False dawns or new horizons? Further issues and challenges for Critical Terrorism Studies

While welcoming Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) as an interesting and valuable addition to the discourse on terrorism studies, this article argues that CTS has some serious shortcomings, particularly in those accounts that draw explicitly on a Frankfurt School approach. The article will mainly engage with three areas: the notion and conceptualisation of ‘critique’, the role of emancipation, and the overstatement of the novelty of CTS. It will argue that the way in which Critical Theory has been incorporated into the study of terrorism does not take sufficient account of the wider philosophical implications and shortcomings inherent in Critical Theory. It then suggests that while the concept of emancipation (which drives the normative agenda of CTS) has been advocated, it is very unclear as to its practical application. CTS scholars, it is argued, cannot simply take ‘emancipation’ out of the different contestations surrounding it by either claiming a (somewhat deceptive) transparency of meaning manifested in ‘liberating the oppressed’ or by retreating into an anti-foundationalist stand in which ‘the concrete content of emancipation cannot and need not be determined in the beginning’. Finally, and in relation to the definition of terrorism in particular, the article argues that the novelty of CTS has been overstated.     

Repressed futures: financial derivatives' theological unconscious

Financial derivatives are credited with bringing to the fore a number of sociological and metaphysical problems for modernity, from the instantiation of particular modalities of risk to the destabilization of referentiality in knowledge-claims about the world. This essay argues that derivatives can take on the particular power they hold in such accounts only through a repression of their mathematical technique. Opening up the black box of the mathematical technique through a history of statistics, it argues that the founding trauma animating derivatives' discursive power is the separation of religion from the technical procedures of mathematics and the stochastic models that give form to trading in derivatives. Derivatives' indexical power is a symptom of this trauma. That symptomatology reveals derivatives to be a moral, not just mathematical, problematic.     

试析日本的东南亚研究

日本的东南亚研究目前走在世界前列.日本的东南亚研究在二战以前已经开始,至今已有了长期的积累,取得了令人瞩目的成果.日本的东南亚研究风格严谨,重视微观研究并强调田野调查的重要性,尤其注重资料的收集.本文以京都大学东南亚研究所以及民间组织东南亚学会的杂志为例进行分析,以了解日本东南亚研究的现状.     

西方国际关系研究的新课题、新视角

扫描西方国际关系研究领域最近10年的进展,从10个方面归纳了新的研究课题与探索方向,对各个分支学科及流派融合贯通、相互借鉴的大趋势做了分析。它从国际关系学这个特殊的侧面,揭示了全球化时代对国际问题研究的强烈冲击和再造。     

Toward a Global Theory of Mind: The Potential Benefits of Presenting a Range of IR Theories through Active Learning

Active learning is particularly well-suited to teaching across the range of perspectives inherent in the practice and study of international politics for two key reasons: (1) because of its capacity to highlight how subjective, intersubjective, and contested understandings play an important role in determining outcomes in the ivory tower as well as in the real world and (2) because of the compatibility between underlying theories of knowledge that inform active learning and the newer generation of IR theories including subaltern realism, social constructivism, constitutive theory, and postmodernism. This article explores the potential benefits of presenting these and other norm-oriented theories through active learning. It also discusses ways to overcome barriers to the integration of active learning techniques.     

Global IR through dialogue

This article aims to address how to ensure a two-way ‘dialogue’ across ‘the West/non-West distinction’ in international studies. To this end, I first discuss three different approaches to dialogue, the Socratic, the Habermasian, and the Weberian, and clarify what kind of thing dialogue should be if it is to overcome the ‘West-non-West divide’ and transform the current ‘Western-centric’ IR into a global discipline. I argue that dialogue should be understood as reciprocal feedback from different perspectives for mutual learning. In order to achieve this goal (i.e. mutual learning), I call for an ‘instrumentalist’ approach to dialogue. To elucidate this point, I offer an empirical illustration. The focus here is on dialogue as mutual learning between Western-centric IR theory, more specifically constructivism, and the indigenous experience and knowledge of East Asia.     

Who governs? Religion and order in postcolonial Africa

Abstract

This article explores how mutually productive intersections between religion and governance constitute international political order in sub-Saharan settings. Asking ‘who governs’, I propose religion–governance entanglement as a means of analysing these intersections and rethinking governance, order and religion in Africa. Existing literatures typically characterise the public reliance on religious actors and institutions as being part of a uniquely ‘post-secular’ moment in contemporary world politics or a wider ‘post-Westphalian’ shift in modern governance. Enduring dynamics between postcolonial states and the Global North problematise these framings. In sub-Saharan Africa, religion has a protracted history in postcolonial hybrid governance, overlapping the regional presence of international non-govermental organisations following decolonisation. Using the example of South Sudan, I build on recent analyses of religious-political activities that leave their collective implications under-theorised.     

试论新形势下我省对外汉语人才的需求

对外汉语是适应我国国际交流需要而发展起来的一门新兴学科 ,为我国开展文化、教育和经济交流作出了重要贡献。在经济、教育全球化进程加快的今天 ,对外汉语的作用愈显其重要。在新形势下 ,我省对外汉语教学、涉外事务管理以及双语教学迫切需要对外汉语专门人才。因此 ,建设和发展我省对外汉语学科 ,具有重要的现实意义。     

女性学学科方法论的本土化——美国学者对明末清初社会性别研究的启示

女性学学科的方法论应是符合中国文化语境的社会性别研究.美国学者借用阴阳理论,采用历史还原研究、社会性别关系研究、社会性别分层研究等研究范式研究明清之际的社会性别问题,可以为中国女性学学科方法论的本土化提供启示.