Michael Freeden - Comparative Political Thought: Theorizing Practices

Comparative Political Thought

This edited book introduces students and scholars to comparative political thought. Featuring contributions from an excellent international line-up of esteemed scholars it examines issues including:

Is political theory Western-centric?

What can we learn from non-Western traditions of political thought?

How do we compare different strands of national and regional political thought?

Political thought in China, India, the Middle East and Latin America

Islamic political thought

Political thought in the wake of post-colonialism

This is a much-needed overview of this key emerging area and will be of interest to all those with an interest in political theory, thought and philosophy.

Michael Freeden is Emeritus Professor of Politics and the founder of the Centre for Political Ideologies at the University of Oxford.

Andrew Vincent is Honorary Professor at Cardiff University and Emeritus Professor at the University of Sheffield.

Routledge studies in comparative political thought

Edited by Michael Freeden, University of Oxford, UK, and Andrew Vincent, University of Sheffield, UK

This series aims are twofold: first, to encourage high quality scholarly works which move away from the singular focus on European and North American approaches to political theory to encompass also African, Asian and Latin American political thought; second, to suggest that the nascent field of comparative political thought is ripe for development, and to offer methodological tools for a rigorous scheme of comparison that will change some of the foci of political theory as currently conceived.

The series is designed therefore to shift the balance and focus of research and scholarship towards the process of comparative thinking across political cultures and continents in order to appreciate the richness, diversity and complexity of such thinking.

The series of single and multi-author texts will entail studies of both singular political cultures as well as more cross-cutting thematic or conceptually-based studies. The aim of the series overall is to change the landscape of political theory by encouraging deeper comparative reflection on the structure and character of the discipline and to arrive at a richer understanding of the nature of the political.

National Characterologies in
Interwar Eastern Europe
The terror of history
Balzs Trencsnyi

Comparative Political Thought
Theorizing practices
Edited by Michael Freeden and
Andrew Vincent

Comparative Political Thought

Theorizing practices

Edited by Michael Freeden and Andrew Vincent

First published 2013
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2013 Selection and editorial matter: Michael Freeden and Andrew Vincent. Contributors: their contributions.

The right of Michael Freeden and Andrew Vincent to be identified as editors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Comparative political thought : theorizing practices / edited by Michael
Freeden and Andrew Vincent.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Political science--Philosophy. 2. Philosophy, Comparative. I. Freeden,
Michael. II. Vincent, Andrew.

JA71.C566 2012

ISBN: 978-0-415-63201-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-63206-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-09434-1 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman
by HWA Text and Data Management, London

Contributors

Partha Chatterjee was educated in Calcutta and received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Rochester in 1971. Having spent nearly four decades teaching and researching in the social sciences in India, he is currently Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University, New York, and Honorary Professor, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. His books include Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World (1986), The Nation and Its Fragments (1993), The Politics of the Governed (2004) and Lineages of Political Society (2011).

Michael Freeden is Emeritus Professor of Politics, and the founder of the Centre for Political Ideologies, at the University of Oxford. His books include The New Liberalism: An Ideology of Social Reform (1978), Liberalism Divided: A Study in British Political Thought 19141939 (1986), Rights (1991), Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (1996), Ideology: A Very Short Introduction (2003), Liberal Languages: Ideological Imaginations and 20th Century Progressive Thought (2005) and The Meaning of Ideology: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives (ed.) (2007). He is the founder-editor of the Journal of Political Ideologies. He is currently completing a book on the nature of political thinking and working on a pan-European conceptual history project.

Chris Goto-Jones is Professor of Comparative Philosophy and Politics at Leiden University, Dean of Leiden University College, The Hague, and Director of the Modern East Asia Research Centre. His publications include Political Philosophy in Japan (2005) and, as editor, Re-Politicizing the Kyoto School as Philosophy (2008). At present, he is working on a project about the ethics of violence in modern Japan for Cambridge University Press and he runs a major VICI research project about political philosophy through visual, graphic and interactive media, funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research.

Engin F. Isin holds a Chair in Citizenship and is Professor of Politics in Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at the Faculty of Social Sciences, the Open University. He is the author of Cities Without Citizens (1992), Being Political (2002) and Citizens Without Frontiers (2012). He has edited with Greg Nielsen, Acts of Citizenship (2008). Isin is engaged with three different but related genealogical investigations: (i) concerning oriental citizenship and justice with a focus on the Ottoman waqf; (ii) concerning acts especially those that constitute subjects as claimants of justice traversing frontiers; and (iii) concerning governing affects with a focus on the role of mobilizing emotion in politics.

Sudipta Kaviraj is Professor of Indian Politics and Intellectual History at the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies, Columbia University.

Rana Mitter