Dear All!

Please see further down William A. Callahan's fascinating project "National Insecurities: History, Ethics and Chinese Identity," where he will consider how "national humiliation guo-chi" has informed Chinese politics and identity in the 20th century. His articles have been published in both Chinese studies and international relations journals, including the Journal of Contemporary China and Millennium.

See also http://www.dur.ac.uk/politics.department, http://www.dur.ac.uk/EastAsianStudies/cccs.htm, and http://www.dur.ac.uk/chinese.politics.

Please read more about William on our Advisory Board!

Most warmly!
Evelin

National Insecurities: Ethics and Identity in China

Dr William A Callahan
University of Durham
W.A.Callahan@dur.ac.uk
http://www.dur.ac.uk/w.a.callahan

To understand the role of nationalism in China, this project will examine how the national insecurity of National Humiliation constructs Chinese identity in complex ways. National humiliation (guo chi) is curious a phrase that unproblematically dots texts (in both Chinese and English) about China’s domestic and international politics. It is taken for granted that the meaning is clear: Chinese ‘nation’ was ‘humiliated’ by foreign aggression and domestic corruption starting with the Opium War in 1840 and continuing for a century.

Through a close reading of specialised national humiliation texts, this project will show how neither the ‘nation’, nor the ‘humiliation’ is so stable. The research will examine the discourse of national humiliation throughout the 20th century to see how its in meaning and importance shift depending on when and where it is written: the 1920s or the 1990s, in Shanghai, Taipei, Hong Kong or Beijing. Academic, official and popular culture materials from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan will be gathered and analysed to see how historical memory frames the politics of nationalism.

Using these Chinese sources, the project will consider how traditional notions of state security and military security interact with non-traditional concepts of economic, cultural and identity security. Hence, though national identity at first seems to be an issue of domestic politics, my research shows how it directly addresses China’s role in the international system: reclaiming China’s ‘proper’ global role is the objective of many of these writers. In addition to a policy issue, national identity/security is also a theoretical issue: many Chinese international relations theorists reason that to be a great power, the PRC needs more than a grand strategy. It needs to a Chinese-style international relations theory. This research project thus examines the role of culture and identity in international relations, the role of domestic politics in diplomacy, the role of public diplomacy in national politics, and like my research on regional politics it considers the theoretical and policy impact of the ‘Rise of Great Powers’ on international politics.

On the one hand, the research will ask general questions such as
• What is the relation between history, nationalism and foreign policy?
• What is the ethical relation of self and Other in national humiliation discourse?
• Do alternative histories produce alternative nationalisms?
On the other hand, it will consider the specificities of the Century of National Humiliation through questions like
• Is national humiliation a definitively modern theme? What are its relations to previous humiliations such as the ‘barbarian’ Yuan and Qing dynasties?
• What is the relation between national humiliation and national salvation?
• How is the history of national humiliation written differently in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan?

While most considerations of humiliation frame it as a problem that needs to be cured, this research will examine how humiliation is a productive part of the construction of community, in this case the nation. Hence the project will explore two important themes: the role of history in nationalism for China, and the role that memory, history, and ethics play in nationalism more generally.

This project started in 2001, and will be concluded in 2005. It has been funded by grants from the British Academy, British Council, and the European Commission. I conducted research for this project as a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University (2002-03), a Visiting Professor at Renmin University of China (2004), and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Hong Kong (2001).