Protecting the Weak

In order to establish a common historical and theoretical foundation for the empirical analysis of the reseach clusters, we will use an interdisciplinary approach to weave the various disciplinary debates outlined above into an integrated framework. We will combine a study on the embeddedness of discourses and practices of protecting the weak in East Asia in indigenous traditions and their relatedness to rapid processes of modernization (to be written by a post-doctoral researcher with expertise in Chinese and Japanese history) with four conceptual background studies, each of which will shed light on the issue of protecting the weak. The four conceptual studies will be written as dialogues between the disciplines involved: sinology/cultural studies (Iwo Amelung), law (Moritz Baelz), economics (Cornelia Storz), and political science (Heike Holbig).

The post-doctoral study on historical embeddedness of protecting the weak as well as the four conceptual background studies will be blended together in the process of project implementation. They will form the basis of an integrated interdisciplinary and collaboration cross-country comparison: The four background studies will set the interactive stage for the empirical analysis of four pairs of empirical case studies, and will be elaborated and refined in accordance with empirical results of the case studies.