If the important role of written translation in the construction and contestation of knowledge and narratives remains largely under-explored, then the part played by interpreting and interpreters is even less examined in knowledge construction and story-telling. At a time when Beijing increasingly seeks to bolster its discursive power and have the Chinese story properly told, the interpreter-mediated and televised Premier-Meets-the-Press conferences constitute a typical discursive event andregime of truthin articulating China’s officially sanctioned “voice.” Discursive in nature, the institutionalised event (...) permits Beijing to construct a desired version of truth, fact and narrative in front of the more vociferous and dominant West. As an attempt to employ digital humanities (DH) methods to real-world language use, this corpus-based CDA study explores the press conference interpreters’ agency and mediation in rendering key concepts and discourses (e.g., ECONOMY and REFORM) constitutive of the broader Reform and Opening-up meta-narrative, which legitimises China’s political and economic systems, developments, policies and positions in the post-1978 era. The interpreters are found to maintain and often further reinforce Beijing’s discourse in English at various levels. Apart from indicating issues of institutional alignment, this study points to interpreters’ agency in communicating beyond national borders, (re)constructing political and institutional knowledge, counterbalancing the naturalised and taken-for-granted Western narratives, and contributing to the shifting East-West power differentials discursively. This study highlights the significance of interpreters as indispensable (re)tellers of the Chinese story in an increasingly mediat(is)ed world, where the interpreted discourse is routinely quotedverbatimon various platforms and taken for granted as the correct version of Beijing’s official “voice.”. (shrink)

A workshop sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1989 brought together more than two dozen scholars in the humanities and social sciences to explore Confucian ethics as a common intellectual discourse in East Asia. The participants included specialists on the societies of China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore as well as scholars who specialize in comparative studies. In nine intensive sessions, they probed the ways in which the Confucian ethic has shaped perceptions of (...) selfhood, dynamics of familial relations, gender construction, social organization, political authority, popular beliefs, and economic culture in East Asia. This book is a distillation of the essence of their multidisciplinary and cross-cultural examination of these issues. It seeks especially to illuminate claims that Confucian ethics have provided the necessary background and a powerful motivation in the rise of industrial East Asia, the most dynamic region of sustained economic growth and political development since World War II. (shrink)

Philosophy claims that its goal is to search for truth. The history of philosophy, however, demonstrates that this search for truth has not been free from the power dynamics of respective eras. In this article, I claim that the formation of modern East Asian philosophy is one occasion in which the power structure of the time was visibly reflected. The East–West power imbalance at the beginning of the modern period was both implicitly and explicitly (...) imbedded in the formation of modern Buddhist philosophy in East Asia. To demonstrate this point, I will examine the life and thought of two East Asian Buddhist thinkers, Paek Sŏnguk 白性郁 and Inoue Enryō 井上円了, as paradigmatic examples of... (shrink)

Before he became a counterculture hero, Alan Watts was known as an incisive scholar of Eastern and Western psychology and philosophy. In this 1961 classic, Watts demonstrates his deep understanding of both Western psychotherapy and the Eastern spiritual philosophies of Buddhism, Taoism, Vedanta, and Yoga. He examined the problem of humans in a seemingly hostile universe in ways that questioned the social norms and illusions that bind and constrict modern humans. Marking a groundbreaking synthesis, Watts asserted that the powerful insights (...) of Freud and Jung, which had, indeed, brought psychiatry close to the edge of liberation, could, if melded with the hitherto secret wisdom of the Eastern traditions, free people from their battles with the self. When psychotherapy merely helps us adjust to social norms, Watts argued, it falls short of true liberation, while Eastern philosophy seeks our natural relation to the cosmos. (shrink)

Cultural space knows no official boundary. Civilizational interaction, recorded and unrecorded, is an ongoing process. Diffusionism and parallelism get interfused in civilizational studies. To think of one-sided borrowing or lending in the realm of culture rests on bias or prejudice, perhaps both. To think that originally there was only one culture (Egypt or India or China) and that all other cultures are its diffused or dispersed form is incorrect, both theoretically and evidentially. Comparably incorrect is the anthropological hypothesis that different (...) cultures, in response to diverse social and natural stimuli or conditions, developed quite independently and in parallel manner. Once we believe, as I think we must, that cultural space is a continuum, the parallelistic thesis is bound to collapse. If, on the other hand, we totally reject the possibility of independent, relatively independent, origin and development of different cultures, we are obliged to deny the differentiable identity and personality and distinct cultures. To deny cultural pluralism is psychologically untenable and ideologically pernicious, and I have argued the point at length elsewhere. (shrink)

The long human odyssey of self-discovery has reached a crucial stage: everything we do affects everyone and everything else - and we know it. The next hundred years will bring more change than we can easily imagine: more opportunities for more people to achieve the fulfilment of a good life, and more risks that could result in catastrophic harm to the entire planet.Viewed geopolitically, the main question is whether the world-views of the world's most important and influential powers - China (...) and America (the one fundamentally Confucian, the other essentially individualist) - can be made to work together constructively.At the same time, on a deeper level, the even greater question is how the irreversible fact of urbanisation may nurture healthy and mature human individuality, such that the accumulated wisdom of the world's great cultures becomes mutually transforming and enriching.This bold and wide-ranging book explores those questions, with all the risks and opportunities they hold for generations still to com"--Publisher information. (shrink)

In a letter to M. Coray, Thomas Jefferson distinguished two distinct notions of political authority. The first was that of ancient Greece, which was characterized by “slavery” and the subjection of the population. Jefferson’s characterization was astute insofar as Aristotle regarded some groups as privileged to rule “by nature,” while all other hereditary groups were fit only to be ruled. The second type, referring to governments of “the present age,” rejected that standard in favor of equality and the promotion of (...) the people’s “happiness.” Unexpectedly, the dichotomy between hereditary privilege systems and egalitarian service to the people maps onto the contrast between “feudal” and “bureaucratic” systems in late imperial Chinese theory. In other words, this insight into the nature of authority was known to theorists both in China and in the “West,” suggesting that it captures something fundamental about the nature of “authority.” This essay probes the dichotomy in two ways, theoretical and historical. In theory, “feudal” systems, east and west, seem to be informed by a substance metaphor, and so both Aristotle and his early modern followers conflated authority with social status, and imagined the latter as a hereditary, noble substance such as gold. In this model, social groups are necessarily ranked, with gold being nobler, for instance, than brass. Because authority inheres in the person as a substance, authority is personalistic. In other words, there is no clear, external standard for checking abuses of power. Classical Chinese bureaucratic theory imagined authority as a tally. In that case, an officer’s performance had to match the office’s public charge. Because the assignment of office is merit-based, tally systems tend to be more egalitarian. Moreover, they naturally provide an external standard for checking abuse, namely, the officer’s effect on the people’s “happiness.” Historically, these two paradigms clashed in England and Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when translations of Chinese texts became available. Using translingual analysis, this essay traces the transformation of authority from a substance model to a tally model in the thinking of several Enlightenment writers, culminating in the writings of Thomas Jefferson. (shrink)

