This paper explores the philosophy of tertiary civic education in Hong Kong. It does not only investigate the role of tertiary education that can play in civic education, but also explores the way to achieve the aim of integrating liberal democratic citizenship and collective national identity in the context of persistent conflicts between two different identity politics in Hong Kong: politics of assimilation and politics of difference. As Hong Kong is part of China and is inevitably getting closer cooperation with (...) the mainland in the future, I argue that Hong Kong citizenship should affirm its own distinctiveness while also identifying with Chinese nationality. Thus, tertiary civic education should foster a trans-cultural political vision so that the two different horizons can be synthesized and the political framework and identity can be transformed in order to reduce conflicts between the two peoples. (shrink)

UTILIZING MICHEL FOUCAULT'S CONCEPTION OF "PLAGUE" AS A DESCRIPtion of states of exception, this essay analyzes America's plans to genetically screen illegal immigrants. It argues that liberal democratic theory presupposes the exceptionalism of the nation-state and hence justifies sacrifices to appease the tragic order of things. The use of genetic technology in current American immigration policy instantiates these "necessary" sacrifices, extending agency and visibility in a never-ending struggle to foreclose every manner of contingency. In contrast, I offer a "doxological" view (...) of space that, eschewing this tragic economy, re-imagines the world by resisting foreclosure and "laboring" to remain open. After theorizing the genetic screening of illegal immigrants through Foucault's "plague" and Hans Jonas' work on sacrifice, I articulate the globalized nation-state as the exception for violence and conclude with political theology's more capacious view of space and cultural identity. (shrink)

Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic is triggering a public health emergency and crisis on a large scale, with far-reaching effects and severe damage to all aspects of politics, economy, cultural and social life, and health. Consecutive outbreaks over the past nearly 2 years of “living with COVID-19” have forced most schools to physically close, resulting in the largest educational disruption in human history. In turbulent times of the COVID-19 crisis, school leaders are facing numerous major challenges germane to school governance (...) and leadership. The key objective of the study is to fully explore the prospective challenges principals are encountering in public schools in times of COVID-19. To fulfill the research purpose, a systematic literature review was carried out to investigate the leadership challenges. As a result, a total of 24 challenges were explored through SLR approach. Frequency analysis approach was initially applied to figure out the most significant challenges. Accordingly, seven challenges were found statistically significant as showing frequency ≥ 50 each. Irrevocably, the study works as a contribution to K-12 school leadership by providing guidance for current and future leaders in crisis based on practical investigation, experiences, and recommendations. Policy makers can leverage these findings to make necessary adjustments to school policy to better prepare school leaders for crisis. Additionally, the findings of the current study are believed to have profound implications for future research. These findings expand our current understanding on school leadership in time of crisis that needs further investigation. Subsequent studies can quantitatively and/or qualitatively validate these leadership challenges findings regarding a particular school context. (shrink)

The paper discusses the preliminary results of a pilot exploratory study concerning on-record politeness strategies used by academics to soften criticism of scientific performance of other scholars and deal with judgmental opinions in relation to their own research findings. The study uses the apparatus offered by the politeness theory to get insight into the trans-cultural writer-reader communication in written academic discourse, namely, in reply to/response to articles. Methodologically, the study draws from the classic framework of linguistic politeness with (...) reformulations in order to identify ways of showing polite agreement in academic writing. The paper focuses on the general selection of and preference towards particular on-record politeness strategies used for conflict management and face redress in replies to. (shrink)

The sociobiology debate, in the final quarter of the twentieth century, featured many of the same issues disputed in the culture war in the humanities during this same time period. This is evident from a study of the writings of Edward O. Wilson, the best known of the sociobiologists, and from an examination of both the minutes of the meetings of the Sociobiology Study Group (SSG) and the writings of Stephen Jay Gould, the SSG's most prominent member. Many critics of (...) sociobiology, frequently radical scientists who were attached to the lineage of the New Left, argued for the same multicultural values promoted by radical humanities professors in this period. Conversely, liberal sociobiologists defended the universalist values of the liberals in the humanities. Those scholars whose work was important before the cultural revolution in the 1960s were usually committed to a liberal universalism that emphasized the similarity between people. Younger scholars, who took faculty positions in the 1970s and after, were more likely to owe an allegiance to an ethnos-centered social vision that valued identity politics. The struggle between these two agendas, more intellectual than generational, was at the core of the culture wars both in the humanities and in the sciences. The sociobiology debate should be viewed in this light. (shrink)

