When a subject or school of thought, such as World Politics, is taught and discussed in the same way, with the same assumptions, for a long time, it becomes easy to start assuming that that particular way is also the only correct way to go about it. This is more often untrue than not, and can even be a dangerous assumption to make. There is an inherent value in analyzing world politics from multiple perspectives, even more so than many other schools of thought, because the very concept of world politics incorporates bringing together many different perspectives on issues that affect many different actors, all of which are the ones who have said differing perspectives. Without that element present, world politics cannot legitimately include the word “world” in its name. And when dealing with a subject so dependent on multiple perspectives, brushing away different views on the subject itself as unnecessary or incorrect seems very hypocritical and self-defeating.
Alternative foundational stories about global politics are valuable in its study, because they help us to look at things we take for granted in a different light, and realize that we may be drawing lines in the sand based on artificial assumptions that are not universal, but we have accepted as such in the absence of alternate explanations. When we only have one way of going about things, it becomes easy to define the “proper” approach to a problem, or the “valid” explanation of a phenomenon, without taking other approaches or explanations into account. When this happens, things begin to appear in terms of black and white, truth and lies, when really, the only thing they do is conform, or defy, the generally-accepted foundational story about a very broad idea. An idea that is usually a human construct invented to categorize a certain collection of the random and multi-faceted actions that make up world politics, not to label a discrete, single phenomenon. Adding different stories about the nature of an issue, or concept, or convention makes said nature more complex, more inclusive, and more natural, while avoiding the pitfalls, logical fallacies, and oversimplifications that come with making up laws and definitions based on the combination of a short period of observation and contradictory or incomplete informations passed down from past, perhaps obsolete times; all taken from one particular perspective.
For example, Tickner placed particular emphasis on marginalized populations, who are deeply affected by the exact same issues that policymakers and experts wrestle with in the elite sphere of international diplomacy, but unlike the latter, have no voice. This is a problem that badly complicates, misleads, and reduces the efficiency of the systems in place meant to deal with said issues. Marginalized populations such as the very poor, the uneducated, women (to varying degrees depending on the country), children, and minority populations not only have a perspective on global politics very different from the perspective of the powerful, highly educated, well-connected officials working in governmental state departments; but they are very different from each other; and very different from the rich, the educated, men, adults, and majority populations. The non-marginalized populations have not just a voice, but many different voices with which they can influence the experts who have the power to agree to make changes in some aspect of global politics, while the marginalized populations do not. This means that only half of a story is being told. It doesn’t make the half that is told invalid, it just makes it incomplete. No single story is the complete story, only when all different perspectives are taken into account, and all different versions of what makes up the foundation of global politics are told and given equal weight, does the “real” story emerge. Like the proverbial blind men with an elephant, a single story can be a very accurate portrayal of what it deals with, just as a blind man touching the elephant’s trunk can give a perfectly valid and accurate description of the trunk. It is only when the trunk is declared (by, perhaps, if we want to make this metaphor even more obvious; an english-speaking blind man to another english-speaking blind man, ignoring the non-english-speaking man holding the elephant’s ear) to be the whole elephant; that is to say, when a particular story is billed as the whole truth, do problems arise.
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