Significant dreams, like omens and oracles, play a conspicuous part in Herodotus′ narrative; the prominence which he affords to them well illustrates the difference between his approach to historiography and that of Thucydides, in whose work we shall look in vain for nocturnal visions. From the point of view of the scientific historian reports of dreams are inadmissible evidence, resting as they must on the unverifiable testimony of a single witness whose recollection is very likely to have been influenced by (...) subsequent events. Herodotus′ more hospitable attitude in part reflects his incalculable debt to the traditions of Levantine storytelling; but it is also connected with the central position occupied by kings and other powerful individuals in his narrative. Homer bears witness to the belief that the dreams of kings are more likely to be divinely inspired than those of others , and throughout the Near East rulers recorded the achievements which resulted from monitions received in sleep; if royal dreams assumed a more lucid and orderly form than most people could well parallel from their own experience, this might be regarded as a natural corollary of the peculiar link between king and gods. (shrink)

The influential apoha theory of concept formation of the seventh-century Buddhist Dharmakīrti stands as a philosophically powerful articulation of how language could work in the absence of real universals. In brief, Dharmakīrti argues that concepts are constructed through a goaloriented process that delimits the content of an experience by ignoring whatever does not conform to one's conditioned expectations. There are no real similarities that ground this process. Rather, a concept is merely what's left over once one has glossed over enough (...) of the differences between elements of one's awareness that one can judge the remainder to have the same effects as what one... (shrink)

Recent flashpoints in Black-Jewish relations--Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March, the violence in Crown Heights, Leonard Jeffries' polemical speeches, the O.J. Simpson verdict, and the contentious responses to these events--suggest just how wide the gap has become in the fragile coalition that was formed during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Instead of critical dialogue and respectful exchange, we have witnessed battles that too often consist of vulgar name-calling and self-righteous finger-pointing. Absent from these exchanges are two vitally important and (...) potentially healing elements: Comprehension of the actual history between Blacks and Jews, and level-headed discussion of the many issues that currently divide the two groups. In Struggles in the Promised Land, editors Jack Salzman and Cornel West bring together twenty-one illuminating essays that fill precisely this absence. As Salzman makes clear in his introduction, the purpose of this collection is not to offer quick fixes to the present crisis but to provide a clarifying historical framework from which lasting solutions may emerge. Where historical knowledge is lacking, rhetoric comes rushing in, and Salzman asserts that the true history of Black-Jewish relations remains largely untold. To communicate that history, the essays gathered here move from the common demonization of Blacks and Jews in the Middle Ages; to an accurate assessment of Jewish involvement of the slave trade; to the confluence of Black migration from the South and Jewish immigration from Europe into Northern cities between 1880 and 1935; to the meaningful alliance forged during the Civil Rights movement and the conflicts over Black Power and the struggle in the Middle East that effectively ended that alliance. The essays also provide reasoned discussion of such volatile issues as affirmative action, Zionism, Blacks and Jews in the American Left, educational relations between the two groups, and the real and perceived roles Hollywood has play in the current tensions. The book concludes with personal pieces by Patricia Williams, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Michael Walzer, and Cornel West, who argues that the need to promote Black-Jewish alliances is, above all, a "moral endeavor that exemplifies ways in which the most hated group in European history and the most hated group in U.S. history can coalesce in the name of precious democratic ideals." At a time when accusations come more readily than careful consideration, Struggles in the Promised Land offers a much-needed voice of reason and historical understanding. Distinguished by the caliber of its contributors, the inclusiveness of its focus, and the thoughtfulness of its writing, Salzman and West's book lays the groundwork for future discussions and will be essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary American culture and race relations. (shrink)

The Magic of Unknowing is a unique philosophical and literary work. Cast in the dialogue form, it unfolds in the mood of soliloquy. Mervyn Sprung has created an imaginative meeting of the minds of great western philosophers: Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Hume, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and Pyrrho. All are brothers, the more skeptical sons of Aristotle. Later they hear as well from Chang, a Taoist, and Nagaraj, a Buddhist, both lately adopted into the family. The dialogue dramatises the erosion in modern times (...) of Aristotelian rationality under the pressures of its own logic. The two eastern thinkers throw the weight of their own skepticism into the discussion at the critical point. In the end the brothers realize that they have moved away from Western philosophy's faith in the singular power of reason to establish truth and sense in the human world. They discover the magic of unknowing that lies in the reciprocal penetration of knowledge and behavior, each receiving its sense from the other. They discover that philosophies are not the issue of reasoning alone but are themselves already inseparably thought and action. And they realise that this entails an unheard-of future for philosophy. (shrink)

Is liberal democracy a universal ideal? Proponents of "Asian values" argue that it is a distinctive product of the Western experience and that Western powers shouldn't try to push human rights and democracy onto Asian states. Liberal democrats in the West typically counter by questioning the motives of Asian critics, arguing that Asian leaders are merely trying to rationalize human-rights violations and authoritarian rule. In this book--written as a dialogue between an American democrat named Demo and three East (...) Asian critics--Daniel A. Bell attempts to chart a middle ground between the extremes of the international debate on human rights and democracy.Bell criticizes the use of "Asian values" to justify oppression, but also draws on East Asian cultural traditions and contributions by contemporary intellectuals in East Asia to identify some powerful challenges to Western-style liberal democracy. In the first part of the book, Bell makes use of colorful stories and examples to show that there is a need to take into account East Asian perspectives on human rights and democracy. The second part--a fictitious dialogue between Demo and Asian senior statesman Lee Kuan Yew--examines the pros and cons of implementing Western-style democracy in Singapore. The third part of the book is an argument for an as-yet-unrealized Confucian political institution that justifiably differs from Western-style liberal democracy.This is a thought-provoking defense of distinctively East Asian challenges to Western-style liberal democracy that will stimulate interest and debate among students of political theory, Asian studies, and international human rights. (shrink)

This paper reports research on the influence of corporate and individual characteristics on managers'' social orientation in Germany. The results indicate that mid-level managers expressed a significantly lower social orientation than low-level managers, and that job activity did not impact social orientation. Female respondents expressed a higher social orientation than male respondents. No impact of the political system origin (former East Germany versus former West Germany) on social orientation was shown. Overall, corporate position had a significantly higher impact (...) on social orientation than did the characteristics of the individuals surveyed. (shrink)

