by Dan Smyer Yü (2011)
"Focusing on contemporary Tibetan Buddhist revivals in the Tibetan regions of the Sichuan and Qinghai Provinces in China, this book explores the intricate entanglements of the Buddhist revivals with cultural identity, state ideology, and popular imagination of Tibetan Buddhist spirituality in contemporary China. In turn, the author explores the broader socio-cultural implications of such revivals. Based on detailed cross-regional ethnographic work, the book demonstrates that the revival of Tibetan Buddhism in contemporary China is intimately bound with both the affirming and negating forces of globalization, modernity, and politics of religion, indigenous identity reclamation, and the market economy. The analysis highlights the multidimensionality of Tibetan Buddhism in relation to different religious, cultural, and political constituencies of China. By recognizing the greater contexts of China's politics of religion and of the global status of Tibetan Buddhism, this book presents an argument that the revival of Tibetan Buddhism is not an isolated event limited merely to Tibetan regions; instead, it is a result of the intersection of both local and global transformative changes. The book is a useful contribution to students and scholars of Asian religion and Chinese studies"--
Raia Prokhovnik and Gabriella Slomp
"The idea of international political theory after Hobbes is a timely and lively focus through which to raise questions about international politics. Contributors explore Hobbes views on contemporary international political theory and on international relations in the context of the history of political thought and Hobbesian realism"--
Mariana C. Zinni
This exciting new book is the first comprehensive study on mimesis in the work of fray Bernardino de Sahagun. The volume deals with three concepts that cannot be avoided when thinking about the discursive colonization that took place in New Spain: mimesis (and its correlate, mimicry), hermeneusis and narration, and their relationship with a monological and monolithic Christian narrative coming from Europe. This narrative started to tremble because of the heterogeneity of the non-European discourses confronting the Occidental rationality that was arriving with the conquistadors and friars. The author suggests the presence of a narrative pact crystallized in the use of Nahua metaphors with Christian content and of discursive models that don't belong to European rhetoric, i.e., the huehuetlatolli, an ancient form of exhortation and courtly speech, among other rhetorical devices. The primary objective of these textual practices was to reshape the symbolic world of the Nahuas from the inside. But this rhetorical operation would also contaminate Hispanic discourses. This study proposes a reading guided by the concept of "discursive colonization" -paying special attention to the different levels of imagination and narration-, and its hermeneutic ambiguities, in order to analyze the dominant symbolic construction of European modernity, now deeply imbricated with processes of conquest and evangelization.--Publisher.
Sarah Allan
"Four Warring States texts discovered during the late twentieth-century challenge longstanding understandings of Chinese intellectual history. The discovery of previously unknown philosophical texts from the Axial Age is revolutionizing our understanding of Chinese intellectual history. Buried Ideas presents and discusses four texts found on brush-written slips of bamboo and their seemingly unprecedented political philosophy. Written in the regional script of Chu during the Warring States period (475-221 BCE), all of the works discuss Yao's abdication to Shun and are related to but differ significantly from the core texts of the classical period, such as the Mencius and Zhuangzi. Notably, these works evince an unusually meritocratic stance, and two even advocate abdication over hereditary succession as a political ideal. Sarah Allan includes full English translations and her own modern-character editions of the four works examined: Tang Yú zhi dao, Zi Gao, Rongchengshi, and Bao xun. In addition, she provides an introduction to Chu-script bamboo-slip manuscripts and the complex issues inherent in deciphering them"--From publisher's website.
Michel Foucault
When one defines 'order' as a sorting of priorities, it becomes beautifully clear what Foucault is doing here. He weaves an intensely complex history of thought. He dips into literature, art, economics and even biology.