Provides a new framework for reconceptualizing the historical and contemporary relationship between cultural diversity, political authority, and international order.

Law and the Order of Culture is an outstanding collection of essays that explores the cultural creation of legal meaning, addressing interpretive processes within the law as well as the social constitution of legal doctrine. Originally published in Representations, these essays are at the center of the "law and literature" movement which exemplifies a burgeoning literature in feminist jurisprudence, critical legal studies, and other work that has focused on law as evidence of cultural orderings. For this edition Robert Post has written a new introduction, proposing an analytic framework for this literature and discussion of the seven essays contained within the book. Ranging over a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, the contributors to the volume address such central issues as the construction of legal normativity, interpretive theory and practice in constitutional law, the function of legal metaphors, the interpretive foundations of the law/fact distinction, and the role of politics in contemporary critical legal studies. Law and the Order of Culture will attract a broad and eclectic readership across many disciplines. Law and the Order of Culture is an outstanding collection of essays that explores the cultural creation of legal meaning, addressing interpretive processes within the law as well as the social constitution of legal doctrine. Originally published in Representations, these essays are at the center of the "law and literature" movement which exemplifies a burgeoning literature in feminist jurisprudence, critical legal studies, and other work that has focused on law as evidence of cultural orderings. For this edition Robert Post has written a new introduction, proposing an analytic framework for this literature and discussion of the seven essays contained within the book. Ranging over a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, the contributors to the volume address such central issues as the construction of legal normativity, interpretive theory and practice in constitutional law, the function of legal metaphors, the interpretive foundations of the law/fact distinction, and the role of politics in contemporary critical legal studies. Law and the Order of Culture will attract a broad and eclectic readership across many disciplines.

Cultures of Order explores how Germany and Japan each struggled to define an appropriate role for themselves in the postwar international order. In Germany, proponents of institutional constraint fought and generally prevailed over those who stressed national rights. This pattern continued even as Germany achieved unification at the end of the Cold War. In Japan, however, the national rights strategy was more successful, and Japanese leaders have been less willing than their German counterparts to predicate international order on commitment to an emergent institutional framework. In both cases, the choices made by leaders were critical, despite the constraints under which they operated. In this book the authors utilize a constructivist theory of order, emphasizing the distinctive ways language works to normative effect, to explain these debates and how they have contributed to two very different "cultures of order."

In a single generation, the rise of Asia has precipitated a dramatic sea change in the world’s economic and political orders. This reconfiguration is taking place amidst a host of deepening global predicaments, including climate change, migration, increasing inequalities of wealth and opportunity, that cannot be resolved by purely technical means or by seeking recourse in a liberalism that has of late proven to be less than effective. The present work critically explores how the pan-Asian phenomenon of Confucianism offers alternative values and depths of ethical commitment that cross national and cultural boundaries to provide a new response to these challenges. When searching for resources to respond to the world’s problems, we tend to look to those that are most familiar: Single actors pursuing their own self-interests in competition or collaboration with other players. As is now widely appreciated, Confucian culture celebrates the relational values of deference and interdependence—that is, relationally constituted persons are understood as embedded in and nurtured by unique, transactional patterns of relations. This is a concept of person that contrasts starkly with the discrete, self-determining individual, an artifact of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western European approaches to modernization that has become closely associated with liberal democracy. Examining the meaning and value of Confucianism in the twenty-first century, the contributors—leading scholars from universities around the world—wrestle with several key questions: What are Confucian values within the context of the disparate cultures of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam? What is their current significance? What are the limits and historical failings of Confucianism and how are these to be critically addressed? How must Confucian culture be reformed if it is to become relevant as an international resource for positive change? Their answers vary, but all agree that only a vital and critical Confucianism will have relevance for an emerging world cultural order. An electronic version of this book is freely available thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched, a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. The open-access version of this book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means that the work may be freely downloaded and shared for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require permission from the publisher.

Following France’s crushing defeat in June 1940, the Nazis moved forward with plans to reorganize a European continent now largely under Hitler’s heel. While Germany’s military power would set the agenda, several among the Nazi elite argued that permanent German hegemony required something more: a pan-European cultural empire that would crown Hitler’s wartime conquests. At a time when the postwar European project is under strain, Benjamin G. Martin brings into focus a neglected aspect of Axis geopolitics, charting the rise and fall of Nazi-fascist “soft power” in the form of a nationalist and anti-Semitic new ordering of European culture. As early as 1934, the Nazis began taking steps to bring European culture into alignment with their ideological aims. In cooperation and competition with Italy’s fascists, they courted filmmakers, writers, and composers from across the continent. New institutions such as the International Film Chamber, the European Writers Union, and the Permanent Council of composers forged a continental bloc opposed to the “degenerate” cosmopolitan modernism that held sway in the arts. In its place they envisioned a Europe of nations, one that exalted traditionalism, anti-Semitism, and the Volk. Such a vision held powerful appeal for conservative intellectuals who saw a European civilization in decline, threatened by American commercialism and Soviet Bolshevism. Taking readers to film screenings, concerts, and banquets where artists from Norway to Bulgaria lent their prestige to Goebbels’s vision, Martin follows the Nazi-fascist project to its disastrous conclusion, examining the internal contradictions and sectarian rivalries that doomed it to failure.

From the Narmer palette to funerary preparations to pyramids, Steen Bergendorff draws on anthropological insights to provide new interpretations of accepted truths about Ancient Egypt. Bergendorff traces societal reproductive patterns in Ancient Egypt and the regional trade network that stretched from the Levant and Mesopotamia in the west and Nubia and Africa to the south in order to illustrate Ancient Egyptian culture anew. This book is recommended for students and scholars of archaeology, anthropology, Egyptology, and history.