Michel Foucault famously stated that the modern West, while priding itself of its
"democracy", has failed to abandon autocracy by refusing to "cut off the king's head".
This fact is patently evident in the global arena in the continued Western assertion of
planetary hegemony and domination. In his book, Kang Jung In valiantly wrestles with
this conundrum from a "subaltern" Korean perspective, placing his hope in the emergence
of a global civil society marked by "polycentric multiculturalism". Without equating a stubborn
local retreat, polycentrism in his view requires a combination of global openness and cultural
resistance, more specifically a "modernization of tradition" involving "learning the new by
reviewing the old". Powerfully argued, the book is a vade mecum for anyone seeking a
transit from Western-centrism into a more equitable global interaction among countries and
civilizations.

Fred Dallmayr, University of Notre Dame

Kang Jung In's book is a courageous and tenacious attempt to measure the cost to modern Korean understandings of politics inflicted by the western provenance of most of the central categories through which its citizens now speak and think about the forms political life assumes in Korea today. It draws on his experience of being taught by Hanna Pitkin to assess the prospects for re-centering their understanding in Korea itself

John Dunn, Fellow of King's College & Emeritus Professor of Political Theory, University of Cambridge