Rearranging the figures on the tapestry: what Japanese direct translation of European texts can tell us about kanbun kundoku

Abstract

From the earliest stages of reading and writing in the Japanese archipelago, the methodology of kanbun kundoku (vernacular reading of literary Sinitic) has been an important means of engagement with Chinese texts. The kanbun kundoku process of glossing and syntactic rearrangement transforms a literary Sinitic source text into a kind of ‘translationese’ that preserves as closely as possible the diction and structure of the original while making it accessible to readers who may have little or no competence in spoken varieties of Chinese. Yet whether this process should be understood as fundamentally a form of translation is a matter of debate among scholars. In this article, I argue that looking at the early modern phenomenon of ōbun kundoku, by which Japanese scholars applied kundoku methodology to European languages (including Latin, Portuguese, Dutch and English), can offer a valuable perspective. These forms of direct translation are an important although comparatively under-studied aspect of Japanese encounters with European texts and they offer an instructive perspective on kanbun kundoku: the longstanding Japanese method of engagement with foreign-language texts that was their inspiration. The theoretical writings of Japan’s early modern scholars of Dutch unmistakably acknowledge a basic commonality between these two forms of kundoku while also clarifying the ways in which the application of kundoku to European languages was distinct from application to literary Sinitic.     

Introduction: studying political violence while indicted – against objectivity and detachment

ABSTRACT

Knowledge construction should seek to embrace empiricism – the deriving of knowledge from data and experience – while not confusing this with a false notion of objectivity. As a truly objective approach is not only difficult but likely impossible to establish, it obscures the burden placed upon social scientists by sociologist C. Wright Mills who advocated for the study of society in order to change it. This action-centric, emancipatory-focused approach is a hallmark of the critical turn in the investigation of political violence. Regardless of how neutral scholars and teachers may try to appear, what does it mean when our audience – our readers, colleagues and students – glimpse behind the curtain and begin to understand knowledge producers as three-dimensional political actors with subjectivities, positionalities and passions? Upon embarking on a multi-semester research and writing process with undergraduate students, what did it mean to begin such a relationship only hours after being released from federal custody, and how did my position vis-à-vis powerful juridical discourses shape our collaborative scholarship and the process of shared knowledge construction?     

Journalism education: bridging media and cultural studies

ABSTRACT

Journalism is more than an ensemble of newsgathering and writing techniques. It is, firstly, a way of viewing and writing about the social world for the public benefit. Similarly, journalism is a means of fomenting conversations in the public domain about events and issues of immediate public interest. While much of journalism training concerns the techniques of text production, too little attention is given to educating students in the ontology or ‘mindset’ within which those techniques and conventions work. Almost no attention is given to the epistemology or ‘research’ approaches by which journalists monitor social phenomena.

Short of calling for a more thorough grounding (as a framework) in critical thinking, we suggest that a more constructivist approach be taken to journalism training. This approach need not be prejudiced towards the more technical and functionalist approaches evident in so many textbooks on the subject. Constructive learning is described by some scholars as ‘active, cumulative, goal-directed, diagnostic and reflective behaviour’ (Breen 1996: 4). All these behaviours are found in journalism practice, and should frame both words in journalism training. This requires a more interpretive approach that teaches the practice of journalism as many of the same processes commonly understood as learning.     

“Dynamite bombs of New York manufacture”: the terrorist perspective in the Stevensons,Greer and James

This article examines the first three literary reactions to Fenian terrorism: Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson’s co-written novel, The Dynamiter (1885); Tom Greer’s A Modern Daedalus (1885) and Henry James’ The Princess Casamassima (1886). Although these works approach terrorism from different angles, they set the pattern for subsequent treatments that will “give primary voice to the perspective of the terrorist”. “Zero”, the hapless bomb-makers in The Dynamiter, is a surprisingly urbane, sympathetic figure; Greer illustrates both the necessity and the moral quandaries of terrorism and James shows considerable sympathy for anarchism’s causes, even though terrorism threatens high art and culture. I also hope to show that fiction can provide excellent source material for studying the cultural imaginary of terrorism and, by extension, make a bid for the inclusion of literature scholars under the umbrella of Critical Terrorism Studies.     

