Justice and harmony have long been two of the world’s most treasured ideals, but much of modern moral and political philosophy puts them on opposite sides of the divide between liberal theories of the right and communitarian theories of the good. Joshua Mason argues that the encounter with their Chinese counterparts, zhengyi and hexie, can overcome this opposition, revealing a pattern that reframes justice and harmony as mutually interdependent concepts in a three-part framework of root harmony (benhe), harmonic justice (heyi), and just harmony (zhenghe). Broadly surveying the histories of western and Chinese moral and political philosophies, Justice and Harmony: Cross-Cultural Ideals in Conflict and Cooperation explores our cross-cultural conceptual inventories and develops a comparative framework that can overcome entrenched binary oppositions and reconcile these grand global values.

An enthralling new biography of a great composer, linking the life and music as never before.

Conflicts happen, and the workplace can be a cacophony for competing interests. Consider that organizational culture is an ensemble of shared values, beliefs, assumptions, perceptions, and norms. Organizations are not solos. They are an accompaniment of individuals, departments, and divisions, and each is competing for scarce resources. Measure in a little power imbalance and organizational political posturing. Then, scale in the fact that today’s managers are faced with diversity and cultural issues ranging from race and gender to individual ethnicity, principles, and philosophies, about which employees are more vocal. All this discord can strike a sharp note of dissonance. However, effective resolutions can change this discord to harmony. Consider that music is not a single note. Rather, it is the silence between the notes that makes beautiful music, and conflict is that silence. Unfortunately, conflict has a bad reputation, and it is often labeled as disagreement, fighting, or arguing that leads to stress, retaliation, and resentment. Some managers spend a disproportionate amount of their workdays dealing with conflicts. They have not learned what causes conflicts or how to productively manage them. As a result, they often avoid or force outcomes causing discord, fractured relationships, loss of productivity, and even lawsuits. Learning to fine tune inevitable conflicts will help managers orchestrate a more harmonious workplace. From Discord to Harmony: Making the Workplace Hum is largely evidence-based, and many of the chapters contain cutting-edge research by experts in their respective fields.

As scholars and publics look for alternatives to what is understood as a violent Western world order, many claim that China can provide such an alternative through the Chinese dream of a harmonious world. This book takes this claim seriously and examines its effects by tracing the notion across several contexts: the policy documents and speeches that launched harmony as an official term under previous president Hu Jintao; the academic literatures that asked what a harmonious world might look like; the propaganda and mega events that aimed to illustrate it; the online spoofing culture that is used to criticise and avoid "harmonization"; and the incorporation of harmony into current president Xi Jinping’s "Chinese dream". This book finds contemporary Chinese society and international relations saturated with harmony. Yet, rather than offering an alternative to problems in "Western" thought, it counter-intuitively argues that harmony has not taken place, is not taking place, and will not take place. The argument unfolds as a contribution to wider debates on time, space and multiplicity in world politics. Offering analysis of the important but understudied concept of harmony, Nordin provides new and creative insights into wider contemporary issues in Chinese politics, society and scholarship. The book also suggests a creative and novel methodology for studying foreign policy concepts more broadly, drawing on critical thinkers in innovative ways and in a new empirical context. It will be of interest to students and scholars of IR, Chinese foreign and security policy and IR theory.