| dc.contributor.author | Rousseau, Tracey Katherine. | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2014-10-21T12:33:55Z | |
| dc.date.available | 1999 | |
| dc.date.issued | 1999 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.other | AAINQ49288 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10222/55670 | |
| dc.description | The end of the 1990s is a pivotal time to examine and reassess the controversy concerning 'Asian values', or the Asian Way debate. The heart of this debate---played out in influential journals, the international media, and numerous academics and policy circles---is the idea of a uniquely 'Asian' path to economic, political, and social life, rooted in regional cultures. Asian Way perspectives propose a set of cultural values based on discipline, cohesion, social order, group- and family-orientation, and respect for authority; these values are said to have contributed to stable political systems and economic growth. However, economic and political crises in the Asia-Pacific at the end of the decade have revealed that many observers misinterpreted complex and varied conditions in the region, and the stylized Asian Way debate has only encouraged this. | en_US |
| dc.description | The Asian Way debate has been framed by larger themes of global clash, stressing inevitable confrontation and conflict between civilizations. This clash literature must be understood within a context of global political and economic changes: since the end of the Cold War, there has been much emphasis on new threats and enemies to the industrialized countries, the United States in particular. The notion of a 'Rising East', imbued with a mystified and reified culture, has provided one of several possible competitors for the 'West'. Within this context, weaknesses of the Asian Way debate reveal the limitations of 'Asian' cultural approaches, 'East-West' clash, and monolithic state and non-state actors. The static, anti-democratic portrayal of Confucianism has not addressed issues of social change; nor have arguments for the cultural roots of economic success dealt with diversity among regional governments or structural explanations for prosperity. Moreover, the description of 'Asian' state and non-state actors as monolithic and adversarial fails to explain the variegation among groups---certain non-state actors in societies like the Philippines, for example, even appeal to selected Asian Way themes on their own terms. A case like the 1993 Bangkok Conference further reveals the inadequacy of concepts like clash and homogeneity within the Asian Way debate; at the conference, both state and non-state responses were varied, and in some regards, even shared some common ground. | en_US |
| dc.description | Ultimately, the Asian Way case shows that analysis of the Asia-Pacific must be approached differently: it must stress differentiation among actors, the impact of the global environment, the ongoing processes of social change, and the more specific examination of particular cultural traditions. Even if changes in the region at the end of the 1990s signal an end to the Asian Way debate, an enduring lesson of the discussions is that 'civilizations' are not clashing; rather, societies are increasingly overlapping. (Abstract shortened by UMI.) | en_US |
| dc.description | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Dalhousie University (Canada), 1999. | en_US |
| dc.language | eng | en_US |
| dc.publisher | Dalhousie University | en_US |
| dc.publisher | | en_US |
| dc.subject | Political Science, General. | en_US |
| dc.title | The rise and fall of the Asian Way debate? Clash, convergence, and social values. | en_US |
| dc.type | text | en_US |
| dc.contributor.degree | Ph.D. | en_US |