This thesis is about the creativity in the East and the West, but I will mainly focus on the view of creativity in ancient Greek philosophy and Chinese philosophy. In the first chapter, I will explore the concept of creativity, the history of creativity, and the research on creativity, including the creativity research in psychology and philosophy, which will set the stage for further disscusion. Then in the second chapter, I will start from Plato’s dialogue, Ion, and explore (...) the traditional theory of creativity in ancient Greek philosophy, and claim that their creative ability is inspired by divine being. After this, I will show people’s view on creativity has undergone a process of demystification. During this process, people gradually began to resist the divine source and explore the world individually and independently. Meanwhile, the meaning of the concept of creativity has become broader, since it is not limited to poem any more, but it can be applied to other fields, such as art, science, and education. In the third chapter, I will turn to the modern creativity theory, including the lateral thinking and emotional creativity, and explore how to be creative with lateral thinking techniques and how to improve creativity through emotion regulation. After the examination in the West, I will turn to the theory of creativity in Chinese philosophy, by focusing on classical works in Daoism and Confucianism. In the fourth chapter, I will explore the view of creativity in philosophy of Daoism. I will claim that the creativity in Daoism is natural and cosmological, and there is no external creative source, so I will claim it is self- creativity, which is distinct from the ancient Western creativity pushed by external divine power. In the fifth chapter, I will argue that the creativity in Confucianism is evolutionary, which is unlike the revolutionary creativity in the West, and I will propose the way to become creative in Confucianism based on its classics, Analects, and then will explore the creativity principle and how the agent cultivate their creative ability in Confucianism. In the conclusion, I will summarize the difference between the creativity in East and West, from the perspective of the source of creativity, nature of creativity. I will claim that the source of creativity in ancient Greek philosophy is divine being, whereas there is no divine source for creativity in Chinese philosophy, therefore, the creativity in the West traditionally is inspired creativity, while the creativity in the East traditionally is natural and cosmological creativity. In addition, the concept of creativity in the West is revolutionary, whereas the concept of creativity in the East is evolutionary and the moral function of creativity is also addressed in Chinese philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:CALL FOR PROPOSALS TRAUMA AND HEALING 12TH EAST-WEST PHILOSOPHER’S CONFERENCE MAY 24-31, 2024 The 12th East-West Philosopher’s Conference will explore the many dimensions of trauma and healing. While trauma can be physical, it can also be psychological, social, political, economic, and cultural—encompassing the immediate effects of global pandemics, the ongoing impacts of ethnic and gender bias, the intergenerational legacies of colonization and geopolitical strife, and (...) the planetary ramifications of anthropogenic climate disruption. Ours is an era in which differences of histories, cultures, and identities are engaged as sources of insight, but also one of retrenchment—a period of relational appreciation, but also one of schism. The global scientific community’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was a stunning example of human potential for empathetic collaboration in the face of global personal and public health trauma. Yet, the economic trauma of the pandemic has resulted in crumbling international alliances, deepening trade wars, and an unfortunate collective reinvestment in zero-sum endgame framings of geopolitics against which there is no vaccination and through which the terms of healing have become delinked from the restoration of global wholeness. These traumas do not stop shaping our lives when the immediate danger comes to an end. Traumatic pain remains stored in the memories of peoples and individuals, it populates their imagination and shapes horizons of possibility. Thus a philosophical exploration of trauma and healing is not only diagnostic of current problems but also a form of genealogy. We invite participants to reflect upon the relational complexity of both trauma and healing, critically and historically engaging concrete occurrences of trauma while also drawing out theoretical insights regarding healing that strengthens and empowers and resists the forms of personal and social amnesia that make the repetition of trauma so tragically common. Of special interest are panels and papers that explore the trauma and healing at all scales from the interpersonal, to the relational traumas experienced by nations at war and cultures in conflict, thus addressing the interplay of the private and public spheres, of ethics and economics, of the human and the natural sciences, and among disciplines, classes, genders, and generations. Panel and paper proposals are encouraged that explore trauma and healing during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the trauma of refugees, displaced and colonized peoples, trauma and healing in personal relationships, climate change as a form of trauma to the planet and its people, trauma and healing related to issues of gender and sexuality, and how philosophers of all traditions, ancient and modern, cross-culturally deal with trauma and healing. KEYNOTE PRESENTERS: Jin Y. Park, Chair of Philosophy and Religion at American University, Washington DC, “Translating Violence.” Ato Quayson, Jean G. and Morris M. Doyle Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Stanford University, CA, “The Ethnography of the Private Sphere: Trauma, Domesticity, and Healing in the Work of Toni Morrison.” We invite proposals for individual papers and panels. Please submit a 250-300 word abstract to the Conference organizers via: [email protected]. Submission Timeline: November 1, 2023 Notifications of acceptance for abstracts and panel proposals received by November 1 will be sent out by December 15, 2023. We have established an early submission timeline to facilitate faculty applying to their own institutions for travel funding. Abstracts received after November 1, 2023, will be vetted as received, taking into consideration the late submission. The absolute deadline for abstract submissions is March 15, 2024. After this, we will not be able to accommodate additional proposals. Final Papers Due: April 15, 2024 CONFERENCE REGISTRATION AND LOGISTICS: Hosted in keeping with the Hawaiian Islands’ spirit of aloha, breakfast and lunch will be provided for all registered presenters, as well as an opening reception and final dinner. The Conference does not provide lodging or travel support, but economical lodgings of various kinds are readily available in Honolulu. ABOUT THE EAST-WEST PHILOSOPHER’S CONFERENCE: The East-West Philosophers’ Conference series is the premier forum for convening philosophers from across the academy who are committed to cross-cultural inquiry. The Conference is the oldest continuous international gathering in Hawai‘i and has been a model of productive collaboration between the University of Hawai‘i at... (shrink)

We compare Western and Chinese conceptions of justice, ancient and modern. We argue that most can be reduced to the principles of fairness and equality, although they are developed and expressed quite differently in the two cultures. In the modern era there has been a noticeable shift in both in favouring equality over fairness. In ancient and modern times there is greater variation regarding justice within each culture than there is between them. This overlap, and arguably in some ways convergence, (...) provides the basis for restructuring Sino-American relations along lines that could prove acceptable to leaders and peoples of both countries. We extend our argument to international order and ask how it could be made more effective and consensual. Building on our principles of justice we identify some of the pathways that would lead to a more peaceful world, one in which the weak and poor as well as the rich and powerful would feel included and rewarded. (shrink)

Near the conclusion of the so-called marriage group in the Canterbury Tales sits Chaucer's Squire's Tale, a strange, hybrid narrative of love and betrayal located in the Mongol empire. Surprisingly, however, none of the many modern readers of the tale has made a study of how the Squire's Tale's setting in the East is connected to its view of the subject that dominates Fragments IV and V of the Canterbury Tales: love, power, and the negotiation of a settlement (...) in the prolonged war between the sexes. The omission is especially perplexing when the Squire's Tale is read in combination with its companion narrative, the Franklin's Tale. Indeed, the relation of Squire to Franklin is normally seen as old money to new, aristocrat to parvenu without reference either to the question of female power or to the geographical and cultural oppositions upon which the stories also insist. When the Squire is understood as making a contribution to the conversation initiated by the Wife of Bath and carried on at least through the Franklin's Tale, it is generally on the subject of true nobility, chivalry, or gentillesse—not on the “gentle sex.” Donald Baker even goes so far as to rechristen G. L. Kittredge's marriage group a “gentillesse group” in order to include the Squire in its discussion. (shrink)

In all societies that have arrived at a certain degree of social differentiation, there are two types of culture that may be qualified respectively as “popular” and “lettered”. Popular culture is that of the people as opposed to the dominant political and intellectual classes. The latter two may be distinct (but allied), as in ancient India with the pair Brahman-kshatriva. or mixed as in Confucian China with the bureaucracy of scholars-civil servants. The duality between the two kinds of culture may (...) become less distinct with the democratization of power and education as well as with the omnipresent symbolic universe of the media. None the less, it survives, as has been proven by all sociological research on the nature of leisure time as employed by classes in industrial societies, in the “West” and in the “East”. (shrink)

