A History of Self-determination across the Sinosphere: Genealogies, Narratives, and the Geopolitics of a Conceptcore
SINOSELF · Horizon Europe grant · 2026-11-01–2031-10-31
EC contribution
Total cost
Beneficiaries
About the data
Source: CORDIS (official EU open data), Horizon Europe. Framework HORIZON · call ERC-2025-COG · scheme HORIZON-ERC · topic ERC-2025-COG. CORDIS record →
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.
Beneficiaries (1)
| Organisation | Country | Role | EC contribution | SME |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI ROMA LA SAPIENZA | IT | coordinator | €1,950,000 |
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