How do undemocratic civic organizations become compatible with democratic civil society? How do local organizations merge older patriarchal, hierarchical values and practices with newer more egalitarian, democratic ones? This article tells the story of how volunteer fire departments have done this in Japan. Their transformation from centralized war instruments of an authoritarian regime to local community safety organizations of a full-fledged democracy did not happen overnight. A slow process of demographic and value changes helped the organizations adjust to more democratic social values and practices. The way in which these organizations have made the transition offers important lessons for emerging democracies around the world.

Through an analysis of Third Sister Liu, a popular musical of the early 1960s, this article illustrates how the Chinese Communist Party mobilized state and society to express disparaging ideas about the intellectual during the Great Leap Forward. The Chinese intellectual was not any specific social type, group, or individual, but a substrate upon which the party organized and promoted its vision and division of society. Official representations, organization, and the threat of punishment underpinned the party's efforts and produced local resistance toward the party's understanding of the intellectual. The author's analytical approach stresses the social work of construction that reproduced the intellectual as a major political subject, an official classification, and an embodied identity in socialist China. The analysis illuminates heretofore obscured dimensions of Communist Party rule and experiences of those affected by the classification.

This article analyzes the changes in the representation of non-Han peoples in textbooks of premodern Chinese history published in China since the establishment of the People's Republic. Whereas in the early 1950s, these peoples were treated as non-Chinese others and were even referred to as “foreigners,” by the beginning of the twenty-first century, they were totally incorporated into the Chinese historical self through a new narrative claiming that they had always been Chinese. Simultaneously, the textbooks exhibit a clear shift from a Han-exclusivist vision of Chinese history to a more inclusive and multi-ethnic one. Based on an analysis of the content, language, and organization of textbooks and other related materials, the article proposes that although the incorporation of non-Han peoples into the Chinese historical subject was gradual, this process accelerated dramatically as a result of a planned reform launched in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The article explains the reasons for the reform and its timing, and examines its implications for the Chinese nation-state and China's ethnic minorities.

The founders of India's Mughal Empire were the last surviving remnants of the Timurid-Mongol ruling elite, descendants of Timur and Chingis Khan, for whom the traditions and institutions of Central Asia were universally recognized and potent symbols of cultural prowess and legitimacy. These ideas and understandings were not abandoned in the dynasty's displacement and reestablishment in India. Among them remained a distinctly Timurid understanding of the rights and roles of elite women—not only with regard to their artistic production or patronage but also, in marked contrast to their contemporaries the Ottomans and Safavids, the power offered to young, even childless, royal women and their active participation in dynastic survival and political success. In generations of Mughal rule on the Subcontinent, the comfortable cultural accommodation of independent elite women was a vital component of the Timurid cultural and social legacy, inherited and carefully maintained at the royal courts of India.

Religious pluralism characterized Tibetan Buddhism by the eleventh or twelfth century, allowing for the development of many schools and sects with little differentiation in religious products. The early Ming dynasty (1368–1424) saw a significant shift in policy on Tibetan affairs compared to the Mongolian Yuan dynasty (1271–1368). Relative disengagement from Tibet translated into a liberalization of local politics, resulting in a shift from secular politics and clan wealth to ecclesiastical monastic institutions. The Geluk sect formed during this period, introducing superior technology in its organizational characteristics—celibacy, ordained abbots, casuistical adherence, scholastic training, and doctrinal orthodoxy—that distinguished it from other schools and sects. With the loss of its major Tibetan patron, the Gelukpa faced a serious challenge from its fiercest competitor, the Karmapa, and raised the stakes by introducing the incarnate position of the Dalai Lama and his labrang (financial estate). This allowed the Gelukpa to directly compete with the Karmapa for wealthy patrons. By forming an alliance with the Mongols, the Gelukpa were willing to counter violence with violence to become the monopoly religion.

“Rule by man” and “rule by law” are frequently invoked categories in Chinese political discourse past and present, but their theoretical scope and possible interpretation remain highly controversial. Seeking to gain analytical traction on these categories, the author revisits an early Republican debate over whether virtuous men or well-designed institutions were more essential to securing political stability and social transformation in the aftermath of China's 1911 Republican Revolution. Focusing on the work of Liang Qichao, Zhang Shizhao, and their interlocutors, the author shows how “man” and “law” not only play roles in legitimizing one or another form of rule, but also help formulate questions about the interaction between individual effort and institutional influence. Viewed from this theoretical rather than historical angle, the debates become important not only for understanding wider issues in early Republican political discourse, but also for critically interrogating their contemporary variants from Chinese—rather than Western liberal-democratic—perspectives.