India’s global proximities derive in good measure from its struggle against British imperialism. In its efforts to become a nation, India turned modern in its own unusual way. At the heart of this metamorphosis was a "colourful cosmopolitanism," the unique manner in which India made the world its neighbourhood. The most creative thinkers and leaders of that period reimagined diverse horizons. They collaborated not only in widespread anti-colonial struggles but also in articulating the vision of alter-globalization, universalism, and cosmopolitanism. (...) This book, in revealing this dimension, offers new and original interpretations of figures such as Kant, Tagore, Heidegger, Gandhi, Aurobindo, Gebser, Kosambi, Narayan, Ezekiel, and Spivak. It also analyses cultural and aesthetic phenomena, from the rasa theory to Bollywood cinema, explaining how Indian ideas, texts, and cultural expressions interacted with a wider world and contributed to the making of modern India. (shrink)

Recently the CJEU decision in the case of ‘Ewa Glawischnig-Piesczek v. Facebook Ireland Limited’ has raised the issue of the transcultural/trans-territorial signification of hate speech and hate crimes. Taking a cue from this decision and the related semiotic/legal implications, the paper proposes an analysis of the semio/pragmatic conditions for the production of performativity inherent in hate speech across different cultural universes of discourse. Given that web-based digital communication is global—at least, potentially—regardless of any spatial/political compartmentalization, it crosses (...) different semio-cultural circuits. This trans-spatiality implies transcultural crossings that can multiply and even transfigure the semantic implications of the original signifier and the related prognoses of ‘semantic effectiveness.’ Cultural boundaries therefore may function as a kind of ‘horizon of events’ for hate speech and, more inclusively, all linguistic acts and their legal signification/classification. The question then arises regarding whether and to what extent the performativity of hate speech is able to withstand the variation of cultural boundary conditions. Insofar as cultures are universes of experience, the issue to be investigated broadens, and ends up invoking the question of whether or not the production of performativity implicitly presupposes and tacitly epitomizes the semio-pragmatic implications/consequences (or, in Peircean terms, ‘bearings’) coextensive with cultural universes of experience. Were this the case, it would seem to call into question the very possibility of ‘making things only with words,’ or more explicitly, the alleged meaning of ‘linguistic acts.’. (shrink)

The Confucian doctrine of _tianxia_ outlines a unitary worldview that cherishes global justice and transcends social, geographic, and political divides. For contemporary scholars, it has held myriad meanings, from the articulation of a cultural imaginary and political strategy to a moralistic commitment and a cosmological vision. The contributors to _Chinese Visions of World Order_ examine the evolution of tianxia's meaning and practice in the Han dynasty and its mutations in modern times. They attend to its varied (...) interpretations, its relation to realpolitik, and its revival in twenty-first-century China. They also investigate tianxia's birth in antiquity and its role in empire building, invoke its cultural universalism as a new global imagination for the contemporary world, analyze its resonance and affinity with cosmopolitanism in East-West cultural relations, discover its persistence in China's socialist internationalism and third world agenda, and critique its deployment as an official state ideology. In so doing, they demonstrate how China draws on its past to further its own alternative vision of the current international system. Contributors. Daniel A. Bell, Chishen Chang, Kuan-Hsing Chen, Prasenjit Duara, Hsieh Mei-yu, Haiyan Lee, Mark Edward Lewis, Lin Chun, Viren Murthy, Lisa Rofel, Ban Wang, Wang Hui, Yiqun Zhou. (shrink)

After the United States invaded Puerto Rico in 1898, the new unincorporated territory sought to define its future. Seeking to shape the next generation and generate popular support for colonial rule, U.S. officials looked to education as a key venue for promoting the benefits of Americanization. At the same time, public schools became a site where Puerto Rican teachers, parents, and students could formulate and advance their own projects for building citizenship. In _Negotiating Empire_, Solsiree del Moral demonstrates how these (...) colonial intermediaries aimed for regeneration and progress through education. Rather than seeing U.S. empire in Puerto Rico during this period as a contest between two sharply polarized groups, del Moral views their interaction as a process of negotiation. Although educators and families rejected some tenets of Americanization, such as English-language instruction, they also redefined and appropriated others to their benefit to increase literacy and skills required for better occupations and social mobility. Pushing their citizenship-building vision through the schools, Puerto Ricans negotiated a different school project—one that was reformist yet radical, modern yet traditional, colonial yet nationalist. (shrink)

