Processes and Mechanisms of Appropriation
Iwo Amelung & Cornelia Storz
From early on, East Asia was part of regional and trans-regional circulations, which, in many cases, as, for example, with Buddhism, had a far-reaching impact. There is no doubt, however, that processes of transmission of knowledge, concepts and practices have greatly accelerated and today extend to an ever larger area of activities and practices. Ideas and concepts related to processes of protecting the weak are an integrate part of these developments. While the ubiquity of these processes has been acknowledged, there are still difficulties in conceptionalizing them. A term such as “transmission”, applied above, tends to overstate the importance of the “sender” of a certain idea, concept or practice, since it implies that a successful “transmission” requires a more or less faithful reproduction of the concept by the recipient. Edward Said (1983) has taken up this problem in his ideas on “travelling theories”. While he was first of the opinion that the travelling of a theory implied something of a loss, he later radically altered his stance and praised the “invigorating” effects which travelling could have for a theory (Said 1994). Concepts and practices of “protecting the weak” are clearly not theories in Said’s sense; nonetheless, it still proves useful to follow his approach.
This background study will look into the question of the travelling of concepts and theories related to protecting the weak by borrowing from cultural studies and conceptionalize it as a process of “appropriation”, which we conceive, in accordance with Said’s understanding, as the creative interpretation of given norms ad concepts (so that the term is used differently from the Foucaultian sense of gaining control [Ashley and Plesch 2002]). Specifically related to our project, the background study aims to overcome the “sender” –“recipient” perspective and instead stresses the agency of the recipients of Western concepts of protecting the weak. At the same time, it looks into the question of how concepts are changed or adapted to new local conditions (or indigenized), and how, due to this process of appropriation, new “cultural and political programmes of modernity” and “new institutional patterns” of protection and the weak are produced (Eisenstadt 2000).
These processes - more often than not - are combined with a radical re-interpretation of traditional ideas and institutions, at times even extending to those which have been defunct for a long time. One example would be the supposed emergence of “left Confucianism” with its concern for the disadvantaged, as recently postulated by Daniel Bell and critically discussed by Michael Walzer (Bell 2010, Walzer 2010). The background study will analyze such processes with regard to concepts which are important for protecting the weak, because we assume that they are essential for framing, mobilization and institutionalization processes. It will isolate mechanisms of appropriation and systematically look into the question how these mechanisms differ between China and Japan, and where and why they show commonalities.
