tung-yi kho | Lingnan University (original) (raw)

Papers by tung-yi kho

British Journal of Chinese Studies, 2022

Drawing on our experience as early career researchers who identify as Chinese, we discuss how suc... more Drawing on our experience as early career researchers who identify as Chinese, we discuss how such an identity has inevitably and unjustifiably come to entrap us in the politics of the great power rivalries of our time. We call for attention to the discrimination against Chinese scholars in the process of academic knowledge production, in particular, in peer review processes.

PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies

The COVID-19 pandemic is as much a process of globalization as it is its outcome. In the wake of ... more The COVID-19 pandemic is as much a process of globalization as it is its outcome. In the wake of the death, socio-economic devastation, and radical uncertainties it has unleashed, this paper re-examines globalization anew. This paper’s focus is on the role that neoliberalism has played in precipitating the COVID-19 disaster, especially in the wealthiest nations of the West. Re-visiting history, the paper takes issue with the rhetoric of globalization that had been sold as a project ushering in an interconnected global village exalting culture and community. Against such exuberance, the paper recalls that globalization was a post-Cold War project celebrating liberal-capitalism’s ‘triumph’ over state-socialism. It reveals globalization to be foremost about economic accumulation, not community edification. Moreover, in the realm of ideology and policymaking, the past four decades have seen liberalism devolving into neoliberalism, and many national states becoming financialized corporat...

PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, 2022

The Covid-19 pandemic is as much a process of globalization as it is its outcome. In the wake of ... more The Covid-19 pandemic is as much a process of globalization as it is its outcome. In the wake of the death, socio-economic devastation, and radical uncertainties that the pandemic has unleashed, this paper re-examines globalization anew. While there are multiple dimensions to the pandemic, the focus of this paper is on the role that neoliberalism has played in precipitating today’s unfolding disaster, especially in the wealthiest nations of the West.
Re-visiting history, the paper takes issue with the rhetoric of globalization. Globalization had been sold as a project ushering in an interconnected global village celebrating culture and community. Against such exuberance, the paper recalls that globalization had been initiated as a post-Cold War project celebrating liberal-capitalism’s ‘triumph’ over state-socialism. Such historic circumstances revealed globalization to be above all about economic accumulation, not cultural or community edification as claimed.
But this is not the worst of it. In the realm of ideology and policy-making, the past four decades have witnessed liberalism devolving into neoliberalism, and many national states becoming financialized corporate states. This has occurred most pointedly in the West, where the liberal state has been captured, repurposed, and financialised. Austerity - not redistributive growth - has reigned, engendering historically unprecedented social polarisation which Covid-19 has now exposed and exacerbated. ‘Globalization’, I argue, has served as rhetorical cover for the social destructiveness of ‘neoliberalism’.
The approaches and outcomes of pandemic management in the West are a further indictment of neoliberalism. Whereas ‘herd immunity’ had been the early de facto pandemic strategy of many neoliberal Western governments, we witness in most of East Asia a robust statist commitment to ‘zero transmission’ and minimum casualties. The respective outcomes have been plain to see. The pandemic has presented us with the corpse of neoliberalism: perhaps it is time to bury the dead?

British Journal of Chinese Studies , 2022

Science, Religion and Culture

In Greenfeld, Liah and Wu Zeying (Eds.) RESEARCH HANDBOOK ON NATIONALISM, 2020

This paper investigates the supposed problem of Chinese nationalism in the present world-system ... more This paper investigates the supposed problem of Chinese nationalism in the present world-system that is marked by China’s growing global influence on the one hand and the simultaneous decline of Western, especially U.S., hegemony on the other. It surveys recent Anglo-American commentary on Chinese nationalism, then proceeds to examine the historical origins of the phenomenon. I argue that modern colonialism left the Chinese with few options but to embrace nationalism as a political organizational form – an institutional means – by which to accomplish de-colonization. Hence, whereas Chinese nationalism is generally condemned by Western political elites, academics and pundits alike, it is evaluated positively by many, if not, most, Chinese. After all, Chinese nationalism was the basis for the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) colonial liberation, the sin qua non of post-Mao China’s success today. Ultimately, Chinese nationalism seems less a Chinese problem than a Western one, with the West still appearing unaccustomed to having its Eurocentrism and self-conferred exceptionalism challenged.