As a model for processing information about people's perceptions to understand the complex world and society in which they live, the cultural schema serves as a key concept in Cultural Linguistics when directing to the perception and processing of information about people, and social groups, and events. Cultural schema theory is valuable in deciphering culturally structured concepts, covering the entire range of human experience expressed in many fields such as education, belief, religion, etc. Through the practice of (...) sacred rituals, each religious believer can form his system of ideas about entities in his or her belief world. Those experiences and experiences are conceptualized through the language picture. In the process of cultural development and integration, the cultural awareness of the Catholic community also reflects certain changes in Catholicism in the West in harmony with the customs and beliefs of Eastern countries. like Vietnam, expressed through the practice of funeral rites and traditional marriage of the Vietnamese. In this article, by using quantitative and qualitative methods, we have conducted a character analysis of the above cultural schemas based on the corpus of 120 discourses drawn during the implementation perform funeral and marriage rites for Vietnamese Catholics. Research results show that cultural schemas (event diagrams, role schemas, image schemas, propositional schemas, and emotional schemas) reflect the cultural knowledge (beliefs, standards, principles, and expectations) of each Vietnamese Catholic about DEATH and MARRIAGE as a journey or a new transformation in one's life... That is the basis for them to transmit achieve and explain the basic values of these two concepts, helping us to understand more deeply the mind of the Vietnamese Catholic community in Vietnam when performing two important rituals in human life in reality. (shrink)

Confucius is finally rehabilitated. Party dignitaries kneel at his ancestral shrine. The benevolent Confucian is a new image of China for the outside, and for Chinese dealing with the collapse of ideology and the moral fabric of their society. The word tianxia is usually translated “all under Heaven.” It has a complicated history and a complicated contemporary appropriation in a desperate ideology-cum-PR campaign. The tianxia-idea is that China has for millennia been a government of all under heaven. It was such (...) a government in the past, is one today, and offers the whole world its benevolent alternative to liberalism and democracy. More than one contributor to this strong collection of interesting essays suspects that the Confucian revival is an act of desperation. As soft power, Confucianism may be no match for global capitalism. Soft power is not readily synthesized by official campaign. Its genuine source is in everyday life, and the life of ordinary Chinese is without much resonance beyond its borders. The whole world uses Chinese electronics, though almost none but the Chinese read their books, watch their television, or listen to their music. The world’s love affair with China is fixated on the economic numbers and is no less capricious. It has never been clear whether tianxia means a cultural realm without political boundaries, as is urged by modern ideologists, or is just another word for China, which is how modern Chinese dictionaries explain it. On the official account, membership in “all under Heaven” is a matter of shared culture, sustained by affective ties rather than coercion, but it is a culture that values order over freedom, ethics over law, and authority over democracy and human rights. Outsiders worry that tianxia is the cloak of a rising hegemon. However, the important audience for lofty talk of tianxia may be internal. Whether foreigners really trust it may be less urgent than for the Chinese to believe it about themselves. Postsocialist China has no unifying vision and has yet to honestly scrutinize official socialism. The new discourse of tianxia speaks to their need for a vision of their place in the world. The image of a tianxia government of benevolent authority may be more useful for identity within China than for offering the world a viable alternative to democracy and human rights. (shrink)

As a generation of ‘digital natives,’ secondary students who were born from 2002 to 2010 have various approaches to acquiring digital knowledge. Digital literacy and resilience are crucial for them to navigate the digital world as much as the real world; however, these remain under-researched subjects, especially in developing countries. In Vietnam, the education system has put considerable effort into teaching students these skills to promote quality education as part of the United Nations-defined Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4). This issue (...) has proven especially salient amid the COVID−19 pandemic lockdowns, which had obliged most schools to switch to online forms of teaching. This study, which utilizes a dataset of 1061 Vietnamese students taken from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s “Digital Kids Asia Pacific (DKAP)” project, employs Bayesian statistics to explore the relationship between the students’ background and their digital abilities. Results show that economic status and parents’ level of education are positively correlated with digital literacy. Students from urban schools have only a slightly higher level of digital literacy than their rural counterparts, suggesting that school location may not be a defining explanatory element in the variation of digital literacy and resilience among Vietnamese students. Students’ digital literacy and, especially resilience, also have associations with their gender. Moreover, as students are digitally literate, they are more likely to be digitally resilient. Following SDG4, i.e., Quality Education, it is advisable for schools, and especially parents, to seriously invest in creating a safe, educational environment to enhance digital literacy among students. (shrink)