Observing incumbent abuses: improving measures of electoral and competitive authoritarianism with new data

Electoral and competitive authoritarian regimes have become a major focus of comparative research. Yet, finding measures that distinguish these regimes from democracies is challenging, especially for scholars conducting large-N cross-national research, as this conceptual distinction rests on incumbent abuses that are difficult to systematically observe. This article reviews common measures that simply utilize extant regime indicators to draw the line with democracy, demonstrates their poor performance in mirroring a benchmark from case-based measurement, and illustrates the adverse implications for theory building. The article then shows how data on incumbent abuse from the National Elections Across Democracy and Dictatorship (NELDA) and Varieties of Democracy (VDEM) projects can be utilized to construct alternative measures. A NELDA-based measure far outperforms extant alternatives in mirroring the case-based benchmark. The article then discusses why a VDEM-based alternative should be a superior option once data is available and how one might be constructed.     

Totalitarian tendencies in drone strikes by states

Lethal drones or unmanned combat aerial vehicles have been used to kill thousands of persons suspected of complicity in terrorism. Despite concerns aired by legal scholars that drone strikes outside areas of active hostilities violate international law, the US government contends that targeted killing is distinct from assassination, and has persisted in the practice to the point where it has become normalised as a standard operating procedure and taken up by other nations as well. Drone strikes have been championed by Western politicians as a “light footprint” approach to war, but the institutional apparatus of remote-control killing rests on totalitarian, not democratic principles. Secretive targeting criteria and procedures are withheld from citizens under a pretext of national security, resulting in a conflation of executive with judicial authority and an inversion of the burden of proof, undermining the very framework of universal human rights said to be championed by modern Western states. Moreover, lethal drones hovering above in the sky threaten all persons on the ground with the arbitrary termination of their lives and as such represent a form of terrorism no less than the suicide bombings of jihadist groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS.     

Measuring the Media Agenda

Measuring media attention to politically relevant topics is of interest to a broad array of political science and communications scholars. We provide a practical guide for the construction, validation, and evaluation of time series measures of media attention. We review the extant literature on the coherence of the media agenda, which provides evidence in support of and evidence against the emergence of a single, national news agenda. Drawing expectations from this literature, we show the conditions under which a single national news agenda is likely to be present and where it is likely to be absent. We create 90 different keyword searches covering a wide range of topics and gather counts of stories per month from 12 national and regional media sources with data going back to 1980 where possible. We show using factor analysis wide variance in the strength of the first factor. We then estimate a regression model to predict this value. The results show the conditions under which any national source will produce time series results consistent with any other. Key independent variables are the average number of stories, the variance in stories per month, and the presence of any “spike” in the data series. Our large-scale empirical assessment should provide guidance to scholars assessing the quality of time series data on media coverage of issues.     

Response to Cilluffo and Gergely

Research on the motives of those who engage in small group political violence typically takes a qualitative or quantitative form. I argue that researchers should seek to understand why people engage in small group political violence, and that the best way to achieve such understanding is to employ both. The advantages of this approach are discussed in this paper, as is the importance of recognizing that the activities of all actors in any given violent location, including state actors, should be accounted for in research.     

In defence of intra‐disciplinarity: ‘European studies’, the ‘New Regionalism’, and the issue of democratisation

This article argues in favour of an intra‐disciplinary rapprochement between ‘EU studies’ and those working in the ‘new regionalism’ (NR). I take the issue of democratisation as an example of how scholars of both the EU and NR could usefully learn from each other. European Union studies has recently undergone a ‘normative turn’, through which inter/intra‐disciplinarity has received a fillip; I argue that at both conceptual and empirical levels, new regionalist studies would benefit from a similar mainstreaming of democracy issues and a similarly open approach to inter/intra‐disciplinarity. Moreover, EU studies scholars would benefit both conceptually (an escape from the ‘N=1’ problem that has plagued integration theory, the adoption of a clear critical theory perspective) and empirically (further cases in which to test hypotheses and generate data) from such a rapprochement.1 I would like to thank the three anonymous referees who made such supportive and helpful comments on the first draft of this article. View all notes     

Electoral Competition,the State,and Communal Violence: A Reply

In a review of my 2004 book Votes and Violence,Ashutosh Varshney and Joshua Gubler criticize various aspects of the book and its electoral incentives theory. The implication is that Varshney's own local civic engagement theory provides a superior explanation for communal violence. This article responds to the specific criticisms of my arguments about the role of electoral incentives and state action, or inaction, in leading to communal violence, showing why these are wrong or unimportant. I cite three important recent studies, by scholars working independently of me, who come to the same conclusions I do about the key role of electoral incentives and the importance of the state. I also cite the work of other scholars, based on careful fieldwork, who have questioned Varshney's characterization of the causes of conflict and peace in the cities he discusses in his own 2002 book Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life.     

