Events

Jul 13 2021 14:55

【Report】The fifteenth session of the Global Studies Seminar series “Challenges in Global Studies” “History of Political Thought, Empire, and Globalization”

Institute for Advanced Global StudiesGSI

【Report】The fifteenth session of the Global Studies Seminar series “Challenges in Global Studies” “History of Political Thought, Empire, and Globalization”


Speaker: BAJI Tomohito (Associate Professor at the Department of Advanced Social and International Studies, the University of Tokyo)

Moderator: KOKUBUN Koichiro (Department of Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences)

Discussant:YOSHIKUNI Hiroki(Department of Language and Information Sciences, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences)
TANABE Akio(Department of Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences)
DATE Kiyonobu(Department of Area Studies, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences)

To learn more about the Global Studies Seminar series “Challenges in Global Studies,” click here.

【Report】

The fifteenth session of the Global Studies Seminar series “Challenges in Global Studies” took place on Tuesday, July 13th, 2021. Professor Tomohito Baji (Associate Professor at the Department of Advanced Social and International Studies, the University of Tokyo) gave a lecture titled “History of Political Thought, Empire, and Globalization.” In the lecture, Baji discussed what had initially brought him to the study of the history of political thought, presented his research on early 20th century international political thought, and introduced his current project on a “global intellectual history of the Pacific.”

When Baji was a student in the 2000s, the word “globalization” was heard everywhere. After encountering J. A. Hobson’s Imperialism: A Study (1902), however, Baji realized that globalization was no new phenomenon and that its precursory conception dates back to the beginning of the 20th century. The innovation of communication and transportation technologies at the turn the century had brought about the dissolution of time and spatial distances and the sense of an ever-shrinking world. This facilitated the expansion of empire, while also generating numerous discourses on globalization. Noticing the striking similarities in perspective between the discourses circulating in the 1900s and the 2000s, Baji set his mind on devoting himself to the study of political thought.

Delving further into the historical developments of key concepts in international relations theory (sovereign state, anarchy, and territoriality), Baji engaged in exploring the vision of imperial-international order expressed in L. T. Hobhouse’s social liberalism (a transnational democracy based on pluralism) and the ideal of a political community transcending nation states entertained by Alfred Zimmern, the first scholar in history to be appointed as the chair of International Relations (a form of civic republicanism founded on the historical negotiation between Ancient Greece and the contemporary British Commonwealth; a conception of the League of Nations).

His subsequent encounter with J. G. A. Pocock’s The Discovery of Islands: Essays in British History (2005) has led him to launch on another field of study, namely, a “global intellectual history of the Pacific.” In this book, Pocock boldly reconceptualized British history from the perspective of its Antipodes, New Zealand, and argued that the identity as neo-Britain was formed through numerous encounters and contacts with the pluralistic and multicultural components (regions, communities, and peoples) of the Pacific, and through the process of mutual acculturation. If Pocock’s narrative constitutes part of a “global history of thought” that challenges Eurocentrism and the traditional emphasis on nation states as the bearer of history, then Baji’s “global intellectual history of the Pacific” further examines the concepts and visions themselves in which the Pacific has been imagined and understood. Baji presented, as an example, the attempt to reconstruct “Pacific identity” proposed by Epeli Hauʻofa in his “New Oceania” project.

In response to Baji’s lecture, discussant Hiroki Yoshikuni (Department of Language and Information Sciences) asked around which period people in the non-Western world came to develop an image of the great ocean. Baji responded that it was hard to pin down a specific period in time, and that in his project on the intellectual history of the Pacific he intends to explore and reconstruct “Pacific identity” built in part on the originally Western concept of the “Pacific.” Akio Tanabe (Department of Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies) drew attention to the diversity and richness of political thought at the turn of the century, which was quickly replaced by the narrow vision of Western-centric international relations theory of the 1930s. He then proposed that we pursue an international relations theory informed by the perspective of ontological plurality, and noted that Baji’s project on the Pacific is encouraging, as it is suggestive of an intellectual pursuit in this direction. Baji responded that in order to further develop his research on the intellectual history of the Pacific he sees it important to first closely examine the diversity contained in the international relations theory of the early days. Finally, Kiyonobu Date (Department of Area Studies) raised the issue concerning the settlers’ sense of inferiority towards their motherland, and asked whether Pocock’s discussion of the neo-Britain identity can be seen as an attempt to overcome such sense of inferiority. Baji agreed that the issue of inferiority on the part of the neo-Britains cannot be neglected, and that, in fact, their differing attitudes towards indigenous cultures mediated by a specific sense of inferiority have led to the formation of diverse identities. These responses generated further questions from the floor, and a lively discussion followed.

【SUZUMI Mitsunobu (Research Student at the Senior Division of the College of Arts)】

【translated by ELLIS Naomi (Ph.D. Student at the University of California, Los Angeles)】