How and why did comparative political economy lose sight of the sources of growing macroeconomic and political instability, a problem that encompassed a growing financial bubble and then a crash in the housing market, a period of sluggish growth that plausibly constitutes secular stagnation, and a crisis of political legitimacy manifesting itself in the rise of antisystem “populist” parties? A gradual shift in CPE’s research agenda from macroeconomic to microeconomic concerns, and from demand-side to supply-side explanations, diminished (...) its ability to analyze adequately the central economic and political problems of the past twenty years. This article traces CPE’s evolution through successive “supermodels” that constituted its core research foci. To understand the current crisis, CPE needs to revisit and update its original roots in Keynes, macroeconomics, and the demand side. This shift is already happening at the margins, as CPE scholars struggle to understand the current crisis. (shrink)

This paper focuses on learning that takes place outside formal classrooms within groups or teams. Based on the conceptual framework of informal learning, adult learning and lifelong learning, it investigates how two contrasting groups of adult learners in Vietnam, Mekong doctors and Hanoi hairdressers, learn, interact, and collaborate through their informal learning experiences in the workplace. These are two ‘co-present groups’ or two ‘complex systems’. For Vietnamese learners, the challenges of Confucian heritage culture, or the lack of awareness of (...) class='Hi'>cultural differences, created obstacles to collaboration and participation. The contribution to this Special Issue argues that co-present group learning applies well to non-Western Confucius-based cultures and other countries with similar values, despite this lack of awareness of cultural differences. (shrink)

This article explores the politics and culture of Creole cosmopolitanism, which emerged in the French post-slavery colonies. It argues that Creole cosmopolitanism offers a framework to imagine oneself in the world. As a form of resistance to the French assimilative project, to absolutist ethnicisms and to abstract universalism, Creole cosmopolitanism imagines a world of trans-local solidarities, a way of being-in-the-world that acknowledges difference and diversity.

Even in psychological literature, which describes many determining variables related to the school domain, few studies have investigated the universal mechanism underlying parent–child relations, which is a prototype matrix for future student–teacher relations. The role of the imprinted schema of children’s obligations toward parents seems to be crucial for school functioning in classroom society. The Dual Filial Piety Model is comprised of two higher-order factors that correspond to the two focal filial piety attributes: reciprocal and authoritarian, which have been shown (...) to have distinct implications on social adaptation and individuals’ psychological functioning. In this study, we investigate the relationship between filial piety and student attitudes in a more individualistic and egalitarian culture and in a more collectivistic and hierarchical society. The measurement invariances of three scales, i.e., the Vietnamese adaptation of DFP Scale, the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, and the Study Satisfaction Scale, were improved in the MLM analyses. Our results show that in more individualistic cultures, the RFP is a stronger predictor of study engagement and study satisfaction; however, the AFP is a better factor to predict study engagement in more collectivistic cultures. What is more, only RFP positively correlates with study satisfaction in individualistic culture. Our findings revealed that in different cultures, different aspects of filial piety should be emphasized by parents in the context of the future academic achievements of their children. The conclusion is that the prevention and intervention strategies or techniques intended for children with school problems should be culturally appropriate and addressed to the parents of kindergarten and later to very early-stage education teachers. The results of studies based on the DFPM may stimulate practical applications and policy development within the domain of success and failure in the academic environment. (shrink)

Awareness of science encouraged through events in 2017.

In this essay I argue that Christian political participation as envisioned by those I term “Augustinian democrats”—a group of Protestant ethicists following a path cleared by Jeffrey Stout’s 2004 Democracy and Tradition—is founded upon an elegantly rendered political ontology, but leaves incomplete a description of the practical task and place of the church. My contention is that this incompletely developed practical task is not accidental to the manner in which these Augustinians complete the speculative, ontological task. The completion (...) of the speculative task combined with the incompletion of the practical task, I conclude, nevertheless results in a hybrid and especially interesting picture of personhood that points to an understanding of Protestantism as the attempt to recover human individuality within Christianity. (shrink)

