By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers
Singapore and 'Asia'
In Singapore, the imposition of unity
and conformity has been supervised closely by a leadership imbued with a strong
sense of its unique capacity to create a well-ordered political, social, and
economic structure resting on a high degree of harmony and consensus.
Singapore's authoritarian governance has been both concealed and justified
by its Confucianist style of politics.
Lee Kuan Yew, who laid the
foundations of a system and also his son as Singapore's third Prime Minister
continued this appropriation of Confucius, seeking to defend illiberalism by
grounding it in an appeal to ancient and ineffable Chinese traditions.
Nonetheless, when seeking to wrest sovereignty from British colonial
control, Lee Kuan Yew had recourse to universal civil and
political rights, such as the freedom to organize and to hold peaceful
protests. And he aptly warned: 'Repression is a habit that grows’. And so it
has grown in Singapore, where the defense of universal human rights has been
reversed, replaced by a questionable and politically convenient invocation of
'local' values. Elections in Singapore are tightly controlled to minimize
opportunities for genuine competition. Individuals who run against People's
Action Party (PAP) candidates, and electorates that vote them into parliament,
suffer the consequences at the hands of a government with very little tolerance
for such behavior. The ruling party punishes electoral districts that do not
toe the line while opposition politicians are harassed and intimidated
relentlessly. The Internal Security Act - with its provisions for indefinite
detention without trial has sometimes been used against political opponents.
But the civil law has proved just as useful, with PAP figures successfully
prosecuting defamation cases and bankrupting opponents in previous years.1
Lee Hsien Loong
Also, aspects of public and private life
are controlled through education, health, housing, employment, pensions, and
the regulation of associational life. Not surprisingly, the government rejects
the concept of 'civil society' in the sense that this is a social space free of
government regulation or surveillance. In its place, we find a concept of
'civic society' emphasizing duties and obligations to the community rather than
'individual rights'. Explanation of the differences between 'civic' and 'civil'
in formal discourses in Singapore are phrased in terms of communitarian versus
individualistic values and practices. Civic values are of course those depicted
as communitarian, emphasizing 'self-help, social responsibility and public
courtesy' and working for the 'larger good of society'. Civil values, which
include individual rights such as free speech, are depicted as far less worthy
and representative only of 'special interests'.2
Singapore's political system has
deployed culture in general, and Confucianism in particular, as a political
tactic against the legitimacy of political opposition. This must be understood
against the background of rapid economic change in Singapore since full
independence in 1965, and the social and political consequences of such change.
In the early post-independence period, modernization was vigorously promoted
and 'traditional cultural values' were regarded as inhibiting the attitudes
needed to create an economically robust state. After just a decade and a half,
however, the PAP perceived that it could well fall victim to its own success,
for modernization very often meant political liberalization as well. Attention
therefore shifted to readjusting official ideology and, with it, the
cultural/political orientation of the population to achieve modernization sans
liberalization.
A major turning point came when the
PAP's share of the popular vote started to decline. By the late 1970s Prime
Minister Lee began to express public concern about too much 'Westernization'.
This included the development of a more open, critical public political culture
manifest in the electorate's growing willingness to listen to a variety of
alternative ideas about politics and government and to vote for opposition
candidates. Particular attention was given to the 'problem' of the Singaporean
Chinese, with Lee Kuan Yew expressing concern about the corrosive
effects that Western influences were having on this population group.3
Singaporean Chinese, viewed as
especially vulnerable to the insidious effects of Western culture, therefore
became a priority for re-education. Since they also constituted around
three-quarters of the population, with Malays, Indians, and other smaller groups
making up the remainder, they happened to be politically the most significant.
