An Enlightened path towards conservatism: critical junctures and changing elite perceptions in early nineteenth-century Russia

This article explores the historical roots of Russian conservatism by analyzing the evolution of Russia’s Westernized, Enlightenment-minded nobility to a conservative segment of Russian society in the early nineteenth century. The events of 1789 and 1812 were critical junctures that made the Russian nobility painfully aware of their own deep level of Westernization. The article first describes the reverberations of the French Revolution among the Russian elite. It also discusses the internal and external scrutiny of Russia’s relations with France under Napoleon, which made Russian conservatism a contingency. It then describes the evolution between 1789 and 1812 of a corpus of conservative ideas ranging from traditionalism to ardent patriotism and xenophobia. Napoleon’s 1812 campaign against Russia overshadowed the generational gap and diverging political and literary preferences among the elite. The reaction to it illustrates the intrinsic duality of the Russian elite: culturally Westernized, yet politically conservative. Yet the influence of several Western defenders of the ancien régime on Russia’s conservatives shows that the essentially conservative Russian identity as propagated by Putin these days originally might have been more pan-European than purely Russian.     

"八王之乱"与禁卫军权

作为中国古代专制君权有机构成的禁卫军权,它既是维护君主专制政体正常运作的必要条件,同时也会成为破坏这一体制的重要因素。“八王之乱”是中国历史上规模最大、影响极为深远的一场统治集团争夺最高统治权力的政治斗争。参与政争的太后及外戚杨骏、惠贾皇后、宗室诸王之间围绕宫殿禁廷的控制权而展开了多次较量,对禁卫军权的控制和利用成为斗争中最常见的手段,能否有效掌握禁卫军权往注成为决定胜负的关键。“八王之乱”与禁卫军权的关系,提供了认识中国古代君主专制政治和禁卫军权关系的一个典型个案。     

民主与独裁论战背后的非学理因素

民主与独裁论战背后有很多复杂因素,其中关于一个领袖的争论是非学理因素,也就是说,这场争论的重心已经由学理上的要民主还是要独裁转移到了中国有没有可以独裁的人、由谁独裁、这个人有没有独裁的能力的现实政治问题,非学理因素与学理因素纠扯在一起,使得不同知识分子群体表现出复杂的心理取向。五四以降,政统上的秩序危机与学统上的意义危机之间存在着较大的张力,尽管本文所选取的对象在对现存政府的合法性——道统的认可是有某种程度的共识的,但对于一个领袖谁来做的不同看法则反映出他们对于解决意义危机的犹疑之态,从而也表现出民国思想界道统、政统与学统之间错综复杂的关系。     

论戊戌维新派反专制、兴民权的政治思想

戊戌维新时期,维新派对封建专制主义进行了猛烈的抨击,并对封建专制主义的理论基础——“君权神授”和“君权至上”进行了批判,在此基础上提出了倡民权、建立君主立宪政体的主张。     

Locating Neoliberalism in Dubai: Migrant Workers and Class Struggle in the Autocratic City

Abstract: In recent years, portrayals of neoliberalism in Dubai have often hinged on narratives about the hyper‐exploitation of migrant workers in the city. In this paper I interrogate these narratives by exploring the governance of lower‐waged construction migrants and their recent role in market‐led processes of urbanization. Through a focus on the recent growth of private worker welfare initiatives and dozens of illegal labour strikes led by migrant builders, I draw attention to the fraught and contradictory character of autocratic neoliberalism that operates in the governance of these workers, and point to workers’ bodily capital and the construction labour camp as two emergent sites in which these labour politics are unfolding. I argue that these social reproductive realms of the body and the mass‐worker household have offered a temporary spatial fix to the limitations of autocratic rule in a neoliberalizing city, while also conjuring moments of political possibility for construction migrants.