The Oxford Handbook of Peaceful Change in International Relations, 2020
This chapter seeks to reconcile the seemingly pacifist nature of Eastern religions and civilizati... more This chapter seeks to reconcile the seemingly pacifist nature of Eastern religions and civilizations and the reality of terrorism, communal violence, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Asia. All religions promote peaceful change but justify violent change. All civilizations have Gandhi-like advocates for peaceful change but also leaders who agitate for violent change. Civilizational plurality and canonical ambiguity have paradoxically provided a fertile ground for the reduction of complex identities, which are more amenable to peaceful change, into singular ones, which are more prone to civilizational clashes. The weakness of inclusive institutions has further incentivized the politicization of religion. While singular ethnonational identities are constructed and can theoretically be deconstructed, they have tended to become hardened. The chapter anchors the analysis with Islam in Afghanistan and Indonesia; Hinduism in India; Buddhism in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Tibet; and Conf...
Contact: 217 O’Shaughnessy Hall University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556. Tel. 574-631... more Contact: 217 O’Shaughnessy Hall University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556. Tel. 574-631-5681 http://www.nd.edu/~apsacp Peter Gourevitch University of California San Diego pgourevitch@ucsd.edu That may produce some paradoxes: the more laws we find that drive regularities in political action, the more constraints on individual discretion we find, and the less we can say choice is at work, thus diminishing the role of politics. Politics involves making choices; if there is no choice, there is no politics. We debate why political choices are made as they are (though we often confuse the why and what with how, taking the process as the substance of the choice). An important element of choice involves agency1 or a sense of the locus of initiative or voluntarism. Agency may, in our arguments about choice, be high or low.
This chapter examines and deconstructs a well-known institution in China: Confucianism. China is ... more This chapter examines and deconstructs a well-known institution in China: Confucianism. China is often presumed to be different from Europe: While the Western world was simultaneously cursed by a Hobbesian state of war and blessed by a deeply ingrained tradition of constitutionalism, the East was supposed to be endowed with peace but burdened with autocracy. Confucianism, a political philosophy that emphasizes benevolence, is often taken to prescribe pacifism in China’s external relations and paternalism in China’s state-society relations. Yet, Confucianism is not unlike other world philosophical thoughts in that it contains both elements that support peace and those that justify war and components that champion freedom and those that defend autocracy. This chapter traces Confucianism’s evolution from its birth in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (770–221 BCE) to its construction in the Imperial era (221 BCE to 1911 CE). It shows that China’s history had roughly equal parts of pacifism and aggression, and limited government and imperial despotism. Confucianism has continued to be reconstructed to this day to support the official line of “peaceful rise” in international relations and a one-party dictatorship in state-society relations. Nevertheless, this deep historical analysis suggests that both the past and the present have suppressed alternatives truer to the Confucian legacy.
Hong Kong, a place where liberty once bloomed, has now been crushed by the People’s Republic of C... more Hong Kong, a place where liberty once bloomed, has now been crushed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). On 30 June 2020, the PRC imposed a draconian national-security law on the city, seeking to “prevent, stop, and punish” a string of vaguely defined crimes of “secession,” “subversion,” “terrorism,” and “collusion with foreign forces.” The crackdown is the latest response by the Chinese Communist party-state to the campaign in defense of freedom and democracy that Hong Kong’s citizens have been waging for decades. The “one country, two systems” constitutional structure that Hong Kong was given at the time of the 1997 handover from Britain was troubled from birth. The radicalization of the 2019 protests against the PRC’s extradition law gave Beijing the perfect excuse to impose its own preferred answer—which might be called “Tiananmen-lite”—to the long-running problem that Hong Kong posed as a thorn of liberty embedded in the side of the PRC’s one-party dictatorship.
s from concrete historical contexts and then chooses part of the works of the pre-Qin masters and... more s from concrete historical contexts and then chooses part of the works of the pre-Qin masters and expounds these texts .... Is the reading of pre-Qin history and the exposition of the thought of the pre-Qin masters a matter of amassing evidence or engaging in hermeneutics? If it is a matter of evidence, then it must be grounded in accurate and strict historical testimony. (Yang, 2011: 155)
This chapter seeks to reconcile the seemingly pacifist nature of Eastern religions and civilizati... more This chapter seeks to reconcile the seemingly pacifist nature of Eastern religions and civilizations and the reality of terrorism, communal violence, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Asia. All religions promote peaceful change but justify violent change. All civilizations have Gandhi-like advocates for peaceful change but also leaders who agitate for violent change. Civilizational plurality and canonical ambiguity have paradoxically provided a fertile ground for the reduction of complex identities, which are more amenable to peaceful change, into singular ones, which are more prone to civilizational clashes. The weakness of inclusive institutions has further incentivized the politicization of religion. While singular ethnonational identities are constructed and can theoretically be deconstructed, they have tended to become hardened. The chapter anchors the analysis with Islam in Afghanistan and Indonesia; Hinduism in India; Buddhism in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Tibet; and Conf...
Review(s) of: Rising China and Its Postmodern Fate: Memories of Empire in a New Global Context, b... more Review(s) of: Rising China and Its Postmodern Fate: Memories of Empire in a New Global Context, by Charles Horner, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2009, 224 pp.
Proceedings of the Annual Meeting (American Society …, 2005
... Toward a Confucian Multicultural Approach to a Liberal World Order: Insights from Historical ... more ... Toward a Confucian Multicultural Approach to a Liberal World Order: Insights from Historical East Asia by Victoria Tin-bor Hui* ... The treaties even granted the victorious powers, France and Sweden, the right to intervene in the empire. ...
