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A Tale Of Three Bishops: Ideologies Of Chineseness And Global Cities In Vancouver's Anglican Realignment, Justin Kh Tse Dec 2016

A Tale Of Three Bishops: Ideologies Of Chineseness And Global Cities In Vancouver's Anglican Realignment, Justin Kh Tse

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Most accounts of the 2002 departure of some conservative Anglican parishes from Vancouver’s Diocese of New Westminster (DoNW) over same-sex blessings seemed to fit the narrative of a battle over sexuality in the global realignment of the Anglican Communion. However, attention to the consecration of two new Chinese Anglican bishops—Silas Ng Tak-yin and Stephen Leung Wing-hong, both from Hong Kong—reveals that their split from the DoNW’s Bishop Michael Ingham had more to do with an ideology of cultural pluralization deploying “Asian values.” I, therefore, argue that the schism in Vancouver was a division over the three bishops’ imaginations of global …


The History Problem: The Politics Of War Commemoration In East Asia, Hiro Saito Dec 2016

The History Problem: The Politics Of War Commemoration In East Asia, Hiro Saito

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Seventy years have passed since the end of the Asia-Pacific War, yet Japan remains embroiled in controversy with its neighbors over the war’s commemoration. Among the many points of contention between Japan, China, and South Korea are interpretations of the Tokyo War Crimes Trial, apologies and compensation for foreign victims of Japanese aggression, prime ministerial visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, and the war’s portrayal in textbooks. Collectively, these controversies have come to be called the “history problem.” But why has the problem become so intractable? Can it ever be resolved, and if so, how? To answer these questions, the author …


Review: Scholar, Courtier, Magician: The Lost Library Of John Dee [Exhibition At Royal College Of Physicians Museum, London, 18 January - 28 July 2016], Emily Soon Dec 2016

Review: Scholar, Courtier, Magician: The Lost Library Of John Dee [Exhibition At Royal College Of Physicians Museum, London, 18 January - 28 July 2016], Emily Soon

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In the mural the acclaimed illustrator Quentin Blake created to commemorate Cambridge University’s 800th anniversary (2009), the Cambridge alumnus and polymath John Dee (1527 – 1609) comes across as a delightfully demented figure. Cloaked in black and surrounded by books and odd objects, Dee looks intent on conjuring up visions from within a large crystal ball. Blake’s watercolour encapsulates the popular image of Dee as a dabbler in the dark arts, one whose quest for the philosopher’s stone represents the equally dark state of learning thought to exist before the emergence of modern science. Indeed, the contemporary cultural fascination with …


Patient-Relativity In Morality, Matthew Hammerton Oct 2016

Patient-Relativity In Morality, Matthew Hammerton

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

It is common to distinguish moral rules, reasons, or values that are agent-relative from those that are agent-neutral. One can also distinguish moral rules, reasons, or values that are moment-relative from those that are moment-neutral. In this article, I introduce a third distinction that stands alongside these two distinctions—the distinction between moral rules, reasons, or values that are patient-relative and those that are patient-neutral. I then show how patient-relativity plays an important role in several moral theories, gives us a better understanding of agent-relativity and moment-relativity, and provides a novel objection to Derek Parfit’s “appeal to full relativity” argument.


A Milestone On The Road To Independence? Singapore’S Catastrophic 1954 Floods, Fiona Williamson Oct 2016

A Milestone On The Road To Independence? Singapore’S Catastrophic 1954 Floods, Fiona Williamson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

A combination of torrential and prolonged rains, high tides, and insufficient flood control caused some of the worst flooding known in Singapore in the first two weeks of December 1954. Early 1950s Singapore was a British Crown Colony and part of the Federation of Malaya. It was a particularly tense time politically, with the rise of nationalist movements and an ongoing state of “emergency” declared by the British government in response to a perceived communist threat supported by some members of the Chinese community. The 1954 floods were a disaster that piled more pressure onto an already stressed community. More …


Chinese Christians For Trump, Justin Kh Tse Oct 2016

Chinese Christians For Trump, Justin Kh Tse

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.


