how the harms and benefits of extraction are differentiated among different stakeholders based on factors such as their access to power, authority over decision-making, social status,and gender. This article combines theoretical insights from assemblage thinking and political ecology to unpack the intertwined range of actors, networks, and structures of power that inform the differentiated benefits and harms of hydrocarbon extraction in Ghana. The study shows that power serves as a crucial ingredient in understanding relations among social groups, including purported beneficiaries of extractive activities, and other actors that constitute the networked hydrocarbon industry. The different levels (i.e. global, national, sub-national,local) at which the socio-ecological 'goods' and 'bads' of hydrocarbon extraction become manifest are relational. The article contributes to ongoing scholarly and policy discussions around extractivism by showing how a multi-scalar analysis reveals a more complex picture of the distributional politics, power asymmetries, and injustices that underpin resource extraction.

AbstractThere is a large body of literature that examines different dimensions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Africa, with many focusing on the false promises of these corporate initiatives. Contrary to simplistic claims of CSR being merely window‐dressing, however, this paper reveals that although several rhetorical proclamations underpin the idea, such statements are often given instrumental meaning through diverse mechanisms (e.g., interpretation of cues toward the proactive (re)construction of identity, (inter)subjective discourses on social legitimacy, and acts of "issue selling") that help to enact particular characteristics of the corporation. The paper specifically employs the organizational concepts of sensemaking and sensegiving to explain how, through CSR activities, hydrocarbon companies in Ghana construct and (re)affirm a particular reality for its stakeholders. The findings suggest that by having significant leverage over the (re)construction of its identity and claims around social legitimacy and performance, the corporation gives sense to and further sustains its authority over societal norms and expectations around what social responsibility entails. The evidence presented contributes to scholarship that considers the corporation as a complex nexus of multiple relations, contested narratives, and practices.

AbstractWithin the current global atmosphere where a universally accepted police force is nonexistent, there are several voluntary norms and codes of conduct that exist to guide how corporations behave worldwide. These have come as a result of many years of poor performance in the areas of social, financial, and environmental responsibility. Such norms are expected to prescribe and proscribe certain types of corporate behavior but when one examines the reality on the ground, the story is not that straightforward. This article assesses the effectiveness of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) in the Ghanaian context with a focus on the mining sector. Based on primary qualitative data the argument is that even though the EITI is performing some function, it has ways to go before it can become an across‐the‐board viable tool for transparency and proper accountability. Five prevailing weaknesses are discussed to underscore this case.