This article contributes to the limited literatures on small- and medium-size enterprises and corporate social responsibility. Using an institutional theoretical framework, we analyzed fieldwork interviews with twenty SMEs and perspectives of 165 SME managers and workers in textiles, garment, and footwear industries, the most important wage-earning sector in Vietnam. Having understood in the context of a developing “market economy with socialist orientation”, we find that socially responsible practices and expectations developed long before the arrival of CSR as a western concept (...) and an MNC agenda. While identifying and contributing ideas concerning forms of “informal” CSR practices—influenced by social and cultural expectations—to the CSR/sme literature, we are conscious of the mixed effects of these practices and the ongoing nuanced negotiations between workers and managers in these SMEs. In our research, we found that it takes both domestic and international stakeholders to improve labor conditions in Vietnam under the banner of CSR. (shrink)

Dans un régime comme celui de la République populaire de Chine, où prévaut la suprématie d’un Parti-État unique, la politique et le politique constituent, a fortiori plus qu’ailleurs, la chasse gardée de l’élite dirigeante du pays, à savoir les cadres du Parti communiste. Cet article tente de saisir qui sont les élites politiques aux commandes de la Chine d’aujourd’hui à travers l’analyse du modus operandi de l’École des cadres du Parti de Shanghai. L’étude de cette institution, qui participe à la (...) régulation de la circulation des élites et constitue l’un des lieux privilégiés de la transmission et de l’exercice du pouvoir, permet, par-delà son propre fonctionnement, d’éclairer la nature et le devenir même du régime. S’il apparaît que les forces modernisatrices, en assimilant davantage l’École du Parti à un institut d’administration publique, œuvrent à la professionnalisation du métier de cadre, c’est également et avant tout afin de mieux perpétuer l’hégémonie du Parti-État unique.In a regime where the one Party-State rule still prevails, as is the case in the People’s Republic of China, the polity and politics constitute – here more than anywhere else – the private ground of the country’s ruling elite, i.e. the cadres of the Communist Party. This article attempts to grasp who the political elites in control of contemporary China are, by analyzing the modus operandi of the Shanghai Party School for Cadres. The study of an institution that takes part in the circulation of the elites and hence constitutes one of the privileged playing fields for the transmission and the exercise of power, allows, beyond the understanding of its own working, to shed light on the very nature and evolution of the regime. If the modernizing forces appear to work towards the professionalization of the cadres’ craft by equating the Party School to an institute of public administration, they ultimately do so in order to better perpetuate the supremacy ofthe one-Party system. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 4, Page 603-618, May 2022. The article examines the status of free speech in Vietnam in light of some of the explosive debates that have flared up in both the US and Europe. It argues that unlike in the West the Vietnamese case requires a critical defense to augment the space for free speech as such. To lead up to this conclusion, the essay looks at two case studies of literary censorship in Vietnam (...) to demonstrate that, since the middle of the twentieth-century, literary speech has been synonymous with political speech. Given the limited space for political speech itself, the essay concludes by advancing a version of the autonomy defense of free speech as one viable critical resource in the Vietnamese context. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 4, Page 603-618, May 2022. The article examines the status of free speech in Vietnam in light of some of the explosive debates that have flared up in both the US and Europe. It argues that unlike in the West the Vietnamese case requires a critical defense to augment the space for free speech as such. To lead up to this conclusion, the essay looks at two case studies of literary censorship in Vietnam (...) to demonstrate that, since the middle of the twentieth-century, literary speech has been synonymous with political speech. Given the limited space for political speech itself, the essay concludes by advancing a version of the autonomy defense of free speech as one viable critical resource in the Vietnamese context. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 4, Page 603-618, May 2022. The article examines the status of free speech in Vietnam in light of some of the explosive debates that have flared up in both the US and Europe. It argues that unlike in the West the Vietnamese case requires a critical defense to augment the space for free speech as such. To lead up to this conclusion, the essay looks at two case studies of literary censorship in Vietnam (...) to demonstrate that, since the middle of the twentieth-century, literary speech has been synonymous with political speech. Given the limited space for political speech itself, the essay concludes by advancing a version of the autonomy defense of free speech as one viable critical resource in the Vietnamese context. (shrink)