Thus traditional Confucian ethics were recruited to bring the ethnic Chinese
firmly back under the ideational control of the government. In as far as
Confucianism is Chinese, Singaporean Chinese could be expected to feel a
'natural' affinity with it. This project was difficult to promote, however,
partly because Singaporean Chinese had never had any particular familiarity
with Confucian teachings.4 Nonetheless, the stereotypical equation of
Confucianism with Chineseness
worked well, if measured by the degree of tacit acceptance with which it was
met. In 1983 the Institute of East Asian Philosophies (IEAP) was founded to
advance the understanding of Confucian philosophy so that it could be
reinterpreted to meet the needs of contemporary society.5
Elements of harmony, consensus, and
society before self - the very essence of what was later to become the core of
'Asian values' were emphasized as culturally authentic and explicitly
contrasted with the dissent and individualism said to mark Western liberal
democracies. One IEAP scholar proposed to dispense with the oppositional
elements of democracy altogether, arguing that 'the genuine consent of the
people going through the process of selection in a one-party state is ...
democratic' and that whereas Western democracy allowed debate both inside and
outside government, the 'Eastern form of democracy' allowed the government to
reach a consensus 'through closed debate with no opposition from without'.6
The PAP nonetheless wanted Singapore to
be called a democracy, thus shoring up its credentials as a modern state
commanding respect in the international sphere where no state could call itself
authoritarian. Postcolonial states such as Singapore had argued for
independence based on self-determination and all the normative implications
this principle has for democracy. But substance generally mattered less than
appearances. In Singapore, as in other authoritarian states, the challenge for
the PAP in the postcolonial order was to revise democracy so as to retain the
formal institutions while eliminating any substantive challenges to their
monopoly of power. The very civil and political liberties so passionately
argued for under British colonial rule were now repudiated at the point of
inconvenience to new power-holders. There is nothing new in partisanship and
self-interest defeating a general principle. What is of interest here is how
particularistic cultural principles were harnessed to this cause.
Regardless of the actual lack of
Confucian knowledge or understanding among the Singaporean Chinese, the fact
that a quarter of Singapore's population was not ethnically Chinese meant that
those belonging to ethnic minority groups were alienated by the emphasis on
what was seen as a purely Chinese program. Precisely because Confucianism was equated
with Chineseness, it could not neutrally embrace a population that was
also Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Sikh, and so on. However, the
political project of creating a set of values to contrast with those of the
West could not be abandoned. Confucianization therefore
gave way to a 'shared national values' campaign. Again this was initiated and
closely supervised by the PAP government, being formally introduced in a white
paper entitled 'Shared Values' released in 1991. In addition to stressing the
dangers of 'Western values, four key values were identified as common to all
the major 'Asian' traditions: 'the placing of society above self; upholding the
family as the basic building block of society; resolving major issues through
consensus rather than contention; and stressing racial and religious harmony'.7
Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad
The set of Confucian values promoted
earlier was therefore transformed into a set of generic' Asian values'.
Packaging what was simply a very conservative set of social and political
values was not only more suitable for Singapore's diverse population but more
readily available elsewhere in the region, especially
in neighboring Malaysia where the then Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad was keen to promote Asian
values as the basis for his particular brand of anti-Westernism while shoring
up the legitimacy of his political position. Since then, the Asian values
discourse has moved back and forth between a narrower focus on 'Confucian values'
and the broader Asianist approach, depending on the country concerned
and the audience. But Confucianism, like any relatively complex system of
thought, whether embodied in religions like Islam and Christianity or
ideologies like socialism and liberalism, contains ambiguities and
contradictions accommodating a variety of interpretations.
Interpreting
Confucius 'Confucianism' names a complex set of ideas almost universally
assumed to have originated with a historical figure known in English as
Confucius, otherwise rendered as Kongzi,
Kung Ch'iu, Kung Tzu, or K'ung Fu-tzu. A native of Shandong province, Confucius
is thought to have lived during the transition from the Spring to Autumn period
of the Zhou Dynasty from around 551 to 479 Be, when chaos and disorder attended
the breakdown of political and social order. The original teachings attributed
to Confucius - contained largely in the collection of sayings known as The
Analects or Lunyu - reflect a concern with
establishing lasting peace and harmony in social and political life. It was a
formula for what we might now call 'good governance' incorporating a strict set
of rules, rituals and relationships supporting a moral order based on virtue.
It resembled a feudal order in which the emperor or 'son of Heaven' stood
firmly at the helm. Although authoritarian, it placed an unequivocal emphasis
on benevolence and leadership by moral example rather than force or coercion,
and enjoined the ruler to govern not in his own interests, but in the interests
of those under his care. This approach was deemed likely to engage widespread
acquiescence and contentment among the populace at large, and was therefore
much more rational and efficacious than blunt instruments of coercion.