We compare Western and Chinese conceptions of justice, ancient and modern. We argue that most can be reduced to the principles of fairness and equality, although they are developed and expressed quite differently in the two cultures. In the modern era there has been a noticeable shift in both in favouring equality over fairness. In ancient and modern times there is greater variation regarding justice within each culture than there is between them. This overlap, and arguably in some ways convergence, (...) provides the basis for restructuring Sino-American relations along lines that could prove acceptable to leaders and peoples of both countries. We extend our argument to international order and ask how it could be made more effective and consensual. Building on our principles of justice we identify some of the pathways that would lead to a more peaceful world, one in which the weak and poor as well as the rich and powerful would feel included and rewarded. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Surviving American Culture:On Chuck PalahniukEduardo MendietaIn an age in which American culture has become the United States' number one export, along with its weapons, low intensity conflict, carcinogenic cigarettes, its "freedom," and pornography, it is delightful and even a sign of hope that there are writers who have taken on the delicate and perilous task of offering a prognosis of what ails this culture. In the following essay I (...) argue that Chuck Palahniuk's works ought to be read as a mortician's report on American culture. Chuck Palahniuk broke into the literary world by way of the movie version of his first novel: Fight Club (1995). He has gone on to write six other novels: Survivor (1999), Invisible Monsters (2000), Choke (2001), Lullaby (2002), and Diary (2003). He also has published an interesting travel book, Fugitives and Refugees; A Walk in Portland, Oregon (2003), but since this is not properly fiction, I will not discuss it in this essay.1Clearly, Palahniuk has already produced a corpus worthy of careful consideration and analysis. Yet, as a west coast writer, far from the literary circles and brokers of the east coast, indeed far away from the clubs of self-promotion and self-monitoring that censure and hold in tight grip the monopoly of criticism that highlights "worthy literature," Palahniuk has not attracted a lot of critical attention. It is only with his most recent work Choke that he has began to be widely reviewed and commented on. In the following I provide a thematic reconstruction of each one of the six published novels, in chronological sequence. I will argue that Palahniuk is not trying to write the "great American novel," although he is profiling himself as a quintessential "American" writer in the midst of post–Cold War megalomania and celebrated Pax Americana. He has taken on a culture that has become so gargantuan, [End Page 394] fragmented, and differentiated but at the same time so rich, so self-reflexive, so historicized and also so mimicked that one novel cannot tell its story in one narrative with one dramatic thread. Many novels, many short cuts, many vignettes, are necessary: one polyphonic, asynchronous, temporally bi-directional, hyper-textual, and cyber-encyclopedic novel made up of individual novels, where each novel is the Bildungsroman of an American hero but told in reverse. These heroes, I will argue, are testimonies to the resilient power of individuals to resist even the most invasive and persistent onslaughts by culture on the physic life of freedom and individuality. I will also argue that he is neither a commercial nor academic writer; that is, he is not the kind of writer who writes either in order to maintain a living or secure tenure. He is a writer with a mission, a vision, and a very distinctive style. The stories that Palahniuk tells are stories that begin at the end, and end at the beginning: they are turned around Bildungsromans. They are, in other words, about unmaking, uncoupling, and disentangling our selves from the normal self into which we have been socialized. These stories are, thus, about the discovery of moral resources that lay dormant in the very simplicity of human solidarity and trust in our will to survive morally untainted, or at least redeemable. I will conclude by arguing that Palahniuk's novels are about surviving American Culture, and about how deviance is the health of the individual in a sick society.One could characterize Fight Club as the intelligent man's response to Robert Bly's Iron John (1990),2 or the fictionalized version of the Michael Kimmel's Manhood in America: A Cultural History (1996).3 Alternatively, one could argue that Fight Club is the fin-de-sieclé response to Barbara Ehrenreich's prognosis in her The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (1983) of 1970s and 1980s narcissistic and hedonistic masculinity.4 Chuck Palahniuk's first novel is a biting and poignant look at men in American culture after the end of affluence and the simultaneous "feminization" of masculinity. It is at the same time about the struggle for a viable sense of masculinity in an age in... (shrink)

The paper discusses a few tensions “crucifying” the works and even personality of the great Georgian philosopher Merab Mamardashvili: East and West; human being and thought, symbol and consciousness, infinity and finiteness, similarity and differences. The observer can be involved as the correlative counterpart of the totality: An observer opposed to the totality externalizes an internal part outside. Thus the phenomena of an observer and the totality turn out to converge to each other or to be one and (...) the same. In other words, the phenomenon of an observer includes the singularity of the solipsistic Self, which (or “who”) is the same as that of the totality. Furthermore, observation can be thought as that primary and initial action underlain by the phenomenon of an observer. That action of observation consists in the externalization of the solipsistic Self outside as some external reality. It is both a zero action and the singularity of the phenomenon of action. The main conclusions are: Mamardashvili’s philosophy can be thought both as the suffering effort to be a human being again and again as well as the philosophical reflection on the genesis of thought from itself by the same effort. Thus it can be recognized as a powerful tension between signs and symbol, between conscious structures and consciousness, between the syncretism of the East and the discursiveness of the West crucifying spiritually Georgia. (shrink)

