'Rehabilitation' of confucianism, was Re: Israel Shamir etc.

kjkhoo at softhome.net kjkhoo at softhome.net
Sun Apr 28 23:34:18 PDT 2002


At 1:20 pm -0500 27/4/02, Carrol Cox wrote:
>kjkhoo at softhome.net wrote:
>>
>> Like my gut response to the (re-?)discovery
>> of 'culture' and 'development' is to deny it, despite (or perhaps
>> because of) the wondrous 'rehabilitation' of confucianism...
>
>This sounds interesting. Could you expand. I'm not sure of the reference
>of either the rediscovery or the rehabilitation you refer to.

Fifty years ago, modernization theorists explained the backwardness of East Asia as a consequence of its Confucian culture. Then, starting in the later 1980s, and esp in the early 1990s, with the christening of the 'East Asian Economic Miracle', East Asian economic success was attributed to Confucian culture -- you know, the other axis of Japan-China-Korea. Round about the same time came all that stuff of the Lords of the Pacific Rim, the Bamboo Network, etc. (which, in the context of some of the stuff here, is interesting, because if anyone had dared suggest anything like a Jewish network, as freely as they were/are talking about a (specifically overseas) Chinese network, there'd likely have been howls of anti-semitism). In 1997, with the East Asian Financial Crisis, this culture -- you know, guanxi, and the like -- was said to be the source, or at least a major source, of the crisis. And so it goes -- a crude summary, but I think accurate in its essentials.



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