Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Drawing on the case of the Wuhan pandemic in 2019, Chapter 4 considers how nationalist discourses, informed by the culture of unity, took root and were transformed within China’s autocratic context during the period of quarantine. Following this, it adopts a relational perspective to argue that, just as the COVID-19 pandemic spotlighted countries’ vulnerability to all forms of nationalism and the danger that this represented, it also revealed an irony: that, despite being treated as a ‘solution’ to the pandemic, nationalism could only exist and thrive insofar as its ‘alter’ – represented by the novel coronavirus itself and, for some countries, the ‘China threat’ – also thrived. Given that nationalism rarely lasts long or enjoys much stability, Chapter 4 contends that, empirically as well as philosophically, nationalism is no solution to crises and that new thinking on coexistence is the vaccine needed to stabilize the post-COVID-19 world order.
Chapter 1, adopting a Confucian lens, connects the respective literature on state-in-society and Foucauldian governmentality by extending their application to autocratic resilience. First, the chapter points out that the state/society dichotomy is inapplicable where there exists no tradition of the rights of nature. The naturalness of the autocrat as part of society calls for an explanation of not only how and why people should accept the autocrat but also how and why the autocrat should care for or fear the people. The chapter uses narrative analysis to show that all references to the autocrat in the Chinese premodern texts imply a readiness among the people to alienate abusive autocracy and cause it to fear isolation. The people’s hearts constitute the ultimate regime of all regimes, which connotes the counter-governmentality of an autocracy to yield. The chapter thus suggests that in addition to the autocrat preparing the people to cooperate in certain ways, the imagined agency of the people to disengage likewise prepares the autocrat to cooperate. Counter-governmentality explains how autocracy is state-in-society or state-as-society.
Chapter 7 seeks to bring the relational concepts of Southern African Ubuntu and Chinese Tianxia into a dialogue. It compares the ontological and epistemological positions of Tianxia and Ubuntu and elaborates on the implications of the encounters between these two lenses. They similarly treat the self and the universe as mutually constituted relations. As both inspire the spontaneous pursuit of multiple relations, they can serve as either a resource or a constraint to preach autocratic governmentality. Ubuntu is closer to the micro-universe, while Tianxia lies at the macro end of the spectrum. Ubuntu is often criticized for being used/idealized as a macro theory. As this chapter argues, however, the pluriverse is co-constituted by both the micro and the macro. The chapter likewise translates the Western notion of the state of nature as well as both Ubuntu and Tianxia into a universal language to adapt them to suit an audience who lies outside each’s familiar cultural zones. Such communication reveals how the coexistence of different cosmological relations is plausible, unilateral assimilation is unlikely, and pluriversalism is always an ongoing process.
Chapter 6 attempts to create a theory of relations and balances (R&B) to clarify the systemic stability of democracy. It draws on Confucianism and compares Confucian self-restraint with liberal self-restraint. The empirical evidence suggests that, on the one hand, a Confucian constituency dislikes challenges being issued to the authorities for the sake of systemic stability yet, on the other, disapproves of unlimited authoritarian control on the pretext of maintaining a harmonious system. The evidence additionally suggests that, if the systemic identity is weak, the constituency of R&B shows greater support for inclusive, rather than enforcive, autocracy to restore governability. The R&B support for systemic inclusiveness may be mistaken for liberalism. Coupled with the idea of civic nationalism, the contemporary constitutionalism of checks and balances neglects systemic stability and fails to explain the spread of illiberal democracy due to the loss of systemic belonging. The R&B explanation of how a democracy can maintain or lose stability belongs to a systemic level.
Chapter 2 presents the critical logic that social science’s methodological individualism restrains liberal democracy from recovering from involution. It also explains why socialist and Confucian autocracy might recover. Two features of liberalism and Confucianism distinguish the ways in which they cope with involution. First, regarding their imagined origin being a transcendental norm or law-like inevitability, contemporary socialist/Confucian autocracy and liberal democracy cope with involution in different ways. Second, the Confucian norms mainly prepare the autocrats to practice (counter-)governmentality, but liberalism must be preached to all individuals. Deliberative democracy and the mass line are compared as the remedies to involution for each system. After all, liberalism’s normative governmentality is not binding. The democratic transition to new leadership costs no one their life or property as a result. Moreover, the losers can rally at the next election and might win. Recovery is unnecessary for liberal leadership to consider a survival strategy. Put succinctly, liberal leaders do not care.
This chapter studies Chinese President Xi Jinping’s political ideas as his references to self-in-relation, rather than his schema to assess and treat alters-in-relation. In addition to facilitating the assessment of the world and policymaking, personality may cause the political actors to use ideas conversely: to engage in self-preparation for acceptance and welcome by their perceived constituencies. In terms of Xi Jinping’s evolving personality, his initial need to overcome a sense of vulnerability due to a failure to belong was satisfied through coalescence into the masses. Xi’s personality has grown into a quest for popularity through the mass line, informed by 1) a Buddhist thread of transcendence in terms of anti-corruption purges while practising the Party self, 2) a Confucian thread of unity to produce self-disciplining cadres and an affluent society while practising the national self, and 3) a socialist thread of materialism to meet the needs of the world while practising the international self. The illustrative programmes include anti-corruption, the Chinese dream of anti-poverty, and the shared future of humankind. The chapter likewise discusses how an autocracy can suffer involution.
The narratives of women activists highlight the important roles of critical awakening, a sense of responsibility, guilt and moral conscience, reciprocity and caring for others, as well as an altruistic vision for others, all as driving forces for their activism. These findings highlight two major interrelated characteristics: relational and future-oriented dimensions. Founded on these, I present a new theoretical concept that I call ‘Altruistic Political Imagination’, which seeks to describe North Korean women’s human rights activism more aptly than existing concepts around imagination and altruism. This framework is an ongoing development built on my previous work on North Korean human rights activism.
This final chapter provides a recapitulated overview of the book, drawing on all the chapters. It re-emphasizes the significance of activism in improving the lives of North Korean women. It also reinforces the salient contribution of Altruistic Political Imagination in unpacking human rights activism, in conjunction with its potentially wider application to the analyses of other movements and activism. Additionally, it examines what has been achieved so far through the activism of North Korean women abroad, as well as other international endeavours to improve the situations of North Korean women. This chapter further discusses some limitations of the study and makes recommendations for future research.
This chapter examines North Korean women’s individual experiences of grave human rights violations, both inside the regime and after they have escaped to China. The first part focuses on women’s narratives of human rights issues in North Korea, such as domestic violence and sexual harassment. The second part explores women defectors’ experiences during their escape, primarily focusing on human trafficking and forced/voluntary marriages to Chinese men. It also presents the harrowing experiences women endured during and after repatriation to North Korean detention centres. The main argument of this chapter is that North Korean women experience a continuous cycle of oppression throughout their lives, both inside and outside North Korea, owing to the intersection of the deep-seated patriarchal structure of North Korea, the absence of freedom of movement, and China’s treatment of North Korean border-crossers as illegal migrants.
This chapter examines changes and constants in North Korean society since the mid-1990s, when the country faced severe famine. In particular, it investigates the rise of the informal market economy – and its subsequent impact on gender roles – and a large exodus of women to China as a consequence of the economic crisis. The chapter situates the North Korean diaspora within the context of globalization and its implications for North Korean refugees and their human rights. It further discusses human rights debates in North Korea and defector human rights activism outside North Korea.