Il y a trois défis pour la sécurité de l’Ouest. Le premier est que l’Ouest, comparé à l’Asie de l’Est, est en déclin. Dans vingt-cinq ans, la taille économique de la Chine continentale pourrait être supérieure à la taille du marché américain ; celle de l’Inde et de l’Indonesie être supérieure à la taille économique de l’Allemagne ; celle de la Corée du Sud excéder l’Angleterre ou la France ou l’Italie. Le second est la prolifération d’un savoir à doubleemploi et (...) le désastre économique de l’ex-Union Soviétique qui auront pour conséquence vraisemblable une prolifération du nucléaire. Le troisième concerne les changements de valeurs qui s’opèrent à l’Ouest et qui favorisent la formation de sociétés occidentales de moins en moins aptes à attaquer ou à se défendre. Mais la réduction du poids de l’Occident dans l’économie globale ne garantit plus que les efforts faciles l’emportent face aux défis du futur, qu’ils viennent des pouvoirs renforcés de l’Est asiatique ou des “desperados” islamiques. Ces défis ne seront vraisemblablement pas relevés au moyen de deux fausses prescriptions qui trouvent quelques faveurs en Europe Continentale. Premièrement, une grande partie de l’Europe de l’Ouest est lasse d’être confrontée à la “destruction créatrice” de ses emplois du fait de la concurrence de l’Asie de l’Est et désire ardemment le protectionnisme. Le remède protectionniste se bâtit sur un diagnostic grandement correct des problèmes occidentaux, mais il est tout de même dangereux si l’on met en perspective la morale, l’économie et la politique du pouvoir. Deuxièmement, certains Européens reconnaissent à juste titre que les grandes puissances historiques, comme la Grande- Bretagne ou la France ou l’Allemagne, n’ont plus une envergure suffisante pour être qualifiées de grandes puissances. Cependant, elles sousestiment la gravité et la vitesse du déclin de l’Occident. Une Europe définie par le noyau dur francoallemand deviendra trop étroite, avant même qu’elle ne soit établie dans cette structure. Vraisemblablement, même l’Union Européenne dans sa totalité sera trop petite avant qu’elle ne devienne une véritable communauté sur le plan sécuritaire. Au lieu de ces fausses prescriptions, cet article propose trois réponses aux dilemmes de l’Occident, ou encore trois façons de gérer le déclin de l’Occident. Premièrement, seule la coopération atlantique promet d’être une réponse efficace au dynamisme de l’Asie de l’Est et au déclin de l’Ouest. De plus, la coopération entre l’Amérique du Nord et l’Europe de l’Ouest a besoin d’être complétée par un nouvel engagement à l’égard d’une économie globale ouverte et d’une disposition à s’ajuster aux défis de celle-ci, afin de coopter l’Est asiatique dans une sphère globale de coprospérité. Cela doit vraisemblablement engendrer quelques coupes radicales dans l’Etat-providence. Deuxièmement, la prolifération nucléaire exige aussi une réponse. Il est concevable que la stratégie de défense contre la Chine soit encore plus difficile dans une vingtaine d’années qu’elle le fut contre l’Union Soviétique dans les années 1980. Mais cela ne devrait pas être une excuse pour ne pas construire des missiles de défense en réponse à ceux de l’Iran, de l’Irak, de la Lybie ou de l’Algerie. Troisièmement, les changements des valeurs en Occident semblent plus difficiles à traiter, mais ils renforcent la nécessité d’investir dans la coopération occidentale plutôt qu’uniquement européenne, la nécessité de coopter l’Asie de l’Est plutôt que de plonger dans une autre guerre froide, et la nécessité de contenir l’Etat-providence plutôt que de le développer. There are three challenges to Western security. First, compared to East Asia the West is in decline. In another twenty-five years, the economic size of Mainland China may exceed the size of the American market, India and Indonesia may exceed Germany, South Korea may exceed Britain or France or Italy. Second, the proliferation of dual use knowledge and the economic disaster in the former Soviet Union are likely to result in some nuclear proliferation. Third, value changes within the West will make Western societies ever less capable of deterrence and defense. But the reduced weight of the West in the global economy no longer guarantees that leisurely efforts succeed in meeting future challengers, whether from East Asian great powers or Islamic desperados. These challenges are unlikely to be met by two false prescriptions which enjoy some appeal in Continental Europe. First, much of Western Europe gets tired of observing the “creative destruction” of its jobs by East Asian competitors and longs for protectionism. The protectionist cure is built on a largely correct diagnosis of some Western problems, but nevertheless dangerous from an economic, moral, and power politics perspective. Second, some Europeans rightly recognize that historical great powers, like Britain or France or Germany, are no longer large enough to be great powers. But they underestimate the severity and speed of the decline of the West. A Franco- German core Europe will become too small, even before it is established. Conceivably, even the entire European Union will be too small before it becomes an effective security community. Instead of these false prescriptions this paper advocates three responses to Western dilemmas, or three modes of managing Western decline. First, only Atlantic cooperation promises to be an effective response to East Asian dynamism and Western decline. Moreover, cooperation between North America and Western Europe needs to be complemented with a renewed commitment to an open global economy and a readiness to adjust to its challenges, in order to coopt East Asia into a global co-prosperity sphere. This is likely to necessitate some radical cuts in the welfare state. Second, nuclear proliferation also needs some response. Conceivably, strategic defense is as difficult against China twenty years from now, as it was against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. But this should be no excuse for not building a missile and air defense against the likes of Iran, Iraq, Lybia, or Algeria. Third, the value changes within the West seem least tractable, but they reinforce the necessity of investing in Western rather than merely European cooperation, the necessity of coopting East Asia rather than stumbling into another Cold War, and the necessity for containing the welfare state rather than expanding it. (shrink)

This article considers how global ethical matters might be approached differently in the English-speaking literature if values salient in sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia were taken seriously. Specifically, after pointing out how indigenous values in both of these major parts of the world tend to prescribe honouring harmonious relationships, the article brings out what such an approach to morality entails for political power, foreign relations and criminal justice. For each major issue, it suggests that harmony likely has implications (...) that differ from approaches that currently dominate Western thought, namely those of utility, autonomy and capability. Lacking the space to systematically defend harmony as a fundamental value, it nonetheless urges theorists not to neglect it in future work. (shrink)

이 연구는 최근 일련의 ‘동아시아담론’과 맞물려 새로운 국제공공성 모델을 근대화의 반대편에 존재하는 문명적 가치와 그 의미를 중시하는 ‘탈근대적 중세화’의 재발견에서 모색하려는 논의들과 맥을 같이한다. 동아시아는 에드워드 사이드가 공론화한 ‘오리엔탈리즘’이라는 제국주의적 원죄를 갖고 태어난 심상지리이다. 따라서 서구의 식민주의적 동양 형상이 근현대 왜곡된 ‘동아시아상’을 초래했다면 ‘긍정적 타자 형상’을 포용하는 비교문화학적 역사모형을 안출해야 한다. 여기서는 서구의 ‘근대 오리엔탈리즘’이 표면화되기 이전 동서양의 사상적ㆍ문화적 대화의 기점인 대항해시대 유럽선교사들의 ‘유교 형상’에 주목했다. 논점은 중세에서 근대로의 이행기 가톨릭선교사 동아시아학, 곧 ‘천학’의 성립과 분화 과정을 재현함으로써 당시 유럽인의 눈에 (...) 비친 동아시아의 문명적 특질들을 적출하는 데 맞춰졌다. 아울러 그에 따른 분석방법은 비교문화 형상학 범주의 ‘4분적 층위’의 문명외부 모델을 취했다. 중국의 전례문제를 둘러싸고 촉발된 유럽 가톨릭 선교회의 문화적응주의와 문화배타주의(신학보수주의)의 갈등은 본질적으로 그리스도교적 ‘복음’과 ‘문화’ 간 딜레마에서 유출된 ‘양가적 유교 형상’에 기인한다. 무엇보다도 그로부터 돌출된 유럽신권과 중화천권의 충돌 등 다양한 간-문명적 문화현상들은 오늘날 동아시아의 문명 정체성과 그 학적 체계 구성에 귀중한 지적 영감을 제공해준다. (shrink)

The affirmation that “there is no philosophy other than Western philosophy” is not in Heideggerian terms praise for the West. One of the ways Heidegger deals with the current hegemony of technology is the search for its historical-ontological origin, tracing the contemporary phenomenon back to its Greek roots. As there are no meta-narratives linking, for example, the China of Laozi to the technological power that China is today, one imagines that global developmentalism really has its epicenter in the (...) West. Be that as it may, East and West need to think about the paths that mysteriously define their common technological destiny. It is against this backdrop that some of Heidegger's references to the Dao will be revisited here. (shrink)