Rulers were regarded as
successful to the extent that their conscientious duty of care attracted
uncoerced deference, loyalty and obedience, producing widespread peace and
harmony. While maintaining the need for hierarchy as a vital principle of this
order, meritocracy was introduced as a means of nurturing moral qualities and
making the best use of available talent. This system further implied duties and
obligations according to one's place in the system. Family relations were
rigidly defined according to gender and birth order. These relations were
projected onto the wider sphere of society and state, with the emperor standing
as the ultimate father figure. Society and state were conceived as a single
organic entity with no distinction between the political and social realms.
Despite usually being categorized in religious terms - possibly because of
references to the 'way of heaven' and the emperor as the 'son of heaven', and
due to a metaphysical conception of heaven more generally as a source of virtue
- Confucianism is an essentially secular tradition of thought. It also displays
a thoroughgoing humanism with clear universalist assumptions that match
anything produced in European philosophy.8
Confucian thought was
developed by generations of scholars with figures as diverse as the mystical
Mencius (Mengzi or Meng Ke) to the rationalist His in Tzu contributing
highly influential interpretations. The contrast can be illustrated by
reference to their views of human nature. While Mencius championed the inherent
goodness of the human (equating goodness with what was natural), His in Tzu
regarded it as essentially evil, and believed that only training and education
could overcome it. Different Chinese emperors adopted and developed aspects of
the tradition in ways that added to its complex evolution. Confucianism as a
tradition of social and political thought, then, has not maintained a single,
consistent and uncontested body of doctrine no tradition does. It owes much to
successive thinkers and their attempts to maintain its practical relevance at
different times and according to different demands. It is not a 'neatly
packaged organic whole in which the constitutive parts fall naturally into
their places' but has rather displayed the usual ruptures of cultural
constructions, 'being forged and re-forged, configured and re-configured'.9
Nor was Confucianism
the only body of thought to develop in China. Scholars of Chinese
political philosophy can point to the existence of anarchists, humanitarian
socialists, legalists, ceremonialists, absolutists, cooperativists,
imperialists, and constitutional monarchists. There are more distinct
philosophical traditions associated with Taoism and Buddhism, each of which has
had a significant impact. It would therefore be a serious mistake to simply
conflate Chineseness with Confucianism -
a mistake parallel to conflating European social and political thought with
liberalism while ignoring conservatism, socialism, and other systems of
ideas.
Fact is however also
that 'Confucianism', as a word and doctrine, may have a relatively recent
origin, emerging in the sixteenth century when Jesuits who traveled to China
sought to encapsulate a particular complex of ideas encountered there.10
And the historical
figure of Confucius that emerged in the twentieth century is more likely a
product fashioned over just a few centuries, rather than millennia, and
performed 'by many hands, ecclesiastical and lay, Western and Chinese'.11
The Lunyu most
likely is a composite work compiled by different authors over time rather than
by a single figure and significant portions of the 'Five Classics' are also of
doubtful historicity.12
One scholar argues that the
Jesuitical re-creation of the 'native hero', Kongzi,
was taken up by Chinese intellectuals, becoming part of the inventive
myth-making vital to engineering 'a new Chinese nation through historical
reconstruction', a project itself inspired by 'the imported nineteenth-century
Western conceptual vernacular of nationalism, evolution, and ethos [which] lent
dimension to the nativist imaginings of twentieth-century Chinese, who
reinvented Kongzi as a historical religious
figure.'
