Social Sciences, Humanities and Liberal Arts: China and the West

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-261
Author(s):  
Liu Kang

For the most part, modern China’s institutions and modes of knowledge have been shaped and predominantly influenced by the West. Since the modern Chinese knowledge system is an integral and inseparable part of that dominant western system, an immanent critique will view Chinese problems not as extraneous, but as intrinsic to modernity, to the world-system or globalization. This article traces the genealogy of modern European modes of knowledge under the rubrics of ‘liberal arts’, as the origin and basis for modern China’s institutions and modes of knowledge, and then examines China’s ‘liberal arts’ as institution and modes of knowledge from the early years of the twentieth century to the present. The paper’s objective is to question the relationship between (Eurocentric) universalism and Chinese exceptionalism within the dominant modern Western institutions and modes of knowledge today.

Author(s):  
Stavros Stavrou Karayanni

References to dances of the East have appeared in Western sources at least since the beginning of the Christian era, yet what has become known and established as "belly dance" seems most closely connected to the World Expositions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 was an event that formally introduced the danse du ventre or belly dance to American audiences and caused a stir in public morals, reformed concepts of the exotic, and revolutionized ideas about the relationship between movement and aesthetics (kinaesthesia). Even though renditions of the dance have varied greatly, there are choreographic elements that make belly dance immediately recognizable and even objectionable to some audiences: elaborate hip articulations, isolations that often layer the choreography and express the texture of the music, and movement on the vertical and horizontal axis without covering a large performance area. In terms of culture, the space it has occupied both in its "native" lands (predominantly but not exclusively, Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon) and in the West continues to be contested in choreographic, social, cultural, and even national politics of the twentieth century and beyond. Like many dance forms, belly dance has had an uneasy and anxious passage through modernity.


2013 ◽  
Vol 83 ◽  
pp. 37-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Darlington

AbstractThe explosion of industrial and political militancy that swept the world during the early years of the twentieth century gave the revolutionary syndicalist movement a prominence and notoriety it would not otherwise have possessed, while at the same time providing a context for syndicalist ideas to be broadcast and for syndicalists to assume the leadership of major strikes in a number of countries. This article sheds new light on the complex nature of the relationship between syndicalism and strikes by means of an international comparative analysis of the revolutionary syndicalist movements in France, Spain, Italy, Britain, Ireland and United States. It presents evidence to suggest ideological/organizational initiative and leadership was of immense importance in understanding how syndicalist movements could be simultaneously a contributory cause, a symptom, and a beneficiary of workers' militancy.


2008 ◽  
pp. 314-339
Author(s):  
Viktor Ye. Yelenskyy

How will religion develop in the 21st century? How optimistic can her outlook be on her future? What will be the meaning of global religious change in the coming decades? Despite being very advanced in the West, the answers to these questions remain problematic. In the famous work, "Returning the Sacred: Arguments for the Future of Religion," D. Bell noted that in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, most thinkers expected that religion would disappear in the twentieth century. At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many sociologists believed that sociologists believed that "At least since the Enlightenment, most Western intellectuals have expected the death of religion as fervently as the ancient Jews of the coming of the Messiah," reminds American religious scholars R. Stark and R. Bindbridge. and the social sciences were particularly distinguished in the prediction of the inevitable triumph of rationality over “prejudice.” The most celebrated figures in sociology, anthropology, and psychology unanimously expressed the belief that their children, or indeed grandchildren, would witness a new era in which, from Freud, the infantile illusions of religion humanity will outgrow ”


2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.


Author(s):  
Paul J. Bolt ◽  
Sharyl N. Cross

The Conclusion reviews the volume’s major themes. Russia and China have common interests that cement their partnership, and are key players in shaping the international order. Both seek better relations with the West, but on the basis of “mutual respect” and “equality.” While the relationship has grown deeper, particularly since 2014, China and Russia are partners but not allies. Thus, their relationship is marked by burgeoning cooperation, but still areas of potential competition and friction. Russia in particular must deal with China’s growing relative power at the same time that it is isolated from the West. While the Russian–Chinese relationship creates challenges for the United States and Europe and a return of major power rivalry, there is also room for cooperation in the strategic triangle comprising China, Russia, and the West. Looking ahead, the world is in a period of dramatic transition.


2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (08) ◽  
pp. 20-26
Author(s):  
Эллада Амирага гызы Аббасова ◽  

The development of international cooperation in the field of culture is extremely important, since it ensures wide and in-depth interaction between states and peoples, makes a real opportunity for dialogue, unites the cultures of the peoples of the world. Two fraternal countries have actively taken root in international cultural exchange; Azerbaijan and Tatarstan. Azerbaijan is a multicultural country that is home to many peoples and ethnic minorities. Representatives of the peoples inhabiting this region are full citizens of the Republic of Azerbaijan, including the Tatars. The radical transformations that befell these countries at the end of the twentieth century influenced future events and their development. The Azerbaijani and Tatar peoples, whose relations have a long history, are linked by a common origin, similarity of language, culture and traditions. The relationship between the two peoples has strengthened even more during the years of independence. Key words: Tatars in Azerbaijan, activities of the Tatar community, cultural exchange, Tugan-Tel, Yashlek, Ak-Kalfak


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gubara Hassan

The Western originators of the multi-disciplinary social sciences and their successors, including most major Western social intellectuals, excluded religion as an explanation for the world and its affairs. They held that religion had no role to play in modern society or in rational elucidations for the way world politics or/and relations work. Expectedly, they also focused most of their studies on the West, where religion’s effect was least apparent and argued that its influence in the non-West was a primitive residue that would vanish with its modernization, the Muslim world in particular. Paradoxically, modernity has caused a resurgence or a revival of religion, including Islam. As an alternative approach to this Western-centric stance and while focusing on Islam, the paper argues that religion is not a thing of the past and that Islam has its visions of international relations between Muslim and non-Muslim states or abodes: peace, war, truce or treaty, and preaching (da’wah).


2007 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 849-888 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. SIDKY

The war in Afghanistan was one of the most brutal and long lasting conflicts of the second half of the twentieth century. Anthropologists specializing in Afghanistan who wrote about the war at the time reiterated the United State's Cold War rhetoric rather than provide objective analyses. Others ignored the war altogether. What happened in Afghanistan, and why, and the need for objective reassessments only came to mind after the September 11th attacks. This paper examines the genesis and various permutations of the Afghan war in terms of causal dynamics embedded in the broader interstate relations of the world system and its competing military complexes during the second half of the twentieth century and changes in that system in the post-Cold War period.


Thesis Eleven ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 149 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zygmunt Bauman ◽  
Aleksandra Kania

This conversation between Zygmunt Bauman and Aleksandra Kania picks up on the themes of crisis, interregnum and the decline of the West. Decline of the West is first of all decline of western civilization. This easily leads to panic about the end of the world; what it really indicates is the limits and constraints of a world system based on nation-states. Spengler and Elias are introduced as interlocutors, in order to open these issues, and those of capitalism, socialism and caesarism. Trump here appears as a wilfully decisionist leader. Populism plays its part, but illiberalism now overpowers neoliberalism. Bauman and Kania engage in this text as interlocutors; this is a record of their own dialogue, and a reminder of its possibilities.


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