Enacting E-Relations with Ancient Chinese Military Stratagem

This study investigates the dynamics of forming organizational relationships enabled by the application of emerging information technology within a large, newly formed Chinese telecom enterprise. It aims to understand the formation process of e-relations in the wider network context. An interpretive case study approach is adopted, which involved the collection of qualitative data through semi-structured interviews and observations. This paper illustrates the importance of culture in shaping e-relations within the network context. It concludes that “the 36 Ji,” ancient Chinese stratagems relating to the Chinese cultural context, help to improve our understanding of the various ways to manage e-relations in Chinese-based businesses

Writing Gender in Early Modern Chinese Women\u27s Tanci Fiction

Women’s tanci, or “plucking rhymes,” are chantefable narratives written by upper-class educated women from seventeenth-century to early twentieth-century China. Writing Gender in Early Modern Chinese Women’s Tanci Fiction offers a timely study on early modern Chinese women’s representations of gender, nation, and political activism in their tanci works before and after the Taiping Rebellion (1850 to 1864), as well as their depictions of warfare and social unrest. Women tanci authors’ redefinition of female exemplarity within the Confucian orthodox discourses of virtue, talent, chastity, and political integrity could be bourgeoning expressions of female exceptionalism and could have foreshadowed protofeminist ideals of heroism. They establish a realistic tenor in affirming feminine domestic authority, and open up spaces for discussions of “womanly becoming,” female exceptionalism, and shifting family power structures. The vernacular mode underlying these texts yields productive possibilities of gendered self-representations, bodily valences, and dynamic performances of sexual roles. The result is a vernacular discursive frame that enables women’s appropriation and refashioning of orthodox moral values as means of self-affirmation and self-realization. Validations of women’s political activism and loyalism to the nation attest to tanci as a premium vehicle for disseminating progressive social incentives to popular audiences. Women’s tanci marks early modern writers’ endeavors to carve out a space of feminine becoming, a discursive arena of feminine appropriation, reinvention, and boundary-crossings. In this light, women’s tanci portrays gendered mobility through depictions of a heroine’s voyages or social ascent, and entails a forward-moving historical progression toward a more autonomous and vested model of feminine subjectivity.https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/ccs/1003/thumbnail.jp

Machiavellian Masculinities: Historicizing and Contextualizing the “Civilizing Process” in Ancient Egypt

This article examines the evidence for warrior burials from periods when the state was decentralized or relatively weak and argues that conceptions of manhood in fact oscillated between an irenic ideal and a more violent counterpart. Drawing upon comparative case studies and advice given by Niccolò Machiavelli to his prince, I argue that hegemonic masculinity in Egypt did not simply reflect the character of the times. Rather, rulers actively promoted the type of masculinity that best served their purpose. To an ambitious local ruler engaged in enlarging his core territory, it was beneficial to appeal to and encourage ideals of valor among potential soldiers and supporters. Once peace had been established, however, violent masculinities proved disruptive. Based on internal evidence as well as observations of authoritarian governments that aimed similarly to solidify their power and pacify their realms, I suggest that pharaohs and their advisors likely employed five specific strategies to neutralize potential competitors and transform an honor-bound warrior aristocracy into courtiers and bureaucrats

Malthus and gender

This article re-reads Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population for his explicit discussion of men and women, masculinity and femininity. A feminist reading is possible, but not undertaken here. Rather, the purpose is simply to demonstrate how ‘gender’ was Malthus's own object of inquiry. Historical actors, perhaps especially economic thinkers, often considered gender far more fully and explicitly than almost all subsequent analysts of them. It therefore remains not just insufficient, but empirically erroneous not to inquire into how ‘men’ and ‘women’ were considered, constructed, instructed, symbolised or valued by the historical actors we study, including those in the political economy canon

How to use cultural biases to win : The intersection of Cultural Theory and Sun Zi’s Art of War