The complexity of Confucianism is
further illustrated by its treatment of political criticism. One reading, it
posits coterminous political and social realms. Harmony - the basic principle
for the right ordering of these realms - depends ultimately on individuals
acting correctly in their given roles and accords with an organic conception of
the state and an uncompromisingly moralistic view of political power together
with the idea of rule by moral example. Thus political power is not obtained
through competitive adversarial processes but bestowed on certain individuals
in accordance with the fundamental principles of a static, passive,
paternalistic and hierarchical order. The stress on harmony and consensus can,
on this reading, be interpreted as incompatible with criticism of those who
hold political power for it threatens the integrity of the state, bringing
disorder and confusion. Such an interpretation is anathema to the give-and-take
of competitive politics. It is antithetic as well as to the idea that people
within a society have different outlooks, values and interests and are entitled
to give them political expression. On this composite reading, it seems
reasonable to infer an antipathy to the contemporary democratic process which
takes open dispute, lively contestation and compromise as normal. Confucianism,
however, is sufficiently complex and fluid to lend itself to varying
interpretations. While the principles set out above describe an ideal order, it
does not assume that political leaders have perfect knowledge or always conduct
themselves under the highest principles. Elements of the tradition assign a
valid place to criticism and modify the idea that the 'mandate of heaven' is
completely unassailable from below. Criticism is permitted if based on moral
concerns, although it cannot legitimately be political as it is in a system
where competition for power is regarded as normal.13
Singapore at the End of British Colonization:
And although the
enforcement of laws and morals usually requires unquestioning obedience, there
are textual exceptions for resistance on moral grounds. A leading contemporary
Confucian scholar notes that in the case of a morally responsible minister,
'where the ruler has departed from tao, it is
quite proper for the minister to follow tao rather
than his ruler', and notes that: 'If the ruler is dogmatic and authoritarian,
the subject can revolt and choose a better one. The Book of Mencius considers
revolution to be the right of the people.14
On another
interpretation, Confucianism can actually support civil liberties, including
freedom of expression, which is basic to the role of constitutional opposition,
although the grounds on which this can be done differs from the standard
liberal justification: 'Whereas Western liberals justify freedom of speech on
the ground of personal autonomy, Confucians see this as a means for society to
correct wrong ethical beliefs, to ensure that rulers would not indulge in
wrongdoing.' 15
Others emphasize that
Confucianism 'is too rich and complex to be presumed ignorant of the value of
individuality' and see openings in it that are hospitable to republican ideas,
at least in so far as the value of individual self-development and' the cultivation
of virtue is concerned. One scholar has produced a detailed study attempting to
identify underlying liberal ideas in Chinese political philosophy.16
Again others argue
that none of this should be taken to imply that there is anything like a
liberal tradition implicit in Confucian thought, claiming the latter lacks such
inherently liberal notions as individual and human rights, evidence for which
might be taken to lie in the absence of any institutional protection for
dissenters.17 The same, however, applies to the Athenian polis where democratic
ideas were developed and institutionalized in the absence of liberal norms
upholding individual rights and the protection of dissidents or critics.
In summary,
Confucianism may be interpreted as both allowing and disallowing criticism,
depending on the circumstances. Even assuming that only a conservative reading
was obtainable, it does follow that societies with a Confucian legacy are
incapable of tolerating a form of oppositional politics compatible with
democratic government. A 'culture' that exists at any given point of time does
not forever determine how people think and behave, at least not if culture is
understood as a dynamic set of practices that are created and recreated in
response to changing circumstances rather than as a straitjacket that forever
binds communities within its grasp to a fixed set of beliefs and values. And
even if we suppose that Confucianism and liberalism represent completely
antagonistic value systems, we still cannot conclude that 'Western thought' and
'Asian thought' are polar opposites on a cultural/ideological spectrum. Neither
liberalism nor Confucianism exhaust the varieties of accessible thought in
either category, If we compare key aspects of Confucianism not with liberalism,
but with Western/European conservative ideology and nationalist thought, it is
relatively easy to find points of convergence. The nineteenth-century
philosopher and nationalist, Ernest Renan, took the view that free speech
should not enjoy institutional protection, albeit for different reasons than
conservative Confucianism.18
Closer to the latter
tradition is a strand of classical European conservatism founded on organic
principles of harmony, consensus, and the notion that people have allotted
roles and functions, duties and obligations.19
This also accords with contemporary communitarian
thinking which has its champions in both the Asian region and the West.
Communitarianism itself comes in both conservative and socialist varieties, the
shared point of departure being their opposition to liberal individualism and
the repudiation of a range of community ties and obligations that is thought to
be implied by it. Modern representative institutions reflect a certain ethic of
political rule expressed by the word 'democracy' itself, a form of rule meaning
'rule or power of the people'. In its indirect, representative form, this means
that people choose their rulers, but do not themselves rule directly. Beyond
the descriptive meaning of democracy, there is also a distinct normative
dimension. It provides democracy with its most basic justification: that it is
right that people exercise ultimate political authority. This does not mean
that political rule is always directed to the welfare or best interests of the
people at large. For although this may be assumed to be part of the package, it
does not distinguish the primary normative principle of a benevolent
dictatorship from a democracy.
