Drawing on a wide range of texts and using an interdisciplinary approach, this volume shows how Chinese and Japanese intellectuals mobilized the past to create a better future. It is especially significant today given a world where, amidst tensions within Asia and the rise of China, East Asian intellectuals and governments constantly find new political meanings in their traditions. The essays illuminate how throughout Chinese and Japanese history, thinkers constantly weaved together nationalism, internationalism and a politics of time. This volume explores a broad range of subjects such as premodern and early modern attempts to conjure a politics of Confucianism, twentieth-century Japanese Marxist interpretations of Buddhism and Japanese and Chinese endeavors to imagine a new world order. In sum, this book shows us why understanding East Asian pasts are essential to making sense of ideological trends in contemporary China and Japan. For example, without understanding Confucianism and how modern intellectuals in China grappled with this body of thought, we would be unable to make sense of the Chinese government’s current promotion of the Chinese classics. This book will interest students and scholars of political science, history, Asian studies, sociology and philosophy.

'Guy Standing's books have, over the years, pieced together a necessary political and intellectual agenda ... His Politics of Time is a splendid and timely addition to this body of important work' Yanis Varoufakis Time has always been political. Throughout history, how we use our time has been defined and controlled by the powerful, and today is no exception. But we can reclaim control, and in this book, the pioneering economist Guy Standing shows us how. The ancient Greeks organised time into five categories: work, labour, recreation, leisure and contemplation. Labour was onerous, whereas leisure was schole, and included participation in public life and lifelong education. Since the industrial revolution, our time has been shaped by capitalism, our jobs are supposed to provide all meaning in life, our time outside labour is considered simply 'time off', and politicians prioritise jobs above all other aspects of a good life. Today, we are experiencing the age of chronic uncertainty. Mental illness is on the rise, some people are experiencing more time freedom while many others are having more and more of their time stolen from them, particularly the vulnerable and those in the precariat. But there is a way forward. We can create a new politics of time, one that liberates us and helps save the planet, through strengthening real leisure and working together through commoning. We can retake control of our time, but we must do it together.

Increased flows of people, capital, and ideas across geographic borders raise urgent challenges to the existing terms and practices of politics. Comparative political theory seeks to devise new intellectual frames for addressing these challenges by questioning the canonical (that is, Euro-American) categories that have historically shaped inquiry in political theory and other disciplines. It does this byanalyzing normative claims, discursive structures, and formations of power in and from all parts of the world. By looking to alternative bodies of thought and experience, as well as the terms we might use to critically examine them, comparative political theory encourages self-reflexivity about the premises of normative ideas and articulates new possibilities for political theory and practice. The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory provides an entry point into this burgeoning field by both synthesizing and challenging the terms which motivate it. Over the course of five thematic sections and thirty-three chapters, this volume surveys the field and archives of comparative political theory, bringing the many approaches to the field into conversation for the first time. Sections address geographic location as a subject of political theorizing; how the past becomes a key site for staking political claims; the politics of translation and appropriation; the justification of political authority; and questions of disciplinary commitment and rules of knowledge. Ultimately, the handbook demonstrates how mainstream political theory can and must be enriched through attention to genuinely global, rather than parochially Euro-American, contributions to political thinking.

This book examines forms of Chinese historical production happening outside the mainstream of academic history, through such new measures as the publication of textbooks, the writing of local history, the preservation of archival materials, and government attempts to establish orthodox historical accounts. The book does so in order to broaden the scope of modern Chinese historiography, when it focuses primarily on a small group of writers such as Liang Qichao, Gu Jiegang, and Fu Sinian. Directly linking historical writings to the formation of the nation, the justification of elite authority, and the cultivation of active citizenry, this book shows that historiography is essential to understanding the uniqueness of Chinese modernity. Also available in paperback.