There’S Nothing To Beat A Backward Clock: A Rejoinder To Adams, Barker And Clarke, John N. Williams Sep 2016

There’S Nothing To Beat A Backward Clock: A Rejoinder To Adams, Barker And Clarke, John N. Williams

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Neil Sinhababu and I presented Backward Clock, anoriginal counterexample to Robert Nozick’s truth-tracking analysis ofpropositional knowledge. Fred Adams, John Barker and Murray Clarke argue that Backward Clock is no such counterexample. Theirargument fails to nullify Backward Clock whichalso shows that other tracking analyses, such as Dretske’s and one that Adams et al may well have in mind, are inadequate.


Wisdom: Understanding And The Good Life, Shane Ryan Sep 2016

Wisdom: Understanding And The Good Life, Shane Ryan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

I argue that a necessary condition for being wise is: understanding how to live well. The condition, by requiring understanding rather than a wide variety of justified beliefs or knowledge, as Ryan and Whitcomb respectively require, yields the desirable result that being wise is compatible with having some false beliefs but not just any false beliefs about how to live well-regardless of whether those beliefs are justified or not. In arguing for understanding how to live well as a necessary condition for wisdom, I reject the view, proposed by both Ryan and Whitcomb, that subjects such as chemistry lies within …


Introduction: The Umbrella Movement And Liberation Theology, Justin Kh Tse Jul 2016

Introduction: The Umbrella Movement And Liberation Theology, Justin Kh Tse

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

September 28, 2014, is usually considered the day that the theological landscape in Hong Kong changed. For 79 days, hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong citizens occupied key political and economic sites in the Hong Kong districts of Admiralty, Causeway Bay, and Mong Kok, resisting the government’s attempts to clear them out until court injunctions were handed down in early December. Captured on social media and live television, the images of police in Hong Kong throwing 87 volleys of tear gas and pepper-spraying students writhing in agony have been imprinted onto the popular imagination around the world. Using the image …


Epilogue: Conscientization In The Aftermath Of The Umbrella Movement, Justin Kh Tse Jul 2016

Epilogue: Conscientization In The Aftermath Of The Umbrella Movement, Justin Kh Tse

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The essays in this volume have demonstrated that the Umbrella Movement brought about a new theological moment in Hong Kong. As discussed in the introduction, theological actors in Hong Kong can be described as having followed the see-judge-act process of liberation theology. Indeed, the seeing and judging of Hong Kong’s situation that began with Occupy Central with Love and Peace (OCLP) in 2013 culminated unexpectedly with the action of the 2014 protests, transcending the wildest imaginations of the seers and the judges. In turn, the authors of this book have seen the 2014 protests and have also judged them theologically. …


On How To Approach The Approach To Equilibrium, Joshua Luczak Jul 2016

On How To Approach The Approach To Equilibrium, Joshua Luczak

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article highlights the limitations of typicality accounts of thermodynamic behavior so as to promote an alternative line of research: understanding and accounting for the success of the techniques and equations physicists use to model the behavior of systems that begin away from equilibrium. This article also takes steps in this promising direction. It examines a technique commonly used to model the behavior of an important kind of system: a Brownian particle that has been introduced to an isolated fluid at equilibrium. It also accounts for the success of the model, by identifying and grounding the technique's key assumptions.


The Umbrella Movement And The Political Apparatus: Understanding "One Country, Two Systems", Justin Kh Tse Jul 2016

The Umbrella Movement And The Political Apparatus: Understanding "One Country, Two Systems", Justin Kh Tse

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Prior to the Umbrella Movement, there was little reason for people who were not from Hong Kong to care much about its politics, unless, of course, one were a devoted reader of The Economist, which did cover Hong Kong as a former British colony. Alas, my experience in the academy corroborates the former sentiment: when I began studying Christian involvement in Hong Kong’s politics in the late 2000s, nobody was interested. “You have to study Christianity in China,” one advisor said, “because that’s where the jobs are.” The growth of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), especially the explosion of …