The article examines the status of free speech in Vietnam in light of some of the explosive debates that have flared up in both the US and Europe. It argues that unlike in the West the Vietnamese case requires a critical defense to augment the space for free speech as such. To lead up to this conclusion, the essay looks at two case studies of literary censorship in Vietnam to demonstrate that, since the middle of the twentieth-century, literary speech has (...) been synonymous with political speech. Given the limited space for political speech itself, the essay concludes by advancing a version of the autonomy defense of free speech as one viable critical resource in the Vietnamese context. (shrink)

Nguyễn Khoa Diệu Biên, née en 1924, conserve un « livre de dédicaces » depuis plus d’un demi-siècle. Dans ce cahier de collégiennes, on peut lire le plaisir de « revivre le bonheur révolu » des années de jeunesse dans l’un des trois collèges de jeunes filles du Việt Nam sous la colonisation française. Témoignage privilégié confronté à des récits autobiographiques ou à des entretiens directs, il révèle des effets encore insuffisamment évoqués de la scolarisation : l’ouverture à la culture (...) occidentale, l’acquisition et l’affirmation d’une autre personnalité et, en même temps, les liens que ces collégiennes gardaient avec l’environnement social et culturel vietnamien ainsi que les soucis patriotes, l’engagement politique anticolonialiste qu’elles partageaient avec la majorité de l’élite intellectuelle. (shrink)

This article explores trans*versal connections between transness, blackness, and the animal. Drawn from the conceptual vocabulary of cultural theorist Félix Guattari, this article argues that the central purpose of transversality is to create linkages between previously unexplored singularities in a field, and then to create connections in other conceptual topographies at different levels of discursivity. The article advances an extension of Guattari’s “transversal” into a more capacious concept of the “trans*versal,” to analyze the #blacklivesmatter and #blacktranslivematter movements (...) that draw on critical animal studies to reveal ways that species hierarchies are always present in processes of racialization that allow some lives to matter more, or less, than others. (shrink)

This essay looks to the complex intercultural relations of China and Korea to highlight two important issues in political theory and international relations: the transnational nature of world politics and the limits of analytical binaries such as East‐West and tradition‐modernity. Discussions of international politics in East Asia characteristically address issues of security and development studies. More recently, Confucianism has been mobilized as part of the clash of civilizations of Asia with the West. This essay will consider how cultural (...) boundaries are negotiated within the region via an analysis of the workings of the transnational discourse of Confucianism in the construction of Korean identity. While many make truth claims about what ‘Confucianism’ means in Korea, this essay examines the discursive economies of ‘Confucian events’ in three overlapping social spaces: official, mass media, and academic. This essay will show the diversity of Confucianism within East Asia, and underline how rather than being a simple orthodoxy, the shape of Confucianism is an active political issue. While many try to define a core ‘Korean Confucianism’, I argue that we should use Confucianism as an analytical tool to understand something else, citing how some scholars are using Confucianism for the specific project of building democracy in Korea. (shrink)

This essay looks to the complex intercultural relations of China and Korea to highlight two important issues in political theory and international relations: the transnational nature of world politics and the limits of analytical binaries such as East‐West and tradition‐modernity. Discussions of international politics in East Asia characteristically address issues of security and development studies. More recently, Confucianism has been mobilized as part of the clash of civilizations of Asia with the West. This essay will consider how cultural (...) boundaries are negotiated within the region via an analysis of the workings of the transnational discourse of Confucianism in the construction of Korean identity. While many make truth claims about what ‘Confucianism’ means in Korea, this essay examines the discursive economies of ‘Confucian events’ in three overlapping social spaces: official, mass media, and academic. This essay will show the diversity of Confucianism within East Asia, and underline how rather than being a simple orthodoxy, the shape of Confucianism is an active political issue. While many try to define a core ‘Korean Confucianism’, I argue that we should use Confucianism as an analytical tool to understand something else, citing how some scholars are using Confucianism for the specific project of building democracy in Korea. (shrink)

Contemporary politics goes on at a mythic level. This is the provocative argument put forward in this unique book which results from the collaboration of practising politicians, organisational and political consultants, scholars of mythology and culture, and Jungian analysts from several countries. The first part of the book focuses on leadership and vision, and features a reflection on myth and leadership by former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley. The second part deals with the way the theme of 'the one (...) and the many' works itself out in politics today. From the perspective of 'the many', there are chapters on factionalism, ethnic strife, genocide and multiculturalism. From the perspective of 'the one', there are chapters on the economic myth and gender politics showing how these bring coherence to today's confused political scene, culminating in the suggestion that the modern political psyche is itself in the midst of a rite of passage. The relevance of the book to the practice and study of politics, mainstream and marginal, cannot be overemphasised and the book will provide stimulating reading for practitioners and students in these areas as well as for those engaged in psychological work such as therapy, counselling or analysis. (shrink)