‘Good governance’ and ‘state failure’: genealogies of imperial discourse

Current international policy discourse routinely characterizes the condition of African states in terms of either ‘good governance’, on one hand, or ‘fragility’ and ‘failure’, on the other. This conceptual vocabulary and analytical approach has become entrenched within the public imagination more broadly, and is reproduced in academic analysis, largely without serious questioning or critique. Some scholars, however, have argued that the entire discourse of ‘state failure’ should be rejected as a valid approach to understanding, analysis and explanation of social and political conditions in Africa. This position seeks both to demonstrate the analytical and explanatory emptiness of the conceptual framework of ‘state failure’, and to reject the uncritical adoption of strands of imperial discourse by academic scholars. This article contributes to this position by examining the failed state discourse as a modern form of racialized international thought. It argues that the discourse must be recognized as a contemporary successor to a much longer genealogy of imperial discourse about Africa and other non-European societies.     

Grabbing attention: An experimental investigation of headlines during campaigns

In this article, we review two research programs that could benefit from a more extensive dialogue: media and policy studies of agenda setting. We focus on three key distinctions that divide these two robust research programs: the agenda(s) under investigation (public versus policymaking), the typical level of analysis (individual versus systemic), and framing effects (individual versus macro level). We map out these differences and their impacts on understanding the policy process. There is often a policy disconnect in the agenda-setting studies that emanate from the media tradition. Though interested in the effects of political communication, scholars from this tradition often fail to link the media to policy outcomes, policy change, or agenda change. Policy process scholars have increasingly rejected simple linear models in favor of models emphasizing complex feedback effects. This suggests a different role for the media—one of highlighting attributes in a multifaceted political reality and involvement in positive feedback cycles. Yet, political communication scholars have for the most part been insensitive to these potentials. We advocate a shared agenda centering on the role of the media in the political system from an information processing framework, emphasizing the reciprocal effects of each on the other.     

Historical sociology,international relations and connected histories

This article addresses three recent developments in historical sociology: (1) neo-Weberian historical sociology within International Relations; (2) the ‘civilizational analysis’ approach utilized by scholars of ‘multiple modernities’; and (3) the ‘third wave’ cultural turn in US historical sociology. These developments are responses to problems identified within earlier forms of historical sociology, but it is suggested each fails to resolve them precisely because each remains contained within the methodological framework of historical sociology as initially conceived. It is argued that their common problem lies in the utilization of ‘ideal types’ as the basis for sociohistorical analysis. This necessarily has the effect of abstracting a set of particular relations from their wider connections and has the further effect of suggesting sui generis endogenous processes as integral to these relations. In this way, each of the three developments continues the Eurocentrism typical of earlier approaches. The article concludes with a call for ‘connected histories’ to provide a more adequate methodological and substantive basis for an historical sociology appropriate to calls for a properly global historical sociology.     

Competing interests and technology policies: A rational choice approach

This paper explores the competition over technology policies by various domestic and foreign interest groups or stakeholders. An expected utility model is used to simulate the competition over the nature and direction of the American supersonic transport (SST) program in the 60s and 70s. The simulation shows that this rational choice approach offers a powerful analytical tool for examing technology and other foreign economic policy processes. The expected utility simulation allows for a more rigorous inspection of the explanations presented in the political economy literature which should allow scholars to’ further explore expectations and conclusions about strategic trade and other foreign economic policies.     