Language And Inter-Racial Harmony: The Battle For English As Singapore Lingua, Margaret Chan Jun 2016

Language And Inter-Racial Harmony: The Battle For English As Singapore Lingua, Margaret Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Against the backdrop of world religious violence, Singapore is as a beacon of inter-ethnic harmony: A 2015 poll, carried out in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, returned the unanimous verdict that it was Singapore that had made the most social progress among the four Chinese ethnic Chinese societies. In 2014, the Pew Research Center ranked Singapore at the top of their Religious Diversity Index. The nation's bilingual policy is critical to the integration of the multi-racial communities of Singapore. This position is highlighted in a discussion of how, in the early years after independence in 1965, the Singapore government …


Only Useful Idiots Would Say That Cardinal Zen Is Calling For Schism In China, Justin Kh Tse Jun 2016

Only Useful Idiots Would Say That Cardinal Zen Is Calling For Schism In China, Justin Kh Tse

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

On June 30, 2016, the Italian news outlet La Stampa put out an article written by Gianni Valente with the provocative headline, ‘Zen to Chinese Catholics: If agreement with China is signed, do not follow the Pope.’ ‘Zen,’ of course, refers not to Buddhism, but to the retired Roman Catholic bishop of Hong Kong, Joseph Cardinal Zen Ze-ken. While the article makes no mention of the word ‘schism’ in Zen’s call for Chinese Catholics to openly disagree with the Bishop of Rome, Cosmos the in Lost’s ever-energetic author Artur Rosman posted it on my Facebook timeline (as he is often …


Religious Aspirations Among Urban Christians In Contemporary Indonesia, Chang Yau Hoon May 2016

Religious Aspirations Among Urban Christians In Contemporary Indonesia, Chang Yau Hoon

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Recognizing that the Christians in Indonesia are not a homogeneous group, this article examines the various contested spiritual, social, and political aspirations of urban Christians in the contexts of the historical trajectory of Indonesian modernity, forces of globalization and urbanization, the role of capital, and the development of Islam - the indispensable religious 'Other' to this minority religion in contemporary Indonesia. It sheds light on the ways in which this minority exercises agency in using political participation and social activism as a counterbalance to the growing Islamization of Indonesia, and how they strategically utilize their extensive economic, social, and political …


Mapping Chineseness On The Landscape Of Christian Churches In Indonesia, Chang Yau Hoon Apr 2016

Mapping Chineseness On The Landscape Of Christian Churches In Indonesia, Chang Yau Hoon

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Scholarship on the Chinese Indonesian community has largely been concerned with the tensions between the community and the majority non-Chinese (or pribumi). The fault lines were usually examined against the background of Suharto’s assimilation policy, the 1998 anti-Chinese riots, the stark imbalance of the nation’s wealth within this minority group, and Chinese loyalty – or chauvinism – in the time of nation-building, and in the face of the rise of modern China. Little attention has been given to Christianity as offering a shelter for the inconspicuous propagation of Chineseness; particularly in terms of the conduct of services in Chinese, the …


Why Equality? Which Inequalities?, Sor-Hoon Tan Apr 2016

Why Equality? Which Inequalities?, Sor-Hoon Tan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article challenges the conventional view that Confucianism has no place for the value of equality by shifting the focus from direct justification of equality (Why equality?) to concerns about actual social and political problems (Which inequalities are objectionable?). From this perspective, early Confucian texts endorse some inequalities, in particular those based on virtue, while objecting to others, especially socioeconomic inequalities. Confucians do not consider equality or inequality as inherently valuable, but evaluate them in relation to issues of good government.


