Critical and Problem-Solving Perspectives on Decentring EU External Action Studies

This article proposes a decentring approach for EU External Action Studies as a debate that is 'disrupting' the mainstream in European Studies. It theoretically contributes to the decentring debate in three ways. First, by identifying decentring as a meta-theoretical current of thinking, the article helps define the decentring debate as an area of theorising which can accommodate scholars from various backgrounds and bring them together around a common commitment to overcome Euro-and Western centrism in scholarship (and practice). Second, the article states the wider relevance of taking a decentring approach, which entails normative and instrumental benefits for scholarship, teaching and practice. By doing so, the article underscores the ethical imperative of disrupting a field of study on the one hand, but also the usefulness and even the necessity of disruption as a problem-solving approach to the benefit of a field's mainstream centre on the other. Third, the article shows how the decentring debate accommodates both critical and problem solving theorising, and proposes potential theoretical anchors in existing bodies of work. Finally, it discusses the inherent paradox that follows from critical and problem-solving approaches to decentring specifically and disruptive theorising more broadly.