Associate Professor Ralph Pettman

A/Prof Ralph Pettman
University of Melbourne, Australia

Asian Perspectives on the European Experience

Abstract:

The impact of “Europe” on “Asia” is self-evident. It is evident in the construction of states and a state system in Asia. It is evident in the spread of market economics there. And it is evident in the advent of European conceptions of civil society there. It is also evident in the spread of the epistemological discourse of rationalism, and in the regional success of Christianity. The impact of Europe on Asia is mediated, however, by Asian cultures and regional religions. Asian peoples are variously imbued with Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Taoism, Confucianism, Shintoism, and Animism, as well as being embedded - to varying degrees - in communalist cultural contexts. This provides Asian peoples with experiences often at odds with those had by Europeans. It results in hybrid outcomes relatively unfamiliar to Europeans. It also results in Asian critiques of European-style experiences, and even in reverse globalization, that is, in a globalization of Asian experiences. These then compete with - and may even come to prevail over - the European ones. For example, there are Asian values, so-called, that many Asian peoples see as being different from and superior to those that Europeans espouse. The Asian notion of the past as having intangible as well as tangible dimensions, that are present as living traditions and technical skills, is another such example. The case this paper will describe is that of the advent in Japan of steady-state economics, however, and the alternative this provides to the European experience of, and hegemonic preference for, untrammelled economic growth. The literature on the Japanese developmental state will be reviewed, and a discussion initiated on the way the largely neo-liberal character of this literature obscures the commitment to a communal form of capitalism there, and to dynamic economic equilibrium rather than endless expansion.

Biographical note:

Ralph Pettman is the Director of the Master of International Politics program at the University of Melbourne. Before that he held the foundation Chair of International Relations at the Victoria University of Wellington for more than a decade. A graduate of the University of Adelaide and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), his previous appointments include teaching and research posts at the University of Tokyo and the Australian National University, teaching posts at Princeton University and the University of Sydney, and research posts at Cambridge University, the New School for Social Research, LSE, and the Frankfurt Peace Research Institute. He has held administrative positions with the Australian International Development Assistance Bureau, the Australian Human Rights Commission, and the Australian Broadcasting Commission. His most recent published book is Reason. Culture, Religion. The Metaphysics of World Politics (2004), and he recently completed a work entitled Intending World Affairs.

Return to Conference program