Still A New Problem For Defeasibility: A Rejoinder To Borges, John Nicholas Williams Mar 2016

Still A New Problem For Defeasibility: A Rejoinder To Borges, John Nicholas Williams

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

I gave a new objection to the defeasibility theory of knowledge, namely that prohibits you from knowing that you know that p if your knowledge that p is a posteriori. Rodrigo Borges claims that Peter Klein has already satisfactorily replied to a version of my objection. He attempts to defend this reply and argues that my objection fails because a principle on which it is based is false. I show that my objection is not a version of the old one that Klein attempts (unsatisfactorily) to address, that Borges’s defence of Klein’s reply fails and that his argument against my …


Does Xunzi’S Ethics Of Ritual Need A Metaphysics?, Sor-Hoon Tan Mar 2016

Does Xunzi’S Ethics Of Ritual Need A Metaphysics?, Sor-Hoon Tan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Contemporary philosophers working on Chinese Philosophy, Confucianism in particular, disagree about the status of metaphysics in early Confucianism. Some maintain that metaphysics are absent by pointing to the overwhelming emphasis on practical concerns – ethical and political – in the early Confucian texts. Others insist that even if there were no explicit metaphysical discussion or theorizing, metaphysical assumptions are inevitable. However do these assumptions point to one definite metaphysical system, or are they so vague and ambiguous that different mutually incompatible metaphysics could be constructed from them and attributed arbitrarily to the early Confucians? The latter situation would weaken the …


'Highway To Heaven': The Creation Of A Multicultural, Religious Landscape In Suburban Richmond, British Columbia, Claire L. Dwyer, Justin Kh Tse, David Ley Feb 2016

'Highway To Heaven': The Creation Of A Multicultural, Religious Landscape In Suburban Richmond, British Columbia, Claire L. Dwyer, Justin Kh Tse, David Ley

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

We analyse the emergence of the ‘Highway to Heaven’, a distinctive landscape of more than 20 diverse religious buildings, in the suburban municipality of Richmond, outside Vancouver, to explore the intersections of immigration, planning, multiculturalism, religion and suburban space. In the context of wider contested planning disputes for new places of worship for immigrant communities, the creation of a designated ‘Assembly District’ in Richmond emerged as a creative response to multicultural planning. However, it is also a contradictory policy, co-opting religious communities to municipal requirements to safeguard agricultural land and prevent suburban sprawl, but with limited success. The unanticipated outcomes …


Comparative Resources: Continental Philosophy And Daoism, Steven Burik Feb 2016

Comparative Resources: Continental Philosophy And Daoism, Steven Burik

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

I argue that continental philosophical resources are more appropriate for comparative philosophy regarding classical Daoism since they in various ways challenge the dominant metaphysical orientation of Western thought and give us a better and more appropriate vocabulary to make sense of important Daoist ideas within the confines of Western languages. Since classical Daoism is largely non-metaphysical or at least not metaphysical in the same way as the Western history of philosophy is, it makes sense that those within the Western tradition who have sought to displace the dominant metaphysical tradition would be more in tune with such non-metaphysical considerations. I …


Fiction As Reality: Chinese Youths Watching American Television, Yang Gao Feb 2016

Fiction As Reality: Chinese Youths Watching American Television, Yang Gao

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

American television fiction is gaining traction among educated urban Chinese youths. Drawing on 29 interviews with fans among college students in Beijing, this article examines a shared perception among these youths that American television is ‘‘real.’’ This perceived realism, which is essential to their viewing pleasure, has two sources: American programming’s textual quality and the Chinese context in which it is consumed. First, US television appeals to Chinese youths because they perceive its topical content and complex characterization as true to life. This perception can be explained by the higher transnational cultural capital of these youths, which renders US programming …


Review Of: James Shapiro, 1606: William Shakespeare And The Year Of Lear, Emily Soon Feb 2016

Review Of: James Shapiro, 1606: William Shakespeare And The Year Of Lear, Emily Soon

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

‘For the Jacobean Shakespeare’, James Shapiro tells us, ‘no year’s output would be more extraordinary than that of 1606’. Between King James’s ascension to the English throne in 1603 and the Gunpowder Plot of late 1605, Shakespeare had penned a paltry two plays, making the speed with which he churned out three great tragedies – King Lear, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra – in 1606 even more impressive. After this year, Shakespeare would have two more creative periods before his death a decade later, but no single year would ever be as imaginatively fruitful again. In 1606: William Shakespeare and …