Values and Identities in Asia and Europe

The purpose of this course is to look into the idea of Asian values and identities which was revived in Asia in the 1990s. Originating in 19th -century nationalist discourses looking for an original road to modernity, this idea 36 was taken up during the spectacular growth of many Asian economies over the past 30 years. Confronted to international models and norms regarded as universal by Western states, several Asian states then strove to promote an alternative model based on supposedly specific Asian values. The course will focus on the religious dimension of values and identities (Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Islam), while also dealing with the place of Christianism. It will question the religious permanence in modernization processes in Asia; the concept of identities in the development of nationalism against Western domination; modernization policies according to Western models (such as Socialism or Capitalism), and the development claims based on specifically Asian premises; assertion of Asian values in the specific case of human rights.

Bibliography: 
Michael D. Barr, Politics and Asian Values, The Tepid War, Routledge, 2002, 241 p.

Han Sung-Joo, Changing Values in Asia: Their Impact on Governance and Development, Brookings Institution, 1999, 336 p.

Robert Hefner, Market Cultures: Society and Morality in the New Asian Capitalisms, Westview Press Inc, 1997, 336 p. 

Damien Kingsbury, Leena Avonius, Human Rights in Asia, A Reassessment of the Asian Values Debate, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, 264 p.

Kishore Mahbubani, Has the West Lost It? A Provocation, Penguin Books UK, 2019, 112 p. 

Anne Sophie Bentz, “Refugees in India : A Study of (Un)equal Status, Treatment and Prospects”, in Gunnel 
Cederlöf and Sanjukta Das Gupta, Subjects, Citizens and Law. Colonial and Postcolonial India, Routledge, 2016, pp. 138-162.

Bernardo Brown, Claire Thi Lien Tran (Ed), “Introduction Global Catholicism in Southeast Asia: Mobilities and Networks”, Numéro Special "Global Catholicism and mobilities in Southeast Asia ", in SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia Vol. 35, No 2 (2020), pp. 197–216.

Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Faut-il universaliser l'histoire, CNRS Éditions, 2020, 144 p.

Eric Tagliocozzo, Helen F. Siu, Peter C. Perdue, Asia Inside Out, Changing Times, Harvard Univ. Press, 2015 : Introduction: Structuring Moments in Asian Connections