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Specific Perspectives (specific + perspective)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences75%

Selected Abstracts

"Perpetual Peace": A Project by Europeans for Europeans?

PEACE & CHANGE, Issue 3 2008
ref Aksu
Immanuel Kant's classic essay Perpetual Peace has famously informed much of the neoliberal "democratic peace" scholarship in International Relations over the past few decades. It has also influenced contemporary notions of cosmopolitanism and global governance. We need to realize, however, that Kant's essay is only one representative of the eighteenth-century European thought on perpetual peace. Several other writers have produced their own versions of the perpetual peace ideal. This article surveys some notable eighteenth-century perpetual peace proposals from a specific perspective: it seeks to find out the attitude of these various proposals toward non-European peoples. It asks, in other words, whether and to what extent non-Europeans were "included" in the eighteenth-century European visions of a perpetual peace. [source]

Ideological Representations of Taiwan's History: An Analysis of Elementary Social Studies Textbooks, 1978,1995

CURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 3 2007
YA-CHEN SU
ABSTRACT Textbooks play a central role in Taiwanese education. In the wake of the political reform and social protest movements of the 1970s and 1980s that led to Taiwanese educational reform, critics assert that traditional textbooks reinforce the dominant national Chinese cultural identity without considering the specific perspectives and voices of different gender, cultural, and ethnic groups. The study's purpose is to examine how political and ideological issues were represented in nationally standardized grade-four social studies textbooks from 1978 to 1995; how the textbook portrayed the history of cultural and ethnic groups as well as both genders in Taiwan; and whether the ideology changed because of political and socioeconomic pressures. In order to explore this question, two series of textbooks were examined. The first series was published between 1978 and 1989, the second between 1989 and 1995. Two social studies textbooks from each series were examined. The study's theoretic framework centers on the relationship between legitimated knowledge and the textbooks, employing the methodology of textbook analysis. Three themes were examined: (1) Taiwan's historical development, (2) national identity and nationalism, and (3) ethnic and gender studies. Two analyses were applied in each theme: (1) story-line analysis and (2) language analysis. [source]

Teaching International Studies from a Regional Perspective: An ISP Symposium on Power, Wealth and Global Order: An International Textbook for Africa

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES PERSPECTIVES, Issue 3 2002
Mark A. Boyer
Thanks to a suggestion made by Tim Shaw (Dalhousie University), the Editors of ISP decided about a year ago to commission a discussion of the textbook Power, Wealth and Global Order: An International Relations Textbook for Africa. This symposium aims at increasing our understanding of the different, regionally specific perspectives that can be brought to bear when studying international relations outside of North America and Western Europe. We want to thank Prof. Donald Gordon for the time he spent on examining the volume at hand and for his insightful analysis of the contribution made by the editors and authors of the textbook. Based on this discussion, we then asked four other authors from diverse areas of the world (Venezuela, Korea, Slovenia, and Russia) to read Prof. Gordon's analysis and respond to a set of questions we posed to them. Those questions and their comments follow Prof. Gordon's essay. We would also like to invite other ISA members from anywhere in the world to comment on this subject, as a continuing effort to engage important pedagogical topics in the pages of ISP. [source]

Four Perspectives on Terrorism: Where They Stand Depends on Where You Sit

POLITICAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 2 2009
Thomas J. Butko
The general assumption is that there is one objective and universally applicable conceptualization of ,terrorism'. This position is especially prominent in the United States and other Western countries after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Yet, despite such a view, it is possible to distinguish four specific perspectives or paradigms on terrorism: standard/mainstream, radical, relativist and constructivist. While the standard/mainstream approach remains dominant among academics, intelligence analysts and policy makers, the other positions have exhibited their own adherents. In the end, it will be argued that the constructivist perspective is the most accurate. Since ,terrorism' remains too contentious and disputed a term to achieve universal consensus, the constructivist approach has been the most effective in stressing the decisive role that parochial state and national interests perform in any conceptualization of ,terrorism', especially the strategic and security concerns of the dominant or hegemonic power(s) within the international system. [source]