Situational Appropriateness in Global Politics: A Yijing Correlative Theory of Infinite Games.

Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2017

Research on Phraseology Across Continents

The second volume of the IDP series contains papers by phraseologists from five continents: Europe, Australia, North America, South America and Asia, which were written within the framework of the project Intercontinental Dialogue on Phraseology, prepared and coordinated by Joanna Szerszunowicz, conducted by the University of Bialystok in cooperation with Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan. The book consists of the following parts: Dialogue on Phraseology, General and Corpus Linguistics & Phraseology, Lexicography & Phraseology, Contrastive Linguistics, Translation & Phraseology, Literature, Cultural Studies, Education & Phraseology. Dialogue contains two papers written by widely recognised phraseologists: professor Anita Naciscione from Latvia and professor Irine Goshkheteliani.The volume has been financed by the Philological Department of the University of Bialysto

Chinese Medicine Student Clubs in Taipei, Taiwan

This thesis focuses on a communal form of transmission of Chinese medicine in contemporary Taiwan: Chinese medicine university student clubs. Offering fundamental Chinese medicine curricula to students and the interested public, the student clubs used to serve as a direct educational steppingstone towards licensed practice. Recent changes in medical education policy, however, made a university degree in Chinese medicine a requirement, thereby pushing informal ways of knowledge transmission into the realm of lay activity. Nevertheless, the clubs remain active and still serve as a community for people interested in Chinese medicine, including those wanting to pursue it professionally. Based on field research conducted in two such university clubs in Taipei in early 2018, this thesis first outlines the challenges and tensions faced and negotiated by those club members with professional ambitions. Not (yet) enrolled in “official” Chinese medicine programs at university but already deeply engaged in learning, they constitute a group of people rarely represented in academic literature, namely those just orienting themselves towards becoming Chinese medicine physicians. These processes of orientation and becoming are shaped by organizational, economic, and epistemological pressures and embedded in transnational movements, imaginaries, and regulatory regimes. Secondly, the thesis examines the function and position of the clubs in the changing landscape of Chinese medical education in Taiwan, as well as in the wider field of transmission of Chinese medicine. I argue that they foster continued interest in Chinese medicine in an environment that has favored biomedicine since the Japanese colonial era and that they, although through paths more winded than before, still contribute to the reproduction of professional Chinese medical expertise. In addition, they provide space for communal forms of healthcare. Lastly, they contribute to the maintenance of everyday healthcare competence in the wider public, or what Arthur Kleinman (1980) has called the “popular sector of healthcare.

Resolute Agency in Confucian Role Ethics.

Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2018

Autos, Allos, and World: Life and Identity in the Situation of Contemporary Global Modernity

By bringing the machinic ontology of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, together with Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela’s machinic theory of autopoiesis, this thesis presents a rethinking of world and identity in what we call the situation of contemporary global modernity. It argues that worlds and identity co-arise with one another through a poietic structuring. Globally, this is defined by organizational processes of autopoietic capitalism that attempts to self-separate from worlds. These processes involve an ontology of abstractive creation destruction, which continuously re-inscribe histories and identities in the image of capitalism. Locally, worlds and identities are structured by allopoietic processes, or, ontological and political machinations of becoming-other. This becoming-other accommodates the global and specific identity of autopoietic capitalism in a local space and history to form poietic subjects. We find that by holding ontology and politics together on equal ground, new implications for political belonging and collective identity are revealed

Confucian Terrorism: Phan Bội Châu and the Imagining of Modern Vietnam

Abstract Confucian Terrorism: Phan Bội Châu and the Imagining of Modern Vietnam by Matthew A BerryDoctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor Wen-hsin Yeh, Chair This study considers the life and writings of Phan Bội Châu (1867-1940), a prominent Vietnamese revolutionary and nationalist. Most research on Phan Bội Châu is over forty years old and is contaminated by historiographical prejudices of the Vietnam War period. I seek to re-engage Phan Bội Châu’s writings, activities, and connections by closely analyzing and comparing his texts, using statistical and geographical systems techniques (GIS), and reconsidering previous juridical and historiographical judgments. My dissertation explores nationalism, modernity, comparative religion, literature, history, and law through the life and work of a single individual. The theoretical scope of this dissertation is intentionally broad for two reasons. First, to improve upon work already done on Phan Bội Châu it is necessary to draw on a wider array of resources and insights. Second, I hope to challenge Vietnam’s status as a historiographical peculiarity by rendering Phan Bội Châu’s case comparable with other regional and global examples.The dissertation contains five chapters. The first is a critical analysis of Democratic Republic of Vietnam and Western research on Phan Bội Châu. I challenge claims that Phan Bội Châu should be interpreted solely as a ‘transitional figure.’ The second chapter investigates Phan Bội Châu’s near-obsession with martyrdom. In it, I explore how Phan weaves together narrative and symbolic strands from Confucian and Catholic repertoires to justify martyrdom on behalf of the Vietnamese nation. The third and fourth chapters provide a detailed account of the famous trial of Phan Bội Châu by the Criminal Commission of Hanoi in 1925. By evaluating the case against Phan Bội Châu in comparison with the research agendas presented in chapter one, I show that both history and law offer flawed ways of interpreting the legacy of a national hero. The fifth chapter presents Phan Bội Châu’s 760-page commentary to the Book of Changes, a classical Confucian text that Phan Bội Châu re-interprets as a structural framework for understanding time, morality, and the inevitability of revolution