The Oxford Handbook of Peaceful Change in International Relations, 2020
This chapter seeks to reconcile the seemingly pacifist nature of Eastern religions and civilizati... more This chapter seeks to reconcile the seemingly pacifist nature of Eastern religions and civilizations and the reality of terrorism, communal violence, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Asia. All religions promote peaceful change but justify violent change. All civilizations have Gandhi-like advocates for peaceful change but also leaders who agitate for violent change. Civilizational plurality and canonical ambiguity have paradoxically provided a fertile ground for the reduction of complex identities, which are more amenable to peaceful change, into singular ones, which are more prone to civilizational clashes. The weakness of inclusive institutions has further incentivized the politicization of religion. While singular ethnonational identities are constructed and can theoretically be deconstructed, they have tended to become hardened. The chapter anchors the analysis with Islam in Afghanistan and Indonesia; Hinduism in India; Buddhism in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Tibet; and Conf...
Contact: 217 O’Shaughnessy Hall University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556. Tel. 574-631... more Contact: 217 O’Shaughnessy Hall University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556. Tel. 574-631-5681 http://www.nd.edu/~apsacp Peter Gourevitch University of California San Diego pgourevitch@ucsd.edu That may produce some paradoxes: the more laws we find that drive regularities in political action, the more constraints on individual discretion we find, and the less we can say choice is at work, thus diminishing the role of politics. Politics involves making choices; if there is no choice, there is no politics. We debate why political choices are made as they are (though we often confuse the why and what with how, taking the process as the substance of the choice). An important element of choice involves agency1 or a sense of the locus of initiative or voluntarism. Agency may, in our arguments about choice, be high or low.
This chapter examines and deconstructs a well-known institution in China: Confucianism. China is ... more This chapter examines and deconstructs a well-known institution in China: Confucianism. China is often presumed to be different from Europe: While the Western world was simultaneously cursed by a Hobbesian state of war and blessed by a deeply ingrained tradition of constitutionalism, the East was supposed to be endowed with peace but burdened with autocracy. Confucianism, a political philosophy that emphasizes benevolence, is often taken to prescribe pacifism in China’s external relations and paternalism in China’s state-society relations. Yet, Confucianism is not unlike other world philosophical thoughts in that it contains both elements that support peace and those that justify war and components that champion freedom and those that defend autocracy. This chapter traces Confucianism’s evolution from its birth in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (770–221 BCE) to its construction in the Imperial era (221 BCE to 1911 CE). It shows that China’s history had roughly equal parts of pacifism and aggression, and limited government and imperial despotism. Confucianism has continued to be reconstructed to this day to support the official line of “peaceful rise” in international relations and a one-party dictatorship in state-society relations. Nevertheless, this deep historical analysis suggests that both the past and the present have suppressed alternatives truer to the Confucian legacy.
Hong Kong, a place where liberty once bloomed, has now been crushed by the People’s Republic of C... more Hong Kong, a place where liberty once bloomed, has now been crushed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). On 30 June 2020, the PRC imposed a draconian national-security law on the city, seeking to “prevent, stop, and punish” a string of vaguely defined crimes of “secession,” “subversion,” “terrorism,” and “collusion with foreign forces.” The crackdown is the latest response by the Chinese Communist party-state to the campaign in defense of freedom and democracy that Hong Kong’s citizens have been waging for decades. The “one country, two systems” constitutional structure that Hong Kong was given at the time of the 1997 handover from Britain was troubled from birth. The radicalization of the 2019 protests against the PRC’s extradition law gave Beijing the perfect excuse to impose its own preferred answer—which might be called “Tiananmen-lite”—to the long-running problem that Hong Kong posed as a thorn of liberty embedded in the side of the PRC’s one-party dictatorship.
s from concrete historical contexts and then chooses part of the works of the pre-Qin masters and... more s from concrete historical contexts and then chooses part of the works of the pre-Qin masters and expounds these texts .... Is the reading of pre-Qin history and the exposition of the thought of the pre-Qin masters a matter of amassing evidence or engaging in hermeneutics? If it is a matter of evidence, then it must be grounded in accurate and strict historical testimony. (Yang, 2011: 155)
This chapter seeks to reconcile the seemingly pacifist nature of Eastern religions and civilizati... more This chapter seeks to reconcile the seemingly pacifist nature of Eastern religions and civilizations and the reality of terrorism, communal violence, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Asia. All religions promote peaceful change but justify violent change. All civilizations have Gandhi-like advocates for peaceful change but also leaders who agitate for violent change. Civilizational plurality and canonical ambiguity have paradoxically provided a fertile ground for the reduction of complex identities, which are more amenable to peaceful change, into singular ones, which are more prone to civilizational clashes. The weakness of inclusive institutions has further incentivized the politicization of religion. While singular ethnonational identities are constructed and can theoretically be deconstructed, they have tended to become hardened. The chapter anchors the analysis with Islam in Afghanistan and Indonesia; Hinduism in India; Buddhism in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Tibet; and Conf...
Review(s) of: Rising China and Its Postmodern Fate: Memories of Empire in a New Global Context, b... more Review(s) of: Rising China and Its Postmodern Fate: Memories of Empire in a New Global Context, by Charles Horner, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2009, 224 pp.
Proceedings of the Annual Meeting (American Society …, 2005
... Toward a Confucian Multicultural Approach to a Liberal World Order: Insights from Historical ... more ... Toward a Confucian Multicultural Approach to a Liberal World Order: Insights from Historical East Asia by Victoria Tin-bor Hui* ... The treaties even granted the victorious powers, France and Sweden, the right to intervene in the empire. ...
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