Universalism

Abstract: The idea of "world religions" expresses a vague commitment to multiculture alism. Not merely a descriptive concept, "world religions" is also a particular ethos, a pluralist ideology, a logic of classification, and a form of knowledge that has shaped the study of religion and infiltrated ordinary language. In this ambitious study, Tomoko Masuzawa examines the emergence of "world religions" in modern European thought through a close reading of a variety of sources as early as the seventeenth century. Devoting particular attention to the relation between the comparative study of language and the nascent science of religion, she demonstrates how new classifications of language and race caused Buddhism and Islam to gain special significance as these religions came to be seen in opposing terms - Aryan on one hand and Semitic on the other. Masuzawa also explores the complex relation of "world religions" to Protestant theology, from the hierarchical ordering of religions typical of the Christian supremacists of the nineteenth century, to the aspirations of early twentieth-century theologian Ernst Troeltsch, who embraced the pluralist logic of "world religions" and by so doing sought to reclaim the universalist destiny of European modernity.

Abstract: This article reviews academic management from three global perspectives: contextual, quantitative, and qualitative. Based on multiple methods of assessment, academic management is found to be overly parochial. Cultural values of the United States underlie and have fundamentally framed management research, thus imbuing organizational science with implicit, and yet inappropriate, universalism. Recommendations are made to develop a more globally relevant organizational science in which universal, regiocentric, intercultural, and culture-specific theories and research are clearly demarcated.

Abstract: Preface and Acknowledgements. 1. Anarchy, Community and Critical International Theory. The Critique of Neo--Realism. The Problem of Community in International Relations. The Changing Context of the Modern State. Theorizing the Reconfiguration of Political Community. 2. Universality, Difference and the Emancipatory Project. Difference, Self--determination and Exclusion. The State, Citizenship and Humanity. Universalism, Domination and Otherness. 3. The Dialogic Ethic and the Transformation of Political Community. Limits on Exclusion: Membership, Citizenship and Global Responsibilities. The Dialogic Community. Dialogue and Discourse. Universalism Revisited. 4. The Modes of Exclusion and the Boundaries of Community. The Critical Sociology of Inclusion and Exclusion. Social Learning and International Relations. Inclusion and Exclusion in World Civilisations. Towards a Sociology of Bounded Communities. 5. State Power, Modernity and its Potentials. Origins of the Paradoxes of the Modern State. On the Ambiguities of State Power. On the Possibility of New State Structures. The Post--Exclusionary State: Answerability to Universal Rationales. 6. Community and Citizenship in the Post--Westphalian Era. Citizenship and its Development. The Problem of the Exclusionary Sovereign State. Beyond the Westphalian State. Citizenship in the Post--Westphalian State. Cosmopolitan Citizenship. Conclusion. Notes. Bibliography. Index.

Abstract: Human rights as an international political project are closely tied to claims of universality. Attacks on the universality of human rights, however, are also widespread. And some versions of universalism are indeed theoretically indefensible, politically pernicious, or both. This essay explores the senses in which human rights can (and cannot) be said to be universal, the senses in which they are (and are not) relative, and argues for the “relative universality” of internationally recognized human rights.