A pluralist position
supports the notion that a variety of institutional forms can accommodate the
primary norm of democratic rule, and these may reflect a variety of cultural
(or other) factors. In addition, and again without losing the connection with the
primary normative principles of democracy, such as liberty, equality and
community. This does not imply that equality, for example, may legitimately be
crushed in the name of freedom - or vice versa. It does not resolve such vexed
questions as whether social and economic equality are a 'democratic right', or
at least a prerequisite for meaningful political equality. And it does not
offer a resolution of the apparent tensions between communitarian and
individualistic approaches to social, economic and political life. Issues such
as freedom and equality, or political and civil rights as distinct from social
and economic rights, and individualistic versus communal approaches are often
posited in a dichotomous, oppositional either/or form. This oppositional construction
is misleading in the sense that equality does not preclude freedom (and
vice-versa), that the enjoyment of political and civil rights does not entail
the suppression of social and economic rights (and vice-versa), and that
individualistic and communitarian approaches are not necessarily mutually
exclusive.
Rather, it acknowledges that
different political communities can legitimately pursue different modes of
democratic expression according to cultural or other contextual differences. In
other words, democracy can accommodate a significant measure of cultural and
political pluralism. This general pluralist position acknowledges both the
fallibility of human constructions as well as the diversity that is
characteristic of human communities - within as well as between them. But it
stops well short of an 'anything goes' relativism by limiting interpretive
possibilities and allowing that some forms of democracy may be better than
others. In this sense, it is neither universalist in endorsing a single
authoritative standard or interpretation of 'democracy', nor relativist in
endorsing any and all interpretations as equally valid. This pluralist approach
also places limits on the kinds of regimes which may legitimately call
themselves democratic. The leaders of regimes of course, can call their
preferred style of rule anything, they like, but this does not mean that the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea is actually democratic. Pluralism
therefore allows for a certain degree of flexibility in both theorizing second
order norms, principles and political practice, but maintains certain
conceptual standards and limitations beyond which a regime cannot be regarded
as democratic. This provides a minimal but nonetheless necessary and sufficient
basis for comparative political scientists to go about the business of comparing.
This contrasts with a
dogmatic relativism that allows an unlimited range of interpretive
possibilities - whether these are linked to a cultural framework or not.
Although this seems, on the face of it, to be a more 'democratic'
epistemological position to adopt than one prescribing conceptual standards and
limitations, the rigid relativist position can (and does) in fact provide a
protective cloak for authoritarianism, as illustrated in the discussion of
'Asian democracy'. The pluralist position described here also rejects a
dogmatic universalism endorsing a single authoritative standard of
'correctness' for democracy, for this works to silence alternative views and
leaves little space for the legitimate diversity that characterizes democratic
politics. But the pluralist position is not entirely unassailable either.
Indeed, given the fallibilism inherent in an open model, it must remain
receptive to criticism. So whereas the relativist and universalist positions
described here both entail a certain closure of discourse - and for that reason
are dogmatic - the pluralist position always remains open. Simply setting up a
pluralist model, however, leaves unanswered certain problems in world politics,
including accusations that some elites in 'the West' have attempted, in the
name of ethical universalism, to assume moral authority in areas such as
democracy and human rights so as to pursue hegemony by other means.20
Much the same has
sometimes been said about democracy promotion projects implying that the
political systems of 'non-Western' countries must be remade in the image of
'the West' in order to achieve 'true' democracy. A recent critique of the
enterprise of comparative politics suggests that the 'culture of the modern
West', because it presents itself as the framework for understanding 'the
other', continues to assume that less developed non-Western others are simply
at an earlier stage in the 'evolution of the self'. This further implies that
commonality between Western selves and non-Western others, assumed by this
implicit evolutionist framework, still needs to be nurtured: 'Those to whom
difference is attributed must be taught, and, if unwilling, they must be forced
to recognize that assimilating to the "sameness" of Europeans is good
for them. This remains the white man's pedagogical burden - a burden carried by
the politics of a particular type of comparison.' Another commentator
criticizes 'Western governments who support democracy in Africa as the process
through which the universalizing of the Western model of society can take
place.' 21
Since culturalist
responses to universalist theories and methodologies, treat 'other cultures' on
their own terms, we may well ask whether this ' idea' can be applied to other
'cultures' who do not necessarily possess such a notion of 'culture'. Or, if
the cultural concept as formulated does have resonance with 'other' places,
this then, demonstrates the fallacy of origins, and the problems of
methodological contextualism.