Magazines, leaflets, weblogs, and a variety of other media incessantly spread messages advising us on how to achieve or maintain our health or well-being. In such messages, the iconic representation of the face is predominant, and reveals an interesting phenomenon: the “face of health” seems to be unattainable as such, and is generally represented in a differential way, that is to say, by making reference to its opposite – the “face of illness”, or at least of malaise. In fact, the (...) face is crucial in the medical domain: since ancient times, face observation has played an essential role in diagnostic practices, both in Western medicine (which resorts to the concept of facies, intended as the distinctive facial expression or appearance associated with a specific medical condition, for the description of pathological states) and Eastern preventive and healing techniques (within which the so-called Mian Xiang, or ‘face reading’, is fundamental, and connects the medical sphere with other aspects such as personality, talents, and dispositions). Drawing on the semiotic analysis of relevant case studies extending from classical iconography to present-day digital mediascapes, this paper investigates the representation of the face of health (and illness) across time and space, specifically focusing on the analogies and differences between the Western and the Eastern semiosphere. To this purpose, it relies on both literature concerning the representation and understanding of the face and studies on medical sign systems and discourses. (shrink)

This speech analyzes the constitutive relationship between liberty and domination. In it freedom is intended as opposition to power through the concept of liberation. But many forms of power, in spite of fighting liberty, try to present themselves as liberators or as a guarantor of liberty itself. In this way the concept of freedom becomes first with Christianity and then with modernity an instrument for a sophisticated technology of power that has the opposite function. This individualistic notion (...) of liberty is criticized also from an epistemological point of view (complexity theory, chaos theory), and from a multicultural point of view by a brief comparison with holistic Sino-Japanese concept of spontaneity. Complexity theory shows that the subject is always connected to a system in his decision making process. Chaos theory shows that what seems spontaneous is an unpredictable interaction of causes. Finally Sino-Japanese culture has not a traditional concept of freedom, because it focuses the spontaneity of Dao or nature that is conceived as whole necessary for the comprehension of the individuals’ life. The aim of this text is to give just some hints for a “mise en question” of the concept of liberty related to recent problems such as globalization, environmental problems and crisis of modern political systems. (shrink)

The election of the Russo-Ukrainian Christian path belongs to one of the most enviable events in Ukrainian history, which directly or indirectly programmed its further progress. Kievan Rus on the eve of the official introduction of Christianity was a powerful and respectable European state. The free country had a rich choice of priorities of geopolitical, economic, cultural orientation, the election of which was greatly influenced by the peculiarities of Ukrainian development. How exactly was this choice - it is necessary to (...) investigate further, but what he brought to Ukraine - is now obvious. Today, when the Ukrainian state, with great losses and tensions, returns to its natural, European path, it is extremely important to analyze what contributed to the deviation from it. To do this, let us return to the first centuries of Ukrainian Christianity - the period of establishing long-term self-identification archetypes of Ukrainians and establishing their views on neighbors. (shrink)

In this cross-cultural exploration of the comparative experiences of Asian and Western women in higher education management, leading feminist theorist Carmen Luke constructs a provocative framework that situates her own standpoint and experiences alongside those of Asian women she studied over a three-year period. She conveys some of the complexity of global sweeps and trends in education and feminist discourse as they intersect with local cultural variations but also dovetail into patterns of regional similarities. Western feminist research has established that (...) relatively few women hold senior positions in universities and colleges. Using the now common metaphor of the "glass ceiling," this research has developed a range of social, cultural, and institutional explanations for women's underrepresentation in academic life. International studies show that women in non-Western countries are also underrepresented in higher education. Yet do Western explanations and strategies for change hold for academic women working in non-Western universities? The very diversity among women's experiences calls into question many of the analytic tools, terms, claims, and solutions formulated by Western feminism. This is the first study to show how cultural differences figure into the institutional dynamics of "glass ceilings." It raises important theoretical and practical, strategic, and tactical questions about issues of cultural difference and institutional power. (shrink)

lts early roots reaching as far as 1954, the great Buropean Post War Conference, which lasted three years from 1972 to 1975, had to overcome the vicissitudes of the Cold War and the setbacks of thediplomatie normalization between Bast and West afterwards, before taking its final shape. Hence the multiple changes of its characteristics and purposes over the years.Resulting from a global rapprochement between the Super Powers and a cautious modus vivendi between the German twin States in Burope, the (...) CSCB, although an old Russian dream, was finally seen by the other parties as a calculated risk and possibly a beneficial one.In the end, Western scepticism and criticism of the Helsinki Final Act were less founded on the actual outcome then on traditional reluctance towards the Bast and more vocal because of a darkening international outlook : the deepening economie crisis, the political disarray in Southern Burope and a disheartened public opinion.A more sober view might nevertheless appreciate not only the balance of modest mutual gains for all participants, but moreover the outline and hope for a «rebirth of Europe's historical identity» as well as the first diplomatic acceptance of the BBC-entity and last, but not least, the «inevitability of reason», as expressed in the policy of détente and the general «vested interest» in it. (shrink)

Character and Culture by Irving Babbitt is the latest volume in the Library of Conservative Thought. Babbitt was the leader of the twentieth-century intellectual and cultural movement called American Humanism or the New Humanism. More than half a century after his death his intellectual staying power remains undiminished. The qualities that marked Irving Babbitt as a thinker and cultural critic of the first rank are richly represented in "Character and Culture. "First published togetherin 1940 (under the misleading title "Spanish (...) Character), "these essays span his scholarly career and cover a wide range of subjects. The diverse topics discussed here--aesthetics, ethics, religion, politics, literature--are illuminated by the same unifying vision of human existence that informs and structures all of Babbitt's writing. Babbitt never took up a subject out of idle curiosity. All of his books and articles grew out of a desire to address certain fundamental questions of life and letters. The essaysin this volume are as worthy of attention now as when they were originally written. Set in then- philosophical and historical context by Claes G. Ryn's new introduction, they are a good place to start for persons who wish to acquaint themselves not only with Babbitt's central ideas but with the scope of his mind and interests. Readers familiar with other books by Babbitt may recognize particular ideas and formulations but will also find much new material to ponder. Ryn's introduction provides a comprehensive look at Irving Babbitt's life, career, writings, and influence. He shows how Babbitt has survived and sustained often harsh criticism from representatives of dominant trends. Ryn describes his writing style as having "a kind of rugged American elegance." The substantial critical introduction also elucidates Babbitt's central ideas in relation to the volume. "Character and Culture "will be of interest to scholars of literature, philosophers, historians, theologians, and political theorists. The extensive index to all of Babbitt's books, including this one, increases the value of the volume. (shrink)

There are essential differences between the Eastern and Western models of education. The Eastern model of education aims at the perfecting of an individual to reach his moral purity. Therefore it applies teaching and teacher-student relations on the individual scale, and primarily prefers didactics. The Western model of education considers an individual as a product of the social environment. Therefore it aims at the perfection of the environment itself, of the society, and so it concentrates its attention on socio-economic reforms (...) and considers education as a component of society. It is impossible to find pure Eastern or pure Western models of education. Secular education was formed in the new period. Besides the social structure and peculiarities of relationships with society, educational systems are primarily differentiated on the basis of their purposes. The relationship between the Eastern and Western educational systems is not one that obtains between religious and secular schools. Educational systems depend on the characters of relations between science and practice, science and philosophy, science and religion. Therefore the development of education is closely connected with the nature of the development of science. (shrink)

