Capitalism,Nationalism and the New American Empire

This article draws on Pareto's theory of elites to explore the relationship between American capitalism and American nationalism, and to connect the invasion of Iraq to classical theories of imperialism. Globalisation has changed the structure of the American economy and promoted interests that have an increased stake in free trade. Neither these interests nor the oil companies advocated intervention in Iraq. Globalisation also accelerated the decline of older industries that were inclined to be protectionist, but these were not prominent advocates of the invasion either. Winners and losers, however, were both deeply affected by the wider consequences of rapid economic change, which generated uncertainty about the direction society was taking and concern about its moral foundations. These anxieties prepared the way for a conservative revival based on family, faith and flag that enabled the neo-conservatives to transform conservative patriotism into assertive nationalism after 9/11. In the short term, the invasion of Iraq was a manifestation of national unity. Placed in a longer perspective, it reveals a growing divergence between new globalised interests, which rely on cross-border negotiation, and insular nationalist interests, which seek to rebuild fortress America.     

帝国论与俄罗斯帝国的形成及其特点

20世纪是"帝国崩溃的世纪",国内外学者们对帝国学和帝国的关注度逐渐提高。本文将立足于帝国学的角度,分析帝国的类型,并考察苏联的前身——俄罗斯帝国的形成过程及其特点,指出俄国斯帝国是一个中央集权的强大的非殖民帝国,在自身社会发展过程中结合了东方专制制度和欧洲专制主义的特性,是各民族团结的典范。     

Political Theology,Democracy, and the Exception in the Egyptian Revolution

As the sixth anniversary of the 2011 protests in Tahrir Square passes, those uprisings and the events that followed continue pose important challenges not only for students of Middle Eastern and North African politics, but also for students of political theory and political theology. While scholars debate the extent to which the “Arab Spring” has amounted to a truly revolutionary turn of events, it is commonly accepted that the protests that swept the region were exceptional in their unanticipated and profound disruption of ordinary affairs. Under the influence of Carl Schmitt's theory of sovereignty, “the exception” has become a key figure in contemporary reflections on political theology, but attention to events in Egypt suggests that the familiar figure of the exception has not yet been mined for all of its implications for democratic practice. Slipping below grand articulations of the exception as a moment of sovereign decision, or as the suspension of the law, this essay turns its attention to the minor, everyday, background patterns of exceptionality that accompany the emergence of democratic practices outside the purview of the sovereign state. I argue that there is an intimate connection between the forms of exceptionality produced by longstanding practices of Egyptian secularism, the forms of exceptionality peculiar to the 2011 uprisings and their aftermath, and the forms of exceptionality that both make and unmake democratic practices. My argument has three parts: first Egyptian secularism is a process that manages and transforms authorized forms of Islamic practice, while at the same time producing exceptional formations, of which the Muslim Brotherhood is a key example; second that revolutionary politics can be understood as a matter of opening and sustaining the kind of exceptional circumstances that attended the 2011 uprisings, and that this can be usefully framed as an open-ended process of conversion; third that democratic practice requires courting both kinds of exception, despite their challenges, ambivalences, and potential dangers.     

Church,Community and Democracy

Abstract

The doctrine of church shapes Christian practice around community, producing a Christian worldview that privileges communal life. Authoritarian and/or sectarian conceptions of church will by definition undermine the practice and sustainability of democracy. Democratic practices are needed to avoid authoritarianism within the church and to promote dialogue between the church and the larger community. Resulting, qualified understandings of community may allow for helpful reformation of the doctrine of church and create space for a communitarian corrective to the overly secular and individualistic conceptions of democracy that are currently dominant.