A CIVILIZATIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON WORLD POLITICS: THE CONTEMPORARY CHINESE WORLDVIEW

Most current American efforts to conceptualize an international system, as exemplified by the work of both "traditional" and behaviorally oriented theorists, have as their frame of reference one form or another of a balance of power model derived from interpretations of eighteenth and nineteenth century international interactions. At the same time, although Marxist-Leninist explanations of the interactions among nations have become a dominant influence in the perceptions of many international actors, and studies of the relationship between imperialism and underdevelopment are numerous, they have seldom been seriously considered by theorists seeking to develop schemes for describing and explaining the functioning of the system as a whole. On a more practical level, the relationship between balance of power models and the current situation is increasingly questionable. There are difficulties in integrating into the models entities other than nation states. Non-Western actors with alien values cause disruption, while theorists and practitioners alike find it difficult to understand their philosophy or their actions. Moreover, the "system" no longer comprises a static group of actors, as posited by the balance of power models, but a field of participants that expands and contracts as the issues change. This dissertation is based on two underlying assumptions--that alternative explanations of the dynamics of interaction among world actors must be taken seriously in efforts to develop a theory relevant to contemporary world politics; and that China's post-1949 experience, on a philosophical and practical level, has valuable implications for an appropriate conceptual scheme. Utilizing and combining concepts drawn from Boulding's explication of the image and Berger and Luckmann's treatise on the subjective, relative nature of reality, it examines the Chinese conceptualization of the global political "world," presenting the Chinese image or symbolic universe as one alternative to the Western balance of power conceptualization. It further demonstrates the possibility of a theoretical conceptualization of contemporary world politics as an interaction of differing, often conflicting, realities resulting from diverse images.