Meritocracy and resentment

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (9) ◽  
pp. 1146-1164
Author(s):  
Shaun O’Dwyer
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Vernacular Literature ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Meritocracy ◽  
Chinese Political Culture

Lately it has become fashionable to speak of a ‘political meritocracy’ in Chinese political culture, which contrasts with the liberal ‘electoral democracy’ of the west. Here, however, I consider the moral psychology of an emotion that arguably shadows the history of meritocratic practices in China and in liberal democracies: the emotion of resentment, expressed by agents who consider themselves to be wronged by the high-stakes competition for status, income and power inherent in these practices. I examine the unstable nexus between this emotion and these practices and draw on Confucian, Qing era vernacular literature and modern studies of educational credentialism for insights into how the potentially destabilizing, destructive manifestations of resentment can be mitigated and channelled into less destructive, dissenting political and cultural expression. I argue that, on balance, electoral democracies have better resources for mitigating such resentment than does the ‘political meritocracy’ attributed to Chinese political culture.

Prologue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter D. McDonald
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
Intangible Heritage ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Print Literacy

The section introduces Part II, which spans the period 1946 to 2014, by tracing the history of the debates about culture within UNESCO from 1947 to 2009. It considers the central part print literacy played in the early decades, and the gradual emergence of what came to be called ‘intangible heritage’; the political divisions of the Cold War that had a bearing not just on questions of the state and its role as a guardian of culture but on the idea of cultural expression as a commodity; the slow shift away from an exclusively intellectualist definition of culture to a more broadly anthropological one; and the realpolitik surrounding the debates about cultural diversity since the 1990s. The section concludes by showing how at the turn of the new millennium UNESCO caught up with the radical ways in which Tagore and Joyce thought about linguistic and cultural diversity.

Byzantium and Russia. The status of the sovereign as a reflection of political culture (late IX-early XVI century)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dmitriy Kazancev
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
World History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Legal Science ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of

The monograph is devoted to the history of medieval Russian and Byzantine teachings about the power of the sovereign and the reflection of these doctrinal ideas in the practice of public administration of the two peoples. The phenomena of the power of the sovereigns of the Byzantine Empire, Ancient Russia and the Moscow state are investigated and compared, and an attempt is made to answer the question of what is common and different in the foundations of the organization of power of these three states. The Byzantine influence on the political culture of Russia is still a subject of controversy, and therefore it is especially important to analyze the achievements of historical and legal science in this area for a reasoned discussion. For students and teachers, as well as anyone interested in national and world history.

scholarly journals The Politics of Gift Exchange in Early Qajar Iran, 1785–1834

2016 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 550-576 ◽  
Author(s):  
Assef Ashraf
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Political History ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
The Political ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Center Periphery

AbstractThis article uses gift-giving practices in early nineteenth-century Iran as a window onto statecraft, governance, and center-periphery relations in the early Qajar state (1785–1925). It first demonstrates that gifts have a long history in the administrative and political history of Iran, the Persianate world, and broader Eurasia, before highlighting specific features found in Iran. The article argues that the pīshkish, a tributary gift-giving ceremony, constituted a central role in the political culture and economy of Qajar Iran, and was part of the process of presenting Qajar rule as a continuation of previous Iranian royal dynasties. Nevertheless, pīshkish ceremonies also illustrated the challenges Qajar rulers faced in exerting power in the provinces and winning the loyalty of provincial elites. Qajar statesmen viewed gifts and bribes, at least at a discursive level, in different terms, with the former clearly understood as an acceptable practice. Gifts and honors, like the khil‘at, presented to society were part of Qajar rulers' strategy of presenting themselves as just and legitimate. Finally, the article considers the use of gifts to influence diplomacy and ease relations between Iranians and foreign envoys, as well as the ways in which an inadequate gift could cause offense.

scholarly journals Kongen hersker, men regerer ikke - Guvernementalitet, statificering og statspraksis hos Michel Foucault

2018 ◽  
pp. 89-108
Author(s):  
Nicolai Von Eggers ◽  
Mathias Hein Jessen
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
The West ◽  
Historical Investigation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Way Of Thinking

Michel Foucault developed his now (in)famous neologism governmentality in the first of the two lectures he devoted to ’a history of governmentality, Security, Territory, Population (1977-78) and The Birth of Biopolitics (1978-79). Foucault developed this notion in order to do a historical investigation of ‘the state’ or ‘the political’ which did not assume the entity of the state but treated it as a way of governing, a way of thinking about governing. Recently, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has taken up Foucault’s notion of governmentality in his writing of a history of power in the West, most notably in The Kingdom and the Glory. It is with inspiration from Agamben’s recent use of Foucault that Foucault’s approach to writing the history of the state (as a history of governmental practices and the reflection hereof) is revisited. Foucault (and Agamben) thus offer another way of writing the history of the state and of the political, which focuses on different texts and on reading more familiar texts in a new light, thereby offering a new and notably different view on the emergence of the modern state and politics.