The Journal of School and Society, 2019

This paper draws upon ethnographic research to examine physical training and its implications for... more This paper draws upon ethnographic research to examine physical training and its implications for a person’s education, particularly one's affective and ethical development. Because of its potential to instigate affective and ethical cultivation, I submit that physical training - or sport - entails significant educational potential. By education, which etymologically derives from the Latin, educare, I am invoking the notion of personal nourishment and edification. Education as described here is therefore holistic, being simultaneously intellectual, somatic, moral and aesthetic. In illuminating why physical training carries important implications for education, this paper addresses some of the fundamental problems that plague modern education and sport today. It is my contention, therefore, that physical training warrants the attention of those who work in both the fields of education and sport, with the potential of fruitful cross-fertilization between them.

Science, Religion and Culture, 2019

Drawing upon some 30-months of ethnographic field research in China’s feted Special Economic Zone... more Drawing upon some 30-months of ethnographic field research in China’s feted Special Economic Zone of Shenzhen, I examine here two competing visions and practices of the “good life” in contemporary China. I have labeled these the Modernist and the Relationist practices of the good life respectively.
Although Chinese conceptions of the good life at the level of the state and of the general populace are today explicitly dominated by the project of modernization in all its grasping materiality and technological glory, my paper reveals that the capacity of a modernist lifestyle to engender well-being, much less the good life, is far from assured.
Meanwhile, my research in Shenzhen disclosed an alternative, Relationist, conception of well-being that was seldom expressed or associated with the good life despite also being ever present. This was a mode of well-being that was constantly being re-created in the course of everyday, mundane social interactions. Because of the general nature of their occurrence, they are not typically associated by the Chinese with well-being or the good life, appearing instead to be unselfconscious practices that are deeply rooted in the Chinese consciousness. The Relationist mode of well-being stands in contrast to the Modernist variant in both its nature and objectives, prompting us to ask: what makes the good life in China and beyond?

SOAS Journal of Postgraduate Research , 2018

The notion of decolonisation presupposes a colonial predicament in need of resolution, but what c... more The notion of decolonisation presupposes a colonial predicament in need of resolution, but what colonial situation exists, and what need is there for decolonisation when national liberation has already been accomplished throughout much of the globe half a century ago?
This paper has two aims.

First, it seeks to highlight the political-economic, socio-cultural,
and ecological conditions that undergird the crisis of contemporary modern civilisation. It argues that this civilizational crisis derives from a colonial logic that animates all relations of modern exploitation and expropriation. Following this, the paper’s other aim is not only to
argue for the desirability of de-colonisation, but to highlight its urgency as an existential imperative for life on earth. Moreover, the paper suggests that such a de-colonial move has to be undertaken as a personal everyday practice. Integral to this move is the conceptual
distinction I make between colonisation and de-colonisation/de-Westernisation on the one hand, and coloniality and de-coloniality on the other. The paper concludes by considering some practical de-colonial options available to us.

City, 2017

Since its designation as China’s first Special Economic Zone, Shenzhen has become an important sy... more Since its designation as China’s first Special Economic Zone, Shenzhen has become an
important symbol of post-Mao China. This has involved the institutionalisation of the
market as the preponderant mode of social organisation, accompanied by the faith that it
would produce unprecedented wealth for all. Against this background Shenzhen has
become a city where Chinese dreams are thought to be realised and, hence, a major destination
for rural migrants in search of a ‘better’ life—the ‘good life’, so to speak. My ethnographic
project in Shenzhen seeks to examine different views of what such a way of life
might consist of. This has raised questions of how such an ethnographic investigation
should be actualised, how the field defined, where the city sits vis-a` -vis its margins, and
what constitutes Shenzhen and what is out of bounds. At stake in the ethnographic undertaking
is the fundamental question about ‘truth claims’ and how we come to them. Ethnography
as ‘a return to the things themselves’ has the potential to offer an account of things ‘as
they are’. Drawing from 30 months of research in Shenzhen, this paper details my ethnographic
experience and reveals how knowing is foremost a corporeal affair. One has to be
in situ to experience and know ‘the city’ and ‘its margins’.