Sun Zi’s Art of War is the oldest military treatise in the world and still the most relevant. It can be applied to any area of human experience that involves conflict of some sort and has been applied to a variety of problems by everyday practitioners and academic scholars alike. Despite its importance, it is mostly ignored by the social scientific community at large. In an attempt to rectify this situation, I examine the Art of War as data from a sociological perspective, namely, that of Cultural Theory, which is used to comprehend sociocultural reality. Furthermore, I invert what might be an ‘intellectually imperialist’ relationship and examine Cultural Theory from the perspective of the Sun Zi. The overall goal is to discover how their mutual interaction might be utilized by scholars in studies of the Sun Zi, Cultural Theory, and related topics as well as how it might allow people to view how they live differently. The results of these close readings demonstrate that the Art of War is rooted in two intertwining cultures, the hierarchic and the individualist—the better for a general to manipulate his enemy and emerge victorious in battle. Cultural Theory, on the other hand, can be fruitfully applied to the issues that concern the Art of War such as knowing one’s enemy and deception, and, thus, used to win

A Rising Tide: The Growing Nuclearisation of the Indian Ocean

"This dissertation examines why the Indian Ocean is becoming, increasingly, the locus of nuclear weapons and platforms. It establishes a nexus between Realism, the desire of states to maximise their power, the role of nuclear weapons in that quest, Seapower, and the importance of the Indian Ocean to the US, China, Pakistan and India. It demonstrates that the Indian Ocean is becoming nuclearised because of the confluence of its growing strategic importance and that nexus.

Doing Good and Ridding Evil in Ming China: The Political Career of Wang Yangming

In Doing Good and Ridding Evil in Ming China: The Political Career of Wang Yangming, George Israel offers an account of this influential Neo-Confucian philosopher’s official career and military campaigns. While his contribution to China’s intellectual history and the outlines of his political life are well known, the relation between his thought and what he did in his capacity as a Ming official has been given less attention. Prior writing on Wang Yangming has passed judgment on his ideas by either idealizing or condemning him for how he treated those he was assigned to govern. Through a detailed reconstruction of his career in the context of issues of empire, ethnicity, and violence, George Israel demonstrates that the truth lies somewhere in the middle

THE POLITICS OF SOUTHERN ASIAN BALLISTIC MISSILES: TOWARDS A FRAMEWORK FOR A MUTUAL RESTRAINT REGIME

ABSTRACT Southern Asia is witnessing the rapid proliferation of ballistic missiles in and around the region. This proliferation phenomenon, together with ongoing and enduring conflicts amongst the “competing parties” (China, India and Pakistan) creates a potential surfacing of “nuclear flashpoint” in the region. This research is an endeavour to explore the causes of this nuclear and missile race amongst the Southern Asian powers (China, India, and Pakistan) with the help of the theory of strategic culture. This study proceeds in the following way: it assesses the geo-political forces at work in the region; examines the strategic culture of China, India and Pakistan; traces the motivation of these countries for the strategic weapon programmes and delivery systems; describes their nuclear doctrines and command and control structures; and the current status of their ballistic missile programmes. It then addresses the prospects for Pakistan, India and China to move towards a system of mutual restraint regime, in which international regime theory is discussed as a conceptual framework; cold war models of strategic arms limitation and reduction models are studied and the important role of Confidence and Security Building Measures (CSBMs) is identified. The same procedure is then applied in the context of Southern Asian region; problem areas identified with the help of CSBMs tools; and conclusions reached as to the potential to move beyond CSBMs into full restraint regime. The study finds the very nature of the overlapping threat perceptions and the continuance of the unresolved issues and disputes as the main hurdles in the successful restraint models. Recommendations are therefore made for more comprehensive CSBMs leading to a Southern Asian regional version of cold war prototypes of strategic arms limitation and reduction for a more comprehensive and fruitful restraint model, which might then be applied and adhered to at the global level. The study therefore opens new avenues of research and progress in the discipline