Organized crime has been on the rise in the Greater China region since the People's Republic opened up its economy and society in the mid-1980s. Today, triads from Hong Kong, Macao, and even Taiwan are involved in businesses in Guangdong Province, and often recruit local Chinese for illegal activities such as extortion, kidnapping, assassinations, and smuggling of illegal aliens.This book provides a detailed and comprehensive study of how the state at the central and local levels has responded to the changing patterns and activities of cross-border crime in Greater China. It discusses the theoretical concept of organized crime; the transnational nature of organized crime in recent years; the significance of studying organized crime in Greater China; and the implications for the national security of other countries such as the United States, Canada, and Australia.The author reviews the history of organized crime and secret societies, and addresses the legal complexities of dealing with criminal groups in the region. He covers such topics as money laundering, the financing of terrorist activities, and regional efforts in fighting terrorism.

This text brings together studies in various aspects of the theory of the capitalist economy. It focuses on major themes of the Marxist tradition that postulate the existence and importance of social relations and structures underlying the esoteric realm of prices, profits, wages, etc.

Exploring themes associated with corruption, sustainable development, and human rights and security, Robert J. Hanlon considers the political dynamics of corporate social responsibility (CSR) within the context of the ‘Asian Century’ and its place in an increasingly multipolar world.

“A fascinating story . . . worth the attention of every student of modern China.” —The Journal of Asian Studies China’s 1911 Revolution was a momentous political transformation. Its leaders, however, were not rebellious troublemakers on the periphery of imperial order. On the contrary, they were a powerful political and economic elite deeply entrenched in local society and well-respected both for their imperially sanctioned cultural credentials and for their mastery of new ideas. The revolution they spearheaded produced a new, democratic political culture that enshrined national sovereignty, constitutionalism, and the rights of the people as indisputable principles. Based upon previously untapped Qing and Republican sources, The Politics of Rights and the 1911 Revolution in China is a nuanced and colorful chronicle of the revolution as it occurred in local and regional areas. Xiaowei Zheng explores the ideas that motivated the revolution, the popularization of those ideas, and their animating impact on the Chinese people at large. The focus of the book is not on the success or failure of the revolution, but rather on the transformative effect that revolution has on people and what they learn from it.

The Chinese themes of the Four Graybeards of Mt. Shang and the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove figure prominently in the art of Momoyama-period Japan (ca. 1575-1625). Kendall Brown proposes that the dense and multivalent implications of aesthetic reclusion central to these paintings made them appropriate for patrons of all classes - the military, who were presently in power, the aristocracy, who had lost power, and the Buddhist priesthood, who forsook power. These paintings, and their attendant messages, thus serve as dynamic cultural agents that elucidate the fundamental paradigms of early modern Japanese society. Unlike traditional art history studies, which emphasize the style and history of art objects, The Politics of Reclusion sets out to reconstruct the possible historical context for the interpretive reception and use of Chinese hermit themes within a specific period of Japanese art. In emphasizing the political dimension of aesthetic reclusion, it introduces into the field of Japanese art history a discussion of the politics of aesthetics that characterizes recent work in the field of Japanese literature. By embedding the paintings within the contexts of politics, philosophy, religion, and even gender, this study restores the reflexive relations between the paintings and their culture and, as such, is one of the first extensive intellectual and social histories of Japanese art in a Western language. It is one that will appeal not only to students of art but to those interested in Japanese literature, history, and philosophy.

An intellectual history of pan-Asianist discourse in the twentieth century. Recent proposals to revive the ancient Silk Road for the contemporary era and ongoing Western interest in China’s growth and development have led to increased attention to the concept of pan-Asianism. Most of that discussion, however, lacks any historical grounding in the thought of influential twentieth-century pan-Asianists. In this book, Viren Murthy offers an intellectual history of the writings of theorists, intellectuals, and activists—spanning leftist, conservative, and right-wing thinkers—who proposed new ways of thinking about Asia in their own historical and political contexts. Tracing pan-Asianist discourse across the twentieth century, Murthy reveals a stronger tradition of resistance and alternative visions than the contemporary discourse on pan-Asianism would suggest. At the heart of pan-Asianist thinking, Murthy shows, were the notions of a unity of Asian nations, of weak nations becoming powerful, and of the Third World confronting the “advanced world” on equal terms—an idea that grew to include non-Asian countries into the global community of Asian nations. But pan-Asianists also had larger aims, imagining a future beyond both imperialism and capitalism. The fact that the resurgence of pan-Asianist discourse has emerged alongside the dominance of capitalism, Murthy argues, signals a profound misunderstanding of its roots, history, and potential.