历史视角下日本学界对东亚共同体的审视

日本学界通过不同的历史视角审视日本与东亚共同体的关系,并设定日本在东亚区域合作中的角色。积极看待古代东亚历史的日本学者,主张吸取近代日本殖民主义和帝国主义教训,日本应积极投身东亚共同体建设。强调东亚历史多样性和差异性的日本学者,主张日本应该借用西方的价值观念和东亚区域外的政治力量,进行东亚区域合作。而延续近代日本"脱亚入欧"历史视角的日本学者,坚决反对日本投身东亚共同体建设。     

Beyond Instrumentalism: A Relational Approach to Negotiation

Instrumentalism, the philosophy that rational people will behave in ways that promote self‐interest, is often the default assumption that scholars and practitioners rely upon when interpreting and predicting human behavior in negotiations. Instrumentalism, however, need not be the only lens through which negotiators and negotiations are viewed. In this article, we discuss some of the problems associated with too heavy a reliance on instrumentalism and propose an alternative relational approach, one in which negotiators see themselves as agents embedded in a system of relationships, who are motivated to understand and advance the welfare of others. We discuss some of the characteristics that differentiate negotiators who adopt a relational versus instrumental approach and invite scholars and practitioners to consider the implications of viewing negotiations through a more relational lens.     

Authoritarian Regimes and Pro-Democracy Semi-Oppositions: The End of the Portuguese Dictatorship (1968–1974) in Comparative Perspective

This article discusses the conditions of failure and success of pro-democracy semi-oppositions to authoritarian regimes through a comparative study of the last phase of the Portuguese authoritarian regime (1968–1974). It specifies and reformulates Juan Linz's concept of semi-opposition. In Portugal, contrary to Linz's argument, the moderate pro-democracy semi-oppositions participated in the regime's electoral moments and tended to take the greatest possible advantage of these periods so as to discredit the regime and to demonstrate that it could not be transformed from within. In order to make sense of this paradox, scholars should look at the institutional legacies and frameworks of authoritarian regimes. Specifically, we argue that the Portuguese semi-opposition failed because the institutional heritage of the Estado Novo, at the moment of the leadership succession, provided no opportunities for a reformist democratizing coalition to assert itself and promoted instead the radicalization of the semi-opposition. Paradoxically, it was the more liberal institutional framework of the regime that made a political change guided by the democratic semi-opposition impracticable.     

An Integrated Model for Communicating Within and About Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives have two main objectives, namely, contributing to sustainable development; and adding strategic value for organisations. These objectives imply that organisations should communicate about CSR initiatives with stakeholders to add strategic value, whilst also communicating within CSR with the beneficiaries of these initiatives to contribute to sustainable development. In the field of CSR communication, however, the majority of the literature focuses on communication about CSR, while communication with the beneficiaries within CSR is often overlooked. This article presents an integrated model for communication both within and about CSR initiatives. The constructs of such integrated communication are analysed in order to identify similarities and point out differences. The ultimate aim is to present a holistic model for CSR communication that covers the content, nature and aims of such communication. The model is based on a literature study involving the two-way symmetrical approach, the reflective paradigm, strategic communication management and the participatory approach to communication for social change. Integrating communication within and about CSR in a single model is a complex undertaking, which entails incorporating constructs of communication from diverse theoretical fields flowing from different meta-theoretical assumptions. To date, this model is the first attempt to integrate communication within and about CSR on a theoretical level.     

Tiananmen as treated by the Christian Science Monitor

Focusing on one medium's specific responses to a specific news crisis, print coverage by the Christian Science Publishing Company on the Tiananmen Square incident is compared to that of the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, New York Times (Springfield, MA), Sunday Republican, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. The Christian Science Monitor, a newspaper internationally known for its objective, balanced reportage, is described and discussed, particularly regarding its pre‐ and post‐Tiananmen coverage. Its 185 articles beginning June 4, 1989, until a year later are delineated, along with the eight that appeared in the Christian Science Publishing Company's new monthly magazine, World Monitor. The argument is advanced that, despite major changes, the Monitor remains an invaluable media resource to both scholars and the lay public for unbiased reportage.     

From development by effects to development by contexts via communication

The vision shared by most development scholars and practitioners today is for beneficiary driven development, the impediment and the means to which both lie with communication. The debate concerns the communication approach that would best realise this vision. This paper examines and critically comments on two major approaches, Development Communication and Development Support Communication, though it argues for neither of these. Rather, it draws on the 'Another Development-Another Communication' paradigm and proposes a Participatory Communication approach, which both resonates in people's own moral values, conforms to the reality of many communities in Africa, and offers better prospects of achieving beneficiary-driven development.