For example, critics
of democracy promotion in Iraq today might be right when they urge 'sensitivity
to context' and highlight the fact that democracy simply cannot be imposed by
force. Even so, attempts to apply sensitivity to context often run the risk of
simply reinforcing the power of oppressive local elites, sometimes at the
expense of local pro-democracy movements. In these instances, a normative
commitment to cultural contextualism (which is perhaps no less ethnocentric
than a commitment to democracy, human rights and a cosmopolitan ethic) has
often been adopted rather naively and without due regard to all that it
entails, either philosophically or politically. Ideas of culture and context
are important, but adopting a rigid methodological contextualism or culturalism
is just as problematic as a rigid methodological universalism.
The apparent
allegiance to these ideas and institutions which emerges from 'the West's
shared history and culture' therefore needs to be placed alongside a more
complete picture of the West which includes histories and 'cultures' of
authoritarianism in both communist and fascist forms in addition to other
products of 'Western culture' which of course include genocide, slavery,
torture, fascism, militarism, colonialism, imperialism, the inquisition,
religious fundamentalism, nationalism and romanticism as well as secularism,
humanism, pacifism, communism and so on. Clearly, not all these have been
exclusive products of 'Western culture' and most have appeared in other part of
the world at one time or another. But to the extent that at one time or another
they have indeed all emerged in the West, they illustrate beyond question the
irreducible diversity of its political experiences and legacies. When something
is attributed to the 'West's shared history and culture' we must always ask:
which history and which culture?
Plus democracy has
only recently come to be regarded as the cornerstone of 'the good' in world
politics, achieving a moral prestige unknown in any previous period and claimed
as the basis for virtually all the world's regimes, regardless of actual practices.
Democracy owes its currency to two primary, inter-related factors. The first
was the experience of the Second World War. Disgust with the fascist ideologies
that had motivated the Axis powers, and the revulsion that attended realization
of their ultimate consequences in the Holocaust, served to bolster democracy's
credentials as the most desirable and morally creditable form of government. It
was linked to standards for basic human rights so grossly abused in the death
camps, and to the interests and well-being of the masses of ordinary men and
women whose political and moral status had been transformed since the French
Revolution. 'The people' now embodied the ultimate source of political
legitimacy and authority. They were those whose interests the political system
was meant to serve and, just as importantly, who were considered most competent
to judge those interests by deciding who was to govern them.
The second factor was the decolonization movement
which gained momentum in the aftermath of the Second World War with Harold
Macmillan's 'winds of change'. Now all 'peoples', not just Europeans, or their
descendants in other parts of the globe, were entitled to exercise the right to
self-determination. So whereas the principle of national self determination in the form of sovereign statehood
was promoted only within Europe following the First World War, it was now
extended world-wide. This set the scene for the European state system and its
foundational principles of sovereignty to become established as the global
organizing norm for political community. The sovereignty principle of course
has two dimensions, the first concerning the status and integrity of any given
state vis-a-vis other states, and decreeing nonintervention in its internal
affairs while the second concerns the location of sovereignty within the state.
Given the ascendance of democratic ideas, sovereignty was now formally vested
in 'the people'. The ideology of nationalism sought to define this entity more
precisely in terms of 'a people' delineated by common cultural characteristics.
“As a newly independent state with
limited resources other than our people and sheer grit to rely on, Singapore
needed Israel’s help to build up our armed forces,” wrote Winston Choo, a former army chief who later
served as non-resident ambassador to Israel.
Singapore did not initially acknowledge
the military collaboration as the Israel-Palestine conflict was a sensitive
topic for Southeast Asian Muslims. Details of Israel’s covert involvement
surfaced three decades later when Lee Kuan Yew published his 1998 memoir, “The Singapore Story.”
