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Cosmopolitan Nation-Building: The Institutional Contradiction And Politics Of Postwar Japanese Education, Hiro Saito Jun 2011

Cosmopolitan Nation-Building: The Institutional Contradiction And Politics Of Postwar Japanese Education, Hiro Saito

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The education system has been a quintessential state apparatus of nation-building since the emergence of the modern nation-state; however, recent comparative studies demonstrate the growing presence of cosmopolitanism in education policies and school curricula around the world. This trend indicates that the education system now operates according to two different institutional logics, nationalism and cosmopolitanism. To understand how the education system negotiates the potential contradiction between nationalism and cosmopolitanism, in this paper, I analyze the case of postwar Japanese education. Theoretically, I synthesize studies of institutional logics and social movements: while the former shed light on a contradiction between different …


How Can A Chinese Democracy Be Pragmatic?, Sor-Hoon Tan Mar 2011

How Can A Chinese Democracy Be Pragmatic?, Sor-Hoon Tan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Early in the last century, some of John Dewey's Chinese students had a chance to influence the fate of the first Chinese Republic. These individuals, Hu Shih being the most prominent example, were identified as Chinese liberals in the political spectrum of that time and advocated education reforms as the chief means of "saving China." Despite the hope for radical social change engendered by the New Culture Movement, education reforms failed, and cultural transformation did not lead in a democratic direction, at least not a Pragmatic democracy as conceived by Dewey. A century later, China is again going through a …