This paper is about how the historical vision of Confucius was constructed in the Analects of Confucius. This analysis concentrates on its particular aspects like the notion of Zhou – the historical dynasty from which Confucius takes much of his guidance on culture, virtue, and refinement. The first part of this paper is to open up a space for a multidimensional and conceptually rich approach to what we might call Confucius’ ‘vision of history’. It challenges some problematic assumptions (...) and approaches that have constituted an obstacle to inquiry into the study of Confucius’ thought – among them, the idea that Confucius was a ‘traditionalist’ who sought to bring back the ritual practices of the early Zhou. Then, I proceed to present a fine-grained textual analysis of the Analects and consider some broader conceptual issues involved in it. In particular, I argue that Confucius’ recognition of meta-knowing infuses the subject with new depths, which link Confucian ritual performance with agency and self-consciousness. In the next section, by establishing as an object of inquiry the imaginary category of ‘Zhou’, rather than the ‘factual’, evidentiary category of ‘Zhou’, I position Confucius’s vision in a comprehensive discussion of political identity. (shrink)

This paper is the first major and a thorough study on the Merger & Acquisition (M&A) activities in Vietnam’s emerging market economy, covering almost entirely the M&A history after the launch of Doi Moi. The surge in these activities since mid-2000s by no means incidentally coincides with the jump in FDI and FPI inflows into the nation. M&A industry in Vietnam has its socio-cultural traits that could help explain economic happenings, with anomalies and transitional characteristics, far better than even (...) the most complete set of empirical data. Proceeds from the sales of existing assets and firms have mainly flowed into the highly speculative industries of securities, banking, non-bank financials, portfolio investments and real estates. The impact of M&A on Vietnam’s long-term prosperity is thus highly questionable. An observable high degree of volatility in the M&A processes would likely blow out the high ex ante expectations by many speculators, when ex post realizations finally arrive. The effect of the past M&A evolution in Vietnam has been indecisively positive or negative, with significant presence of rent-seeking and likelihood of causing destructive entrepreneurship. From a socio-economic and cultural view, the degree of positive impacts may result in domestic entrepreneurship which will perhaps be the single most important indicator. (shrink)

Iris Marion Young’s politics of difference promotes equality among socially and culturally different groups within multicultural states and advocates group autonomy to empower such groups to develop their own voice. Extending the politics of difference to the international sphere, Young advocates “decentered diverse democratic federalism” that combines local self-determination and cosmopolitanism, while adamantly rejecting nationalism. Herr argues that nationalism, charitably interpreted, is not only consistent with Young’s politics of difference but also necessary for realizing Young’s ideal in the global arena.

This collection opens with an inquiry into the assumptions and methods of the historical study of culture, comparing the new cultural history with the old. Thirteen essays follow, each defining a problem within a particular culture. In the first section, Biography and Autobiography, three scholars explore historically changing types of self-conception, each reflecting larger cultural meanings; essays included examine Italian Renaissance biographers and the autobiographies of Benjamin Franklin and Mohandas Gandhi. A second group of contributors explore problems raised (...) by the writing of history itself, especially as it relates to a notion of culture. Here examples are drawn from the writings of Thucydides, Jacob Burckhardt, and the art historians Alois Riegl and Josef Strzygowski. In the third section, Politics, Nationalism, and Culture, the essays explore relationships between cultural creativity and national identity, with case studies focusing on the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, the place of Castile within the national history of Spain, and the impact of World War I on work of Thomas Mann. The final section, Cultural Translation, raises the complex questions of cultural influence and the transmission of traditions over time through studies of Philo of Alexandria's interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, Erasmus' use of Socrates, Jean Bodin's conception of Roman law, and adaptations of the Hebrew Bible for American children. (shrink)

