The nomadic other: Ontological security and the Inner Asian steppe in historical East Asian international politics

MacKay, Joseph

doi:10.1017/s0260210515000327

Cited by 18 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…The imperial atlas made with the help of European Jesuits depicting the vast expanse of the Eurasian continent is indicative of a nomadic outlook typical of the Eurasian Steppe, rather than a sedentary understanding of space siloed in a fixed space-society relationship (Dunnell et al, 2004; Neumann and Wigen, 2013: 314). In contrast to the boundless imperial vision of Eurasia, the Mongols, Manchus and Han subjects are confined to their ethnically defined administrative and geographic limits (MacKay, 2015: 490; Perdue, 1998: 266). In contrast, the complete map focuses on depicting the bureaucratic Chinese administrative divisions of prefectures known as the Junxian （郡縣）system and there reflects a Sinocentric form of territoriality which produces territorial order based on the perceived civility of the inhabitants of a place.…”

Section: Manchu Qing and Sinocentric Cartographies And Territorialitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In IR, the historiography of China as a singular and continuous entity compounded by the additional layer of essentialised Otherness works to inhabit critical enquires into the historicity of modern China and the contested nature of China as ethnic, racial and modern territorial toponyms (see Krishna, 2017; MacKay, 2015, 2019; Phillips, 2014, 2018 for exceptions). The isomorphism between modern China and the Qing Empire has served as a vantage point for a modern theological understanding of China as a singular national subject moving through history (Duara, 1995).…”

Section: Rescuing Territory From the Nationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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From alien land to inalienable parts of China: how Qing imperial possessions became the Chinese Frontiers

2022

European Journal of International Relations

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Scholarship on the origins of modern territoriality and the modernist conception of territory has largely been confined to Europe and its colonial histories. Few attempts have been made to understand modern territoriality from an alternative epistemic starting point. This article moves beyond critiques of Eurocentrism by examining the territorial metamorphosis of the Qing Empire to modern China. Like the United States and Russia, China has retained its early modern continental colonial possessions. In order to explain the territorialisation of the multi-ethnic Qing empire, this article engages empirically with cartographic and textual representations of China from Confucian literati scholars, European Jesuit cartographers and the Manchu imperial court from the 17th to the early 19th centuries. The empirical study shows that by the early 19th century, a new territorialised conception of ‘China’ closely resembling that of modern territoriality had emerged. This ‘modern’ and Sinocentric form of territoriality encompassed areas that were hitherto seen as foreign and non-Chinese. In opposition to the extant Eurocentric historiography, this article traces the emergence of modern territoriality in imperial China to a nexus of European cartographic techniques, Qing imperial conquests and the literati synthesis of Manchu imperial and Sinocentric forms of territoriality. By showing the deep historical processes and global entanglements behind the emergence of modern China as a territorial state, the article makes a case for a polycentric account of modern territoriality

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Section: Manchu Qing and Sinocentric Cartographies And Territorialitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Rescuing Territory From the Nationmentioning

confidence: 99%

From alien land to inalienable parts of China: how Qing imperial possessions became the Chinese Frontiers

2022

European Journal of International Relations

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“…The gradual emergence and elaboration of a cosmopolitan notion of harm, and of harm reduction as a moral principle, is one such example (Linklater, 2011). Another is the emergence and management of self-other relations between China and the nomadic communities of the Inner Asian steppe, producing normative categories and their maintenance in practice (Mackay, 2016). A third is the emergence of a relatively stable set of identities and relations across religious divides (and their associated territories and institutions) in Europe, which occurred through intense social movement contestation (Nexon, 2009).…”

Section: Normative Transformation Practices and Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

From norms to normative configurations: a pragmatist and relational approach to theorizing normativity in IR

Pratt

2019

Int. Theory

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Normativity matters in international politics, but IR scholarship will benefit from de-reifying ‘norms’ as units into a relational, configurational alternative. The alternative I propose here is the ‘normative configuration’: an arrangement of ongoing, interacting practices establishing action-specific regulation, value-orientation, and avenues of contestation. This responds to recent constructivist scholarship, particularly from relational sociology and practice theory, that implies the need for ontological and analytical alternatives to ‘norms’ as central concepts responsible for establishing rules, institutions, and values in social life. I offer a way of conceptualizing and analyzing normativity consistent with these alternative approaches. Namely, I have brought together a pragmatist theory of action with the social theories of a number of key relational social theorists and philosophers, oriented around a reading of what norms-talk actually does for social enquiry. I then outline a three stage process – de-reification, attributing agency, and tracing transactions – that allows scholars to study transformations in normative configurations. Finally, I discuss what this contributes to the recent turns toward practices and relations, as the latest direction in constructivist scholarship within the discipline.

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“…Compounding this handicap, ‘barbarians’ were themselves ambivalent — and sometimes actively hostile — to sublimating their own identity within Confucian frameworks. Joseph MacKay (2016: 476–477) has eloquently demonstrated the centrality of the civilized–barbarian divide in shoring up China’s ‘ontological security’ in its interactions with non-Confucian polities. The flip side to this, though, is the threat to ontological security that ‘barbarian’ conquerors themselves often saw in Sinicization.…”

Section: Civilization Barbarism and Hierarchy In Historical East Asiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Contesting the Confucian peace: Civilization, barbarism and international hierarchy in East Asia

Phillips

2017

European Journal of International Relations

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International Relations scholars have turned to China's tributary system to broaden our understanding of international systems beyond the 'states-under-anarchy' model derived from European history. This scholarship forms the inspiration and foil for this article, which refines International Relations scholars' conceptualizations of how international hierarchy arose and endured in East Asia during the Manchu Qing Dynasty-China's last and most territorially expansive imperial dynasty. I argue that existing conceptions of East Asian hierarchy overstate the importance of mutual identification between the region's Confucian monarchies in sustaining Chinese hegemony. Instead, we can understand Qing China's dominance only once we recognize the Manchus as a 'barbarian' dynasty, which faced unique challenges legitimating its rule domestically and internationally. As 'barbarian' conquerors, Manchus did not secure their rule by simply conforming to pre-existing Sinic cultural norms. Instead, like other contemporary Eurasian empires, they maintained dominance through strategies of heterogeneous contracting. Domestically, they developed customized legitimacy scripts tailored to win the allegiance of the empire's diverse communities. Internationally, meanwhile, the Manchus strategically appropriated existing Confucian norms and practices of tributary diplomacy in ways that mitigated-but did not eliminate-Confucian vassals' resentment of 'barbarian' domination. East Asian hierarchy may have been more peaceful than Westphalian anarchy, but the absence of war masks a more coercive reality where the appearance of Confucian conformity obscured more fractious relations between Qing China and even its ostensibly most loyal vassals.

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The nomadic other: Ontological security and the Inner Asian steppe in historical East Asian international politics

Cited by 18 publications

References 62 publications

From alien land to inalienable parts of China: how Qing imperial possessions became the Chinese Frontiers

From alien land to inalienable parts of China: how Qing imperial possessions became the Chinese Frontiers

From norms to normative configurations: a pragmatist and relational approach to theorizing normativity in IR

Contesting the Confucian peace: Civilization, barbarism and international hierarchy in East Asia

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