Contextualizing Cultural Politics

Abstract

Although culturalist ideas formed part of a broad postcolonial discourse from an early stage in the post-Second World War period, rapidly changing conditions following the end of the Cold War saw cultural politics move to centre stage in various parts of the world. It was especially pronounced in the Asia-Pacific where the economic dynamism of the region prompted proclamations of a coming ‘Pacific century’ by commentators from such diverse sites as the world of international business to cultural studies. This gave rise to a species of regional identity in the form of a ‘new Asianism’ dependent not only on a stereotypical and over-homogenized representation of ‘Asia’ but also an equally stereotypical construction of ‘the West’. The deployment of Confucianism provided the original basis for a version of ‘Asian values’ that later became projected more broadly across the region. As noted earlier, discourses on these themes have become muted in the post-9/11 world, but the more general implications for understanding cultural politics in the international sphere remain important. The use of a cultural category such as Confucianism to underscore alternative models of democracy also raises the issue of how cultural diversity may be accommodated in democratic theory and how democracy ‘fits’ into different contexts. Communitarian approaches to these issues have generally revolved around three inter-related arguments.