Detour and Access: Strategies of Meaning in China and Greece (review)

Sellmann, James D.

doi:10.1353/cri.2007.0041

Cited by 5 publications

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“…It is precisely this which allows him to speak of 'China' and 'the Chinese' (and 'Greece' or 'Europe') as wholes corresponding to specific cultural traditions, a position bolstered by his decisions, for example in The Propensity of Things, to remove the names of individual thinkers from the argument itself and confine them to the margins, presenting thinkers separated by school of thought, geography, and millennia of history as part of a continuous and largely homogeneous whole. Whilst in the introduction to The Propensity of Things Jullien (2000) presents his justification for this apparently rhetorical strategy, it nonetheless contributes to his making claims which are empirical in nature and which presume, ultimately, the existence of a singular 'Chinese tradition' out there in the world and through which, if we are so inclined, we can travel to arrive at new insights (a key theme of his work, particularly Detour and Access [2000]). The problem with this approach is that 'culture' used in this way can only serve as a convenient verbal substitute for a broad range of behaviour and mental representations among individuals, which do not necessarily belong to a 'natural category'.…”

Section: Locating and Explaining Culture Ontologically Speakingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Getting Our Ontology Right: A Critique of Language and Culture in the Work of François Jullien

Matthews

2023

Theory, Culture & Society

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This article presents a cognitive anthropological critique of François Jullien’s approach to language and culture. Jullien approaches ‘culture’ as a coherent set of concepts across time and space, relying primarily on identifying Chinese (and Greek) thought with particular concepts expressed in language. This mischaracterizes human culture, which exists on the level of individual mental representations, and relies on a form of linguistic determinism which fails to stand in the face of psychological and anthropological evidence. This leads Jullien to claim an incredible degree of cultural (and ontological) divergence between the Chinese and Europeans. By accounting for the distribution and dynamism of mental representations, the degree to which thought is underdetermined by language, and above all the divergence of intuitive and reflective cognition on the individual level, we can arrive at an alternative, ontologically realistic account of cultural divergence.

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Section: Locating and Explaining Culture Ontologically Speakingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Getting Our Ontology Right: A Critique of Language and Culture in the Work of François Jullien

Matthews

2023

Theory, Culture & Society

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“…Then, we differentiate between the 'ying shi' (reactive agency toward situation, thus more situation than agency in their interaction) and 'zao shi' (proactive agency toward situation, thus more agency than situation in their interaction), thus consistent with the lens of yin-yang balancing. With an understanding of situation as coproduced by the interplay of factors, not with a direct subject-object causality, favorable momentum is not created by directly causing reality to change, but by indirectly influencing the interplay of the situational factor(s) (Jullien, 2000). For example, Jing and Van de Ven (2014) describe the case of Chengdu Bus company that was in decline as a consequence of a competitive market circumstance.…”

Section: How Can Shi 勢 Be Detectedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond the Western Conceptions with François Jullien: The Process of Leadership Informed by the Chinese Shi 勢 as Organizational Propensity

Yue,

Persson,

Wasieleski

2023

Manag. Organ. Rev.

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This conceptual paper examines the considerable scope of leadership theories built from literature originating in the West to focus on the ‘process’ of leadership. By opening the door to include traditional Chinese thought, the worldview of Western tradition is challenged using the work of philosopher and sinologist François Jullien. Chinese culture views process as the basis of transformation and renewal in the world. It is explained through ‘the propensity of things’ in relation to European ontology and causality. Recognizing the evolving nature of reality through the generic Chinese notion of shi 勢, which serves as a conceptual tool for Jullien, leadership process is understood as an aspect of organization propensity. Shi 勢 is then recognized as a leading force encompassing human agency that is able to open a new avenue for research nurturing the emerging quantum phase of leadership.

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“…It calls for a designator's active mental context and convention to tie language to the world (ibid., 38). By comparing the rules according to which poems were written in Chinese and Greek tradition, Jullien (2000) has made this point especially clear. He argues that the Greeks conceive poetry in terms of representation, whereas the Chinese relate 57 The living elder in the family, not the parents of the new-born have to right to name the newborn baby.…”

Section: Naming As a Mode Of Differentiating And Coheringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thinking of Space Relationally

Gao¹

2021

Urban Studies

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Since the relational turn, scholars have combated methodological universalism, nationalism, and individualism in researching social-spatial transformations. Yet, when leaving the gaps between the traveling and local epistemic assumptions unattended, engaging relational spatial theories in empirical research may still reproduce established theoretical claims. Following the sociology of knowledge tradition and taking Critical Realism as a meta-theoretical framework, Xiaoxue Gao takes relational spatial theories as traveling conceptual knowledge and develops meaningful and context-sensitive ways of engaging them in studying the complex urban phenomenon in China. She offers conceptual elucidations and methodological roadmaps, which leap productively from employing plural causal hypotheses to generating effect-based explanations for locally observable events. They are exemplified by manifold interrogations of Beijing's Artworld as a conjuncture of particular events.

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Detour and Access: Strategies of Meaning in China and Greece (review)

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Getting Our Ontology Right: A Critique of Language and Culture in the Work of François Jullien

Getting Our Ontology Right: A Critique of Language and Culture in the Work of François Jullien

Beyond the Western Conceptions with François Jullien: The Process of Leadership Informed by the Chinese Shi 勢 as Organizational Propensity

Thinking of Space Relationally

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