John E. Schrecker

Bio: John E. Schrecker is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Nationalism. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 89 citations.

The Colonial State as a Social Field: Ethnographic Capital and Native Policy in the German Overseas Empire before 1914

Abstract: What led modern colonizers to treat their subject populations in radically differing ways, ranging from genocide to efforts to "salvage" precolonial cultures? In Southwest Africa, Germany massacred the Ovaherero and Witbooi; in Samoa, Germany pursued a program of cultural retraditionalization; and in the Chinese leasehold colony of Qingdao/Kiaochow, the Germans moved from policies of racialized segregation to a respectful civilizational exchange. Bourdieu is not generally seen as a theorist of empire, despite the partial genesis of his lifelong research program in the late colonial crucible of French Algeria (Bourdieu 1958; Yacine 2004). Nonetheless, Bourdieu's theoretical work—most notably his conceptions of field and capital—helps solve the main riddle of the colonial state. Different European social groups competed inside the colonial state field for a specific form of symbolic capital: ethnographic capital. This involved exhibiting an alleged talent for judging the culture and character of the colonized, a gift for understanding "the natives." Competitive dynamics among the colonial rulers decisively shaped the ongoing production of native policies. Policy formation was also influenced by geopolitical and economic interests, responses by the colonized, and the metropolitan government's final authority in appointing and dismissing colonial officials. The effects of these additional mechanisms were typically mediated by the internal dynamics of the semi-autonomous colonial state.

"The devil's handwriting": Precolonial discourse, ethnographic acuity, and cross-identification in German colonialism

Abstract: A polarization has emerged in the field of colonial studies On the one hand, many writers describe colonialism as a direct, inexorable product of Orientalist or precolonial racial discourse and pay little attention to “social” phenomena such as capitalism, the state, and social class Other analysts assume that cultural discourse is the product of supposedly more foundational economic or material factors Historians in the second group explain colonial policies in terms of imperialist economic and political interests, strategies of resistance and collaboration among the colonized, precolonial social structures in the periphery, or other “quasi-objective” phenomena Both schools tend to ignore the role of properly psychic processes in the constitution of colonial regimes, although this has been the focus of Homi Bhabha's psychoanalytic interventions in (post)colonial theory (1994) The lack of integration of materialist, culturalist, and psychoanalytic approaches in the colonial literature echoes broader oppositions that structure the human sciences todayThe essays in Steinmetz (1999) exemplify some attempts to overcome the artificial separation between culturalism and materialism in studies of the state Landmark theoretical interventions that reintegrate the social and cultural levels include Bourdieu (1977), Bhaskar (1979), and Laclau and Mouffe (1985) The need for a reintegration of the psychic into social theory has been argued forcefully by Zizek (1989, 1991) and Elliott (2000)

War, Religion and Empire: The Transformation of International Orders

Abstract: What are international orders, how are they destroyed, and how can they be defended in the face of violent challenges? Advancing an innovative realist-constructivist account of international order, Andrew Phillips addresses each of these questions in War, Religion and Empire. Phillips argues that international orders rely equally on shared visions of the good and accepted practices of organised violence to cultivate cooperation and manage conflict between political communities. Considering medieval Christendom's collapse and the East Asian Sinosphere's destruction as primary cases, he further argues that international orders are destroyed as a result of legitimation crises punctuated by the disintegration of prevailing social imaginaries, the break-up of empires, and the rise of disruptive military innovations. He concludes by considering contemporary threats to world order, and the responses that must be taken in the coming decades if a broadly liberal international order is to survive.

Themes in intellectual history: May Fourth and after

Abstract: Many factors combined to create the great intellectual upsurge of 1919 and the early 1920s that in the Chinese fashion has been given a neutral numerical designation as the 'Five-four' movement. The main focus of this chapter is on themes and issues which were to dominate the discourse of the intellectual stratum during the May Fourth period and after. The grandest and most enduring theme of all is the theme of historical or evolutionary progress as first interpreted in the writings of the great pioneers like K'ang Yu-wei, Yen Fu, and T'an Ssu-t'ung. The Chinese Revolution of 1911 produced no social revolution. One of the more significant conflicts which emerged out of the winds of doctrine of the May Fourth period was the debate between Hu Shih, Li Ta-chao and others concerning the question of 'problems versus -isms'. Another outcome of the May Fourth movement was the whole 'neo-traditionalist' reaction against the 'totalistic iconoclasm' of the movement.