By critically analyzing the status and differentiation of bodies and their lives, the author expands the vision of governmentality beyond the West in order to define the body beyond the pacified techno-promises of their emancipation through fragmentation, calculability and programmability. By elaborating the nature, power, and promises of dominant digital technologies and technobodies, the author conceptualizes them in relation to the shift between bio- and necropolitics/power and in relation to violence, (digital) coloniality, and racialization to which bodies (...) are exposed. It is about the normality of violence against the Other, also in relation to the principle of separation of virtual bodies and “surplus flesh,” which increases exponentially with technological development. The author seeks to understand how we have come to the point where techno-objects are humanized, given agency, while the body and life of the Other are dehumanized, deprived of any rights. The article contextualizes and re-politicizes the shifting relations between subject and object, particularly within our forensic contemporaneity. (shrink)

This article discusses the ideological character of the notion of functional differentiation. According to Luhmann, the development of worldwide social differentiation leads to different regional developments and generates, through the inclusion/exclusion code, a division of the world between places where the functional differentiation operates appropriately and inappropriately. This paper argues, however, that functional differentiation is only readable as an ensemble of relations of power and ideological discourses. This subject is developed in light of theoretical approaches from the Marxist tradition (...) and from postcolonial studies. Regarding the first, the functional differentiation is reread as an abstract and generic equality, which permits the material reproduction of regional inequality. This idea provides a background for discussing the ideological features of the functional differentiation which serves the dominant position of Western countries in the international arena since it enables the maintenance of a ruling ideology, according to which the world is differentiated between the ‘civilized’ West and the ‘uncivilized’ non-West. (shrink)

Alexander the Great’s conquests ushered in the Hellenistic era throughout the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East. In this period, the Seleucids, one of most successful of the Successor dynasties, ruled over most of the Middle East at the height of their power. Yet two rising powers in the ancient world, Rome and Parthia, played a crucial role in the decline and eventual fall of the Seleucids. In a prior article, I argued that geopolitical developments around the Eastern (...) Mediterranean in the middle third century BCE were indirectly responsible for the emergence of the Parthian state in Iran. Disastrous military conflicts at home and abroad in the west caused a sudden decline of Seleucid power in the 240s–230s, triggering what political scientists call a power-transition crisis. This article utilizes similar approaches to historical analysis and International Relations theory to contend that, after a period of recovery, a further sudden decline of Seleucid power in the 160s–130s triggered another power-transition crisis that brought an end to Seleucid hegemony over the Middle East permanently. The crisis facilitated the rapid transformation of the Parthian state from a minor kingdom to a major empire, drastically changing the international environment of the ancient world. (shrink)

For the West … China as a land in the Far East becomes traditionally the image of the ultimate Other. What Foucault does in his writing is, of course, not so much to endorse this image as to show, in the light of the Other, how knowledge is always conditioned in a certain system, and how difficult it is to get out of the confinement of the historical a priori, the epistemes or the fundamental codes of Western culture. (...) And yet he takes the Borges passage seriously and remarks on its apparent incongruity with what is usually conceived about China in the Western tradition. If we are to find any modification of the traditional image of China in Foucault’s thought, it is then the association of China not with an ordered space but with a space without any conceivable arrangement or coherence, a space that makes any logical ordering utterly unthinkable. Significantly, Foucault does not give so much as a hint to suggest that the hilarious passage from that “Chinese encyclopaedia” may have been made up to represent a Western fantasy of the Other, and that the illogical way of sorting out animals in that passage an be as alien to the Chinese mind as it is to the Western mind.In fact, the monstrous unreason and its alarming subversion of Western thinking, the unfamiliar and alien space of China as the image of the Other threatening to break up ordered surfaces and logical categories, all turn out to be, in the most literal sense, a Western fiction. Nevertheless, that fiction serves a purpose in Foucault’s thought, namely, the necessity of setting up a framework for his archaeology of knowledge, enabling him to differentiate the self from what is alien and pertaining to the Other and to map out the contours of Western culture recognizable as a self-contained system. Indeed, what can be a better sign of the Other than a fictionalized space of China? What can furnish the West with a better reservoir for its dreams, fantasies, and utopias? Zhang Longxi, author of A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century Theories of Literature , is currently writing a dissertation in comparative literature at Harvard University. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry is “The Tao and the Logos: Notes on Derrida’s Critique of Logocentrism”. (shrink)

The East/West divide seems to be as old as history itself, the roots of Orientalism and anti-Semitism lying far beyond the origins of modern Western imperialism. The very project of Western classical republicanism had its darker side: to purloin the legacy of the Greeks, distancing them from Eastern systems deemed 'despotic' and 'other'. Western Republicanism and the Oriental Prince is a thoroughly revisionist book, challenging not only the comfortable view the West has of its own political evolution, (...) but the negative stereotypes of non-Western systems. Not only did these images serve to legitimate early modern European nation states struggling for an identity, but they also served to justify slavery and other forms of domination over subject peoples. Drawing upon archaeological and epigraphic evidence, Springborg discusses the Mesopotamian and ancient Egyptian contribution of political forms and cultic institutions to classical Graeco-Roman civilization, an Eastern legacy to the West long obscured for political reasons. A different reading of the foundation myths of Athens and Rome, certain texts of Plato, Aristotle, and the writings of Herodotus, Isocrates, Plutarch and Diodorus Siculus, permits us to restore possible lines of filtration. Renaissance thought, long believed to have ushered in the Western classical republican tradition, demonstrates a curious ambivalence towards powerful Eastern system, objects of fascination as much as fear. We do not yet find sedimented the divide between Western Democracy and oriental despotism, in which post-Reformation thought as been set in stone. This major new study will be of interest to students of political history, political theory, comparative politics and political archaeology. (shrink)

Every soul has an unconscious knowledge of the ultimate truth of things, a premise long taught by all great spiritual teachers, East and West, regularly experienced by those who follow the spiritual path. In the quest to help reestablish that universal connection, editor J. Douglas Kenyon has culled from the pages of Atlantis rising magazine this compilation of concise and well-illustrated articles by world-class researchers and theoreticians."--Back cover.

