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A History of Self-determination across the Sinosphere: Genealogies, Narratives, and the Geopolitics of a Concept

Objective

Self-determination is one of the defining political concepts of the 20th century. From the closure of World War I to the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s, from the age of nationalism to the struggle for decolonization, and up to the contemporary debate on universal human rights, defining “self-determination” has been central to the articulation of different, and often competing, political and geopolitical agendas (Sparks 2023). Hence, exploring this concept often resembles “opening a veritable Pandora’s box” (Cassese 1995). What does it entail, in legal and institutional terms? Who is entitled to it? Is it universally applicable, or is it contingent to specific circumstances? (Sterio 2013).
The present project intends to trace a conceptual history of self-determination in the Chinese-speaking world and at its borders, from the Wilsonian moment in the 1920s (Manela 2007) to the rise of global China in the 2020s.
By focusing on four sites of political and intellectual elaborations – Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Taipei, Naha – the research will navigate through different contexts, each of them shaped by peculiar forces (nationalism, communism, British colonialism, Japanese imperialism, US influence, democratization movements), but all participating in the transnational, transimperial, and global circulation of models and concepts.
The research team will work on primary sources – including essays, newspaper articles, political documents, historiographical texts - providing their historical contextualization and content analysis, and mapping the network of their discursive and/or physical connections.
By this token, the project aims to expand the methodological framework of conceptual history, testing the possibilities offered by the “geopolitics of concepts” (Brusadelli 2024) in revealing the geopolitical imbrications, interactions, and implications of the different narratives and articulations self-determination produced within the Sinosphere and at its margins.

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HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2025-COG

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Host institution

UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI ROMA LA SAPIENZA
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 950 000,00
Address
Piazzale Aldo Moro 5
00185 Roma
Italy

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Region
Centro (IT) Lazio Roma
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 950 000,00

Beneficiaries (1)