Monthly Archives: May 2014

China seminar 4 June: Alliances and strategic networks: Tibetan Buddhist lamas and the Qing court

China seminar

June 4, 2014, 15:15 —— Arsenaal, room 001

Yangdon Dhondup (SOAS)

Alliances and strategic networks: Tibetan Buddhist lamas and the Qing court

The relationship between the Manchu court and Tibetan Buddhists was based on the “patron-priest” model. The emperor acted as the patron and protector of Tibetan Buddhism in exchange for religious advice and guidance by Buddhist Lamas. Whether genuinely believing in Tibetan Buddhism or motivated by geopolitical considerations, the Manchu emperors were generous patrons of Tibetan Buddhism. In this presenta¬tion, I look at how Tibetan Buddhists from east Tibet tried to establish a “patron-priest” relationship with the Manchu court and explore their motivation for doing so.

China seminar 21 May: The Communication and Empire Project

China seminar

May 21, 2014, 15:15 —— Arsenaal, room 001

Hilde De Weerdt (Leiden University)

The Communication and Empire Project:
Digital and comparative perspectives on middle-period Chinese history

“Communication and Empire: Chinese Empires in Comparative Perspective” is a five-year
ERC-funded project based at Leiden University. Project members research the importance
of political communication and communication networks in the maintenance and fragmentation
of political entities focusing on Chinese history (1000-1300) and medieval Europe (1000-1500).
This talk sets out the project’s main objectives and reports on the outcomes of the first two years
of comparative historical research as well as on the development of digital text analysis and
visualization tools for large corpora of classical Chinese texts.

For more information see http://chinese-empires.eu/about/ or http://did-acte.org/about/

one more time!

June 4, 2014: Yangdon Dhondup (SOAS) “Alliances and strategic networks:
Tibetan Buddhist lamas and the Qing court”

China seminar 7 May: Civil society concept as a tool for making the other: the case of China

China seminar

7 May, 2014, 15:15    ——   Arsenaal, room 001 (Arsenaalstraat 1, Leiden)

 

Taru Salmenkari (Leiden University)

 

Civil society concept as a tool for making the other: the case of China

 

The application of the concept of ‘civil society’ to China in Western academic studies is one devise for “othering” China. Despite of its vivid grassroots social life (categorized as minjian in China), academic treatises do not merit the term civil society for China. At best, civil society in China is claimed to be “nascent,” far from a mature civil society. At worst it is said to be nonexistent. This paper analyzes the reasons for the different usages of the term for China and for “the West,” including the use of the term civil society when researchers actually search for oppositional movements and the failure of separating trajectories of economic liberalization and of associational life. This definitional deficiency causes problems when it is reflected back to Chinese academic research and associational life. Too narrow definitions hinder the development of Chinese civil society, when many phenomena common in Western civil societies are defined as undesirable in China.

 

forthcoming: 

May 21, 2014: Hilde De Weerdt (Leiden U): “The Communication and Empire Project: Digital and comparative perspectives on middle-period Chinese history”

June 4, 2014: Yangdon Dhondup (SOAS) “Alliances and strategic networks: Tibetan Buddhist lamas and the Qing court”