Confucianism,Secularism, and Atheism in Bayle and Montesquieu

It should be hardly surprising to discover that eighteenth-century European perspectives of other cultures were shaped to a large extent by concerns internal to European political life. Objective or unprejudiced accounts of non-European cultures are rarely found among travellers, missionaries, and philosophers of the time. While the insights of Enlightenment political thinkers on the non-European world may shed little light on the cultures being commented upon, they are useful for assessing the nature of the Enlightenment's engagement with cultural traditions external to Europe. In particular, Enlightenment conceptions of China were extremely varied and reflective of the debates between Enlightenment thinkers, especially on the proper relation between religion and politics. I shall argue that Montesquieu's account of Confucianism in The Spirit of the Laws (De l’esprit des lois, first published in 1748) was in part influenced by his critique of Bayle's position on the role of religion in society as expounded in his Various Thoughts on the Comet (Pensées diverses sur la comète, published in 1682). While Montesquieu's account and assessment of Chinese thought and culture are “Eurocentric,” his evaluation of Confucianism nevertheless arises from a considered philosophical position on religion and politics.     

Violence sits in places? Cultural practice, neoliberal rationalism, and virulent imaginative geographies

Through imaginative geographies that erase the interconnectedness of the places where violence occurs, the notion that violence is ‘irrational’ marks particular cultures as ‘Other’. Neoliberalism exploits such imaginative geographies in constructing itself as the sole providence of nonviolence and the lone bearer of reason. Proceeding as a ‘civilizing’ project, neoliberalism positions the market as salvationary to ostensibly ‘irrational’ and ‘violent’ peoples. This theology of neoliberalism produces a discourse that binds violence in place. But while violence sits in places in terms of the way in which we perceive its manifestation as a localized and embodied experience, this very idea is challenged when place is reconsidered as a relational assemblage. What this re-theorization does is open up the supposed fixity, separation, and immutability of place to instead recognize it as always co-constituted by, mediated through, and integrated within the wider experiences of space. Such a radical rethinking of place fundamentally transforms the way we understand violence. No longer confined to its material expression as an isolated and localized event, violence can more appropriately be understood as an unfolding process, derived from the broader geographical phenomena and temporal patterns of the social world.     

Informant disavowal and the interpretation of storytelling revival

The scholarship of traditional arts revivals is often ironic. Revivalists' activity has been understood as a rational, politically nostalgic, and symbolic re‐enactment of a fictional past. In this, scholars have underestimated the significance of disavowal; that is, informants' neutral or negative responses to analytical methods and conclusions. Interviews with English storytelling revivalists reveal a coherent and significant consensus of disavowal, showing their primary concern to be not with nostalgic self‐rationalisation, but with basic practical issues of artistic and sociable interaction. Storytelling revival involves nostalgic displays that are actually fragmentary, superficial, and subordinate to practical concerns. This suggests that revivalists are seeking not to symbolise an imagined past for political purposes, but to familiarise recently appropriated performance genres for artistic purposes. This conclusion is hypothetically applicable to the uses of nostalgic rationalisation within other revival movements.     

Governing Future Radicals in Europe

Abstract: This article analyses European initiatives to counter radicalisation and recru‐itment as a practice of governing that works preemptively through civil society and semi‐public spaces. Since the London and Madrid bombings, the EU agenda in this domain is substantial and ambitious. At the same time, proposals are embraced by member states to various degrees and materialise in local settings and concrete programmes in different ways. We propose to regard radicalisation as an assemblage of governing that is mobilised through particular threat representations, knowledge practices, training programmes and strategies for intervention. This lens allows for the simultaneous recognition of national differentiations, the power and reach of “Europe”, and the tensions, fluid relations and alignments that are forged in counter‐radicalisation conceptualisation and practice. In so doing, the motivation behind our research is to make strange the idea of radicalisation itself, which has been fully embraced and mobilised as a problem of governance across Europe.     

‘Moving a little with the tide’: Malay monarchy and the development of modern malay nationalism

From the early twentieth century, the ideological hegemony of Malay monarchy has been challenged by emerging Malay nationalism. Despite the more radical manifestations, however, nationalism has rarely sought to overturn monarchy. Indeed, monarchy and nationalism have co-existed, sometimes uneasily, until the present. This co-existence has been facilitated by a number of factors, not least the linkages between the two: during the colonial period and beyond many prominent nationalists came from aristocratic, even royal backgrounds, while the Malay Rulers themselves were prepared to give their patronage to conservative forms of nationalism. Mutual interest in maintaining political and religious conservatism, nevertheless, has not prevented periodic disputes between princes and politicians as the two have competed for the loyalty of the Malay community. Despite such controversies, the continuing hold exercised by monarchy over Malays has placed a limit on the extent to which the Rulers have been supplanted by alternative representations of loyalty and identity. The ability of Malay monarchy to ‘move a little with the tide’, moreover, has assisted its weathering of the nationalist challenge during Malaya's transition from colonialism to independence.     

Libertarian Paternalism as a Tool to Explore Strategic Sub-Regional Planning in England?

Across Europe, a series of revisions and realignments are currently taking place in sub-national governance structures. In England, this involves the creation of a new scalar construct through the dismantling of the regional tier and the creation of new sub-regional institutions. Through focusing on the move towards subsidiarity, this article considers the extent to which libertarian paternalism—or “don't do anything unless you have to”—and the adoption of some of these key principles by the UK government—can help to illuminate and explain such contemporary processes of restructuring and rescaling of governance. In turn, the article considers (i) the form, process and outcomes of planning practices within this restructuring; and (ii) the implications arising in respect of the democratic accountability and strategic efficiency of the new arrangements, and the interests that are being privileged therein.     

Julia Gillard's Citizens' Assembly Proposal for Australia: A Deliberative Democratic Analysis

Many governments have embraced the rhetoric of inclusive citizen engagement. Greater public involvement promises to strengthen democratic institutions and improve the quality of policy decisions and services. How do these aspirations sit alongside the reality of Australian federal politics? This article investigates the responses of elite policy actors to the Gillard government's proposal to conduct a citizens’ assembly on climate change in 2010. Drawing on over 200 media articles, the authors identify a series of procedural, institutional and political objections raised by elite commentators against the citizens’ assembly proposal. Many of these objections have little basis in the experience of deliberative designs in practice. Some, however, reflect the challenge of realising inclusive, deliberative governance in highly politicised contexts.

很多政府对公民广泛参与的说辞爱不释手。更大程度上的公共参与有助于强化民主体制,改善政策及服务的质量。这种渴望与澳大利亚联邦政治的现实相处如何呢？本文考察了政策精英对杰拉德政府倡议在2010年召开的气候变化公民大会的反应。本文浏览了200多篇媒体文章,发现了这些人从程序、体制、政治等等方面反对公民大会的倡议。不少反对意见在精心设计的实践经验中并没多少基础。但有些却反映了高度政治化的语境中正在实现的广泛参与所构成的挑战。