In what must be ranked as a foremost classic of twentieth-century political philosophy, George Santayana, in the preface to his last major work prior to his death, makes plain the limits as well as the aims of Dominations and Powers: "All that it professes to contain is glimpses of tragedy and comedy played unawares by governments; and a continual intuitive reduction of political maxims and institutions to the intimate spiritual fruits that they are capable of bearing." Completed at midpoint in (...) the century, but serving as his final masterpiece, Santayana's volume offers an ominous account of the weakness of the West, and its similarities in substance if not always in form with totalitarian systems of the East. Few analyses of concepts, such as government by the people; the price of peace and the suppression of warfare; the nature of elites and limits of egalitarianism; and the nature of authority in free societies, are more comprehensive or compelling. This is a carefully rendered statement on tasks of leadership for free societies that takes on added meaning after the fall of communism. (shrink)

As Paulo Freire’s education theory for social change and emancipation is being continually studied and disseminated in East Asia, it has faced skepticism as some educators are unfamiliar with its critical pedagogy or education for freedom concepts. In light of this, scholars have attempted to compare Freirean philosophies with concepts in Chinese philosophy of education as a way of bridging East and West. Diverging from previous studies that use popular Chinese philosophies (such as Confucianism) to connect with (...) Freirean theory, this paper introduces an understudied but compatible Chinese philosophical thought, Mohism, for comparison with Freirean theory. Mohism is a political philosophy for the working class that expanded into grassroots movements for people’s welfare in ancient China. The Mohist bottom-up approach echoes the grassroots emancipatory pedagogy that underlies Freirean philosophy. A comparative analysis of education concepts in both philosophies reveals that despite differences in the educational content of Freirean theory and Mohism, there are similarities in their conceptualization of education for anti-oppression and praxis for social change. Implications for utilizing Mohist philosophy to contemplate Freirean philosophy within the East Asian educational context are also explored. Ultimately this paper revives educational concepts of Mohism that aligns with Freirean philosophy to a broader audience of scholars and educators. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Healing Powers and Modernity: Traditional Medicine, Shamanism, and Science in Asian SocietiesE. N. AndersonHealing Powers and Modernity: Traditional Medicine, Shamanism, and Science in Asian Societies. Edited by Linda H. Connor and Geoffrey Samuel. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 2001. Pp. xiii + 283. Hardcover.Healing Powers and Modernity: Traditional Medicine, Shamanism, and Science in Asian Societies, edited by Linda H. Connor and Geoffrey Samuel, consists of an Introduction, by (...) the first editor, and eleven case studies. The latter are short ethnographic studies of particular communities or healers in East and South Asian countries. All of these are well-written, detailed accounts of particular healing contexts and behaviors. Several are by first-rate veteran ethnographers, such as Laurel Kendall (writing-as usual-on Korean shamans), Mark Nichter (India), Carol Laderman (Malaya), and Geoffrey Samuel (Tibet). Others are by younger scholars, such as Amanda Harris (the Iban of Sarawak), who are carrying on the great tradition. Other essays by Kalpana Ram (India), Marina Roseman (the Temiar of Malaya), Cynthia Hunter (Indonesia), Sydney White (the Naxi of China), Craig Janes (Tibet), and Vincanne Adams (Tibet) complete the picture. All are fine ethnographic sketches.The unifying theme is a classic anthropological one: traditional, small-scale, indigenous traditions meet international forces of change. Inevitably, the former must accommodate to the overwhelmingly greater wealth and power of the agents of the latter. In the medical arena, nations often push international biomedicine to the exclusion of other modes. In the nations under study here, things are a bit more complex; all have their own elite medical traditions, some much changed by contact with biomedicine (as in the case of China's "Traditional Chinese Medicine," with capital letters; it is a new invention, in spite of the name). So local indigenous healers have to accommodate not only to some much-altered form of biomedicine; they usually have to accommodate also to some much-altered form of their country's elite medicine. They improvise, often with striking success. The spirits of the forest are joined by the spirit of canned sardines (see Roseman's chapter), but spiritual healing practice continues.Naturally, this is confusing, and here the book begins to break down a bit. "Modernity" as a concept is taken over from the writings of Foucault, de Certeau, Homi Bhabha, and the like, which are by no means consistent or clear on its meaning. And the authors of this book are far too sophisticated to think of "modernity" as any one thing or as anything at all simple. They are, perforce, left to say that modernity-especially as written up at enormous length and vagueness in the works of the authorities cited-is too complex to address here. (Someone more irreverent might even suggest that "modernity," if indeed it cannot be tightly defined, is not a concept worthy of much attention.) This leaves the book rather undertheorized.Moreover, the authors follow the aforementioned authorities in leaving out bio-scientific considerations, even from descriptions of local modernizing discourses. One wishes for some biomedical diagnoses of cases, for example, for background data on disease incidence, infant and maternal mortality, nutrition, and other basic health concerns. [End Page 702]A reviewer usually should not complain about what is not treated in a book, but in some cases here, stories really need rounding out. Laurel Kendall speaks of Korean folkloristic interest in shamans, but does not mention the fascinating and hotly debated ideas about shamanism as the fount of Korean morality and fine art. Geoffrey Samuel puts discussion of China's brutal crushing of Tibetans and their culture "beyond the scope of this chapter" (p. 215), which deprives the reader of serious consideration of the most obtrusive force shaping Tibetan medical practice today.Such quibbles are minor. These compelling studies of local healers caught in global currents can stand on their own. [End Page 703]E. N. AndersonUniversity of California, RiversideCopyright © 2006 University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

Proponents of a monetary interpretation of Marx’s theory of value (monetäre Werttheorie) argue that one cannot estimate the amounts of socially necessary labour time that lie behind the prices, an interpretation usually ascribed to the West German Neue Marx‑Lektüre. As Hans-Georg Backhaus began fleshing out his monetary interpretation in the early 1970s, he referred explicitly to debate among economists in early‑1960s East Germany about the possibility of estimating quantities of labour value in terms of commodities’ labour content. In (...) fact, scholars who articulated a powerful position in the latter discussion closely approximated the Neue Marx-Lektüre’s ‘monetary interpretation’. They held that expressing labour value in terms of labour time is impossible: the substance of value is not a measurable quantity of labour time but, rather, a social relation. Hence, it is problematic that Neue Marx-Lektüre adherents today should maintain an inaccurate contrast between their reading of Capital and that of ‘traditional Marxism’. (shrink)

Michel Foucault has inspired a rich body of work in the field of critical social theory and the social sciences in general. Few scholars working in the area of social movement studies, however, have applied a Foucauldian perspective to examining the twin phenomena of social mobilization and collective action. This may stem, in large part, from the commonly held assumption that Foucault had far more to say about ‘regimes of power’ than ever about mobilization and collective action or contention (...) politics in general. Be that as it may, a close interrogation of his work reveals the broad contours of a theoretical framework for analyzing social movements whose chief merit lies in a sensitivity to the sociopolitical context within which oppositional movements form, develop and conduct their operations. This paper aims at delineating what a Foucauldian model of social movements would entail, with specific reference to the Middle East and North Africa, a region traditionally consigned to the margins of social movement studies. An enquiry of this kind is important because, as I argue, the leading mainstream social movement theories that have been applied to contemporary MENA cases invariably fall short of fully elucidating the phenomenon of mass mobilization. Specifically, leading mainstream theories are prone to certain universalistic assumptions and ‘West-centric’ orientations that render them incapable of accounting for the specificities of MENA cases. I shall demonstrate how a Foucauldian perspective on social movements can bypass the problem of applicability to the MENA region by mapping out a theoretical framework whose chief merit lies in a sensitivity to the sociopolitical context within which oppositional movements form, develop and conduct their operations. At the same time, I argue that a Foucauldian model transcends social movement theories with their linear conception of social and political progress, their exclusivist understanding of sociopolitical ‘development’ and ‘modernist’ assumptions by advancing an account of ‘multiple modernities.’. (shrink)