Or as we have seen in our above, case study about
Singapore, ideas do not belong to specific places. They 'belong' wherever they
happen to take root. Culturalist ideas developed in the human sciences have a
resonance well beyond Europe or North America. Indeed they provide many of the
intellectual resources for the construction of the Asia/West dichotomy on which
the cultural politics of in this case Confucian/Asian democracy rests. There is
also a case regarding the cluster of concepts that underpin 'Asian values' and
'Asian identity' as assembled very largely on the edifice of the ' Asia '
studied by Western scholars. This is so not just in terms of the geographic
conceptualization of Asia, but also those studies based broadly on the concept
of 'Asian political culture'. The subject point produced through this paradigm
is at least partly a product of reconstituted images of cultural heritage or
tradition derived substantially from Western studies of the Orient. This by no
means implies a 'Western' hegemony or monopoly of ideas. Rather, it shows that
the political elites most closely involved in promoting culturalist projects
have found those intellectual resources most suitable for the task, and used
them in what amounts to a “self-Orientalization (a
quasi-Western representation of the East) a discourse that works because it
confirms many of the old, but eminently serviceable cliches about 'East is
East'.
1. Francis T. Seow, The Media
Enthralled: Singapore Revisited, 1998, p.208.
2. “Civic or Civil Society” in
Straights Times, 9 May 1998, p. 48.
3. Martin Lu, Confucianism: Its
Relevance to Modern Society, Singapore, Federal Publications, 1983, pp. 71, 85.
4. Its Relevance to Modern Society,
Singapore, Federal Publications, 1983, pp. 71,85.
5. Joseph B. Tamney, 'Confucianism and Democracy' Asian Profile, 19 (5),
1991: 400.
6. Wu Teh Yao,
Politics East - Politics West, Singapore, Pan Pacific Book Distributors, 1979,
pp. 57-58.
7. Singapore, Parliament, Shared
Values, Cmd. 1 of 1991, p.3.
8. Ray Billington,
Understanding Eastern Philosophy, London, Routledge, 1997, p.119.
9. Kai-Wing Chow, On-Cho Ng and
John B. Henderson (eds), Imagining Boundaries: Changing
Confucian Doctrines, Texts and Hermeneutics, Albany, State University
of New York Press, 1999, p.3.
10. See among others, Xinzhong Yao, An Introduction to Confucianism,
Cambridge (MA), Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 16-17.
11. Lionel M. Jensen, Manufacturing
Confucianism: Chinese Traditions and Universal Civilization, Durham NC, Duke
University Press, 1997, pp. 4-5).
12. Hsii,
Political Philosophy of Confucianism, pp. xiii-xv.
13. Peter R. Moody, Political
Opposition in Post-Confucian Society, New York, Praeger, 1988, p.3.
14. Tu Wei-Ming, Confucian Ethics
Today, Singapore, Federal Publications, 1984, p.24.
15. Joseph Chan, 'A Confucian
Perspective on Human Rights for Contemporary China' in Joanne R. Bauer and
Daniel A. Bell (eds), The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights,
Cambridge, Cambridge University 'Press, 1999, p. 237.
16. See Wm. Theodore de Bary,
The Liberal Tradition in China, New York, Columbia University Press, 1983. See
also David Kelly, 'The Chinese Search for Freedom as a Universal Value' in
David Kelly and Anthony Reid (eds), Asian Freedoms: The Idea of Freedom in East
and Southeast Asia, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 93-119.
17. James Cotton, “The Limits to
Liberalization in Industrializing Asia: Three Views of the State”, Pacific
Affairs, 64 (3), 1991: 320.
18. See Preston King, Toleration,
London, Frank Cass, 1996, p. 107).
19. Robert Eccleshall,
Vincent Geoghegan, Richard Jay and Rick Wilford, Political Ideologies: An
Introduction, London, Unwin Hyman, 1984, pp. 79-114.
20. Ann Kent, 'The Limits of Ethics
in International Politics: The International Human Rights Regime, Asian Studies
Review, 16 (1), 1992: 32.
21. Claude Ake, 'The Unique Case of
African Democracy', International Affairs, 69 (2), 1993: 239.
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