1st Edition
A New Approach to Global Studies from the Perspective of Small Nations
With emphasis on East Asian and North American examples – notably Japan and Quebec – Date, Laniel and their contributors take a new approach to the understanding of small nations and their role in the international system.
Small nations, by their very nature, raise significant questions about what a nation is. Some small nations are sovereign states with relatively small populations and limited territory, others are nations within larger sovereign states, with distinctive cultures, governance structures or other features that differentiate them from their “parent” state. By focussing on non-European nations in particular, the contributors to this volume challenge our conceptions of what a small nation is and how it operates within the international system. They focus in particular on the nation-within-a-nation-state of Quebec and on Japan, supplemented by further examples from East Asia. By interrogating what these examples have to show us about the typology and character of small nations, they offer a critique of superpower and draw out the potential of small nation studies.
A valuable resource for students and scholars of international relations and theories of the nation and nation state.
Introduction
Kiyonobu Date and Jean-François Laniel
Part I: Quebec society through the lens of the small nation
1. A Small Nation in Search of Normalcy: Modern Quebec and its Significant Others
Jean-François Laniel
2. The return from Europe and the return from America as heuristic figures of the small nation in Quebec
François-Olivier Dorais
3. The Value of an Intercultural Citizenship Regime for Small Nations: The Case of Quebec
Félix Mathieu
4. Between vulnerability and adaptability: rethinking financial interventionism in Quebec as a "small nation"
X. Hubert Rioux
Part II: Re-examining Japan from a small-nation perspective
5. Japan, a Small Nation Feigning to be Something Greater: Redefining Universality with Special Reference to the Religious and the Secular and a Counter Intellectual History
Kiyonobu Date
6. Imagining a Small Nation in an Empire: Kōtoku Shūsui and His “Small-Nationism”
Hiroki Tanaka
7. The Foundational Violence of Sovereignty: The Racist Logic of "Rescuing" the Ainu
Katsuya Hirano
8. Inventing "Independence": A Short Intellectual History of Post-war Okinawa
Sana Sakihama
Part III: Diversity: Small nations in subnational contexts
9. Small Nations, Empires and the Commonwealth: Canada, Quebec, Newfoundland, and Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon in Global Perspective
Hiroyuki Ogawa
10. Philosophy in Hong Kong after 1949: Tang Chun-i, Lao Sze-kwang and Cheung Chan-fai
Cheung Ching Yuen
11. "The Other America" and the Quest for Economic Justice: Race, Gender, and the Struggle over Guaranteed Income in the Late 20th Century United States
Kazuyo Tsuchiya
12. People or Nation? East European Jews’ Struggle over Their Categorization before the Holocaust
Taro Tsurumi
Epilogue Size Matters: Small Nations’ Existential Pursuits of Power, Happiness, and Purpose
Uriel Abulof
Biography
Kiyonobu Date is Professor in the Department of Area Studies at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo, Japan.
Jean-François Laniel is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the Université Laval, Canada.