Seneca the Elder, the Controuersia Figurata, and the Political Discourse of the Early Empire

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-150
Author(s):  
Matthew Leigh
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Roman History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Turn On ◽  
Specific Event ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Seneca The Elder

This paper studies examples of how exponents of Roman declamation could insert into arguments on the trivial, even fantastic, cases known as controuersiae statements of striking relevance to the political culture of the triumviral and early imperial period. This is particularly apparent in the Controuersiae of Seneca the Elder but some traces remain in the Minor Declamations attributed to Quintilian. The boundaries separating Rome itself from the declamatory city referred to by modern scholars as Sophistopolis are significantly blurred even in those instances where the exercise does not turn on a specific event from Roman history, and there is much to be gained from how the declaimers deploy Roman historical examples. Some of the most sophisticated instances of mediated political comment exploit the employment of universalizing sententiae, which have considerable bite when they are related to contemporary Roman discourse and experience. The declamation schools are a forum for thinking through the implications of the transformation of the Roman state and deserve a place within any history of Roman political thought.

The People

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuri Pines
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The Political ◽  
Imperial History ◽  
Political Role ◽  
The People ◽  
Chinese Political Culture

This chapter explores the reasons for the recurrence of large-scale popular uprisings throughout imperial history. It considers how the idea of rebellion correlates with fundamental principles of Chinese political culture, such as monarchism and intellectual elitism. Moreover, the chapter looks at why the rebellions serve to support rather than disrupt the empire's longevity. These issues are then related to the broader issue of the political role of the “people,” here referring primarily, although not exclusively, to the lower strata, in the Chinese imperial enterprise. In answering these questions, this chapter focuses on ideological and social factors that both legitimated rebellions and also enabled their accommodation within the imperial enterprise.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Stephen Lovell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Public Speaking ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
The Political ◽  
History Of Rhetoric ◽  
Mass Politics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Mass

The introduction considers the place of the spoken word in Russian history, presenting a pre-history of rhetoric and oratory in Russia before the 1860s. Examples are drawn from sermons, literature, theatre, and the universities, as well as from the political practice of Russia’s rulers. The introduction goes on to explain the significance of public speaking in Russia’s ‘stenographic age’, highlighting the challenges of modern mass politics and communications. It further offers comparisons between Russian political culture and the political culture of Britain, Germany, and the United States, paying particular attention to the place of oratory in the political imagination. It concludes by outlining the structure and rationale of the book.

Sedition and Western Liberal Democracies

2018 ◽  
pp. 73-135
Author(s):  
Anushka Singh
Keyword(s):  
Political History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
Course Of Study

The second chapter leads to separate inquiries into the political history of the law of sedition in the three western liberal democracies, namely, England, USA, and Australia, based upon legislations, judicial trials, targets of the law and its relationship with counterterror legislations. In each country, there is one specific moment in relation to sedition that gains prominence through the course of study. The chapter offers a framework of three specific moments, namely, ‘abolition’, ‘restriction’, ‘modernization’, which most effectively define the place of sedition in that particular country.

Ritual under Change: Mongolian Influences on Horse Races and Mountain Divinity Worship in Tibet

Inner Asia ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 361-373
Author(s):  
Elke Studer
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Central Government ◽  
The Political ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
Horse Race ◽  
Autonomous Region ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of

AbstractThe article outlines the Mongolian influences on the biggest horse race festival in Nagchu prefecture in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR).Since old times these horse races have been closely linked to the worship of the local mountain deity by the patrilineal nomadic clans of the South-Eastern Changthang, the North Tibetan plain. In the seventeenth century the West Mongol chieftain Güüshi Khan shaped the history of Tibet. To support his political claims, he enlarged the horse race festival's size and scale, and had his troops compete in the different horse race and archery competitions in Nagchu. Since then, the winners of the big race are celebrated side by side with the political achievements and claims of the central government in power.

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