Folklore has a critical role as a cultural transmitter, all the while being a socially accepted medium for the expressions of culturally contradicting wishes and conducts. In this study of Vietnamese folktales, through the use of Bayesian multilevel modeling and the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, we offer empirical evidence for how the interplay between religious teachings (Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism) and deviant behaviors (lying and violence) could affect a folktale’s outcome. The findings indicate that characters who lie and/or (...) commit violent acts tend to have bad endings, as intuition would dictate, but when they are associated with any of the above Three Teachings, the final endings may vary. Positive outcomes are seen in cases where characters associated with Confucianism lie and characters associated with Buddhism act violently. The results supplement the worldwide literature on discrepancies between folklore and real-life conduct, as well as on the contradictory human behaviors vis-à-vis religious teachings. Overall, the study highlights the complexity of human decision-making, especially beyond the folklore realm. (shrink)

Despite increasing scholarly interest in tertiary student perceptions of plagiarism, very little is known about those held by postgraduate students, although differences between undergraduate and PG students relate to both their characteristics and the demands of their studies. Furthermore, there is a dearth of research within the context of international education, where managing plagiarism is seen as a major challenge. This paper reports on a recent online survey with 207 Vietnamese and local PG students at a New Zealand university regarding (...) their perceptions of plagiarism. The findings showed significant differences both between and within the two groups. Perception variations arose from a range of influences and prior experiences, not just the culture in which the students were initially educated. Differences related to participants’ age, gender, academic levels, disciplines, and teaching experience. This study’s findings contribute knowledge about under-researched PG students and problematize prevalent stereotypes of international students regarding plagiarism. They generate implications for higher education institutions to accommodate international and domestic PG student needs in ways that respect their diversities in detail as individuals, not as members of a homogeneous group. Further qualitative research to explore PG student perceptions in greater depth is recommended. (shrink)

Contemporary casuistry, informed by a centuries-old intellectual tradition within the Jesuit order of the Catholic Church, characteristically maintains that ethical judgment does not rely on abstract laws, general rules or universal principles. Ethical judgment is formed through a subtle activity of comparing prior, settled cases with the current problem one is experiencing. Judgment on moral matters is therefore thought to be highly context-dependent and requires a sensitivity to the unique facts and social circumstances of each case. This discussion reviews the (...) origins of casuistry within Jesuit thought and then examines the implications of casuistry for organizational ethics. Our central argument is that contemporary casuistry, while correct to emphasize the particularity of ethical judgment, is nonetheless compatible with an important role for general principles in ethical decision-making within organizations. (shrink)

We would like to open some questions here about the institutional and cultural conditions of anything that might be called cultural studies or multiculturalism. By introducing cultural studies and multiculturalism many intellectuals aim at a more democratic culture. We share this aim. In this essay, however, we would like to argue that the projects of cultural studies and multiculturalism require: a more international model of cultural studies than the dominant Anglo-American versions; renewed attention to the (...) institutional environments of cultural studies; and a questioning of the relations between multiculturalism and identity politics. We seek less to “fix” these problems than to provide a critical analysis of the languages, the methods of criticism, and the assumptions about identity, culture, and politics that present the problems to us. Because the thickets entangling what our group calls cultural studies are so deeply rooted in Western academia, which to a large degree constitutes our own group, the counterexample of cultural criticism in other contexts can be more than usually instructive. We begin by considering the position of cultural studies in China, since our group includes a number of Chinese intellectuals, on whose experience the following section is largely based. The Chicago Cultural Studies Group began meeting in June 1990. It includes Lauren Berlant, David Bunn, Vinay Dharwadker, Norma Field, Dilip Gaonkar, Marilyn Ivy, Benjamin Lee, Leo Ou-fan Lee, Xinmin Liu, Mathew Roberts, Sharon Stephens, Katie Trumpener, Greg Urban, Michael Warner, Jianyang Zha, and Jueliang Zhou. (shrink)

This paper argues that it is the human search for authentic understanding that gives birth to radical hermeneutics, and not the reverse. Radical hermeneutics in the “contemporary” sense begins with Martin Heidegger’s critical reinterpretation of Immanuel Kant’s answer to the question of “What is the man?” , and continues with his reflection on Being as the foundation of hermeneutics. Hans-Georg Gadamer has developed Heidegger’s thesis into what he termed philosophical hermeneutics, while Jacques Derrida seized Heidegger’s Kehre as the momentum to (...) launch a typically Nietzschean interpretation, that is, to “return” to understanding in its genetic stage. Despite their difference, Gadamer and Derrida believed that authentic understanding is possible only if it is motivated by a creative force that remains loyal to humanness: identity in difference and difference in identity. (shrink)