Adam K. Webb
Adam K. Webb grew up in England, Spain, and the United States. He is now Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Hopkins-Nanjing Centre, an overseas campus of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. He has authored three books, including Beyond the Global Culture War (2006), A Path of Our Own: An Andean Village and Tomorrow’s Economy of Values (2009), and Deep Cosmopolis: Rethinking World Politics and Globalisation (2015). His interests range broadly across political thought, and efforts to recreate room for traditions and liberty on the emerging global landscape. He divides his time among urban China, rural England, and other corners of the world.
Articles by Adam K. Webb
The Ties that Stretch and Bind
Many a time, I have seen my friend doting on his little seven-year-old half brother, picking him up from school, cooking for him, and keeping his classmates’ junk food at…
Have We Forgotten the Women?
Tradition supposedly bears the thumbprints of Roman patricians with browbeaten wives or frustrated monks who shivered in mediæval abbeys.
Knowing One’s Place at the Ballot Box
The prevailing model of local voting has deep defects, which often work against strong communities. The modern standard is one person, one vote, one place. While this standard is simple,…
Castles Built on Sand
Even for the average homeowner, ownership all too often is imagined as a way of gaming income flow and consumption over a lifetime, accumulating enough to spend down before one…
An Arch Needs Many Stones: A Response to “God’s Economy”
But how can such plural sovereignty be realised under the circumstances of this century? Who will guard the guardians, so to speak? How will the stones of the arch fit…
Perils of the Stationary State
When economic growth finally levels off, what kind of world comes after? Shall we be unchained from the mad rush for money of the last century? Or will other but…
From Olive Trees to Overcapacity
A homogeneous global consumer culture flattens its victims. And, perhaps in the same vein, our meanderings around the dying furniture capital of Yecla turned up nothing: virtually everything on display…
What Colour Is the Village Green?
Often the politics of the local turns on the “who” as much as the “where.” Switzerland showed as much very recently. The country enjoys some goodwill among the sort of…
Empire’s Heir?
As the old saying suggests, be careful what you ask for, because you may get it. The hubristic here in China are well on their way to discovering some uncomfortable…
The Other Side of China, and What It Might Say When It Speaks
As the heat of late summer subsides here in Nanjing and our university settles into the new semester, many look forward to the annual “Golden Week” holiday in early October. …
Closing the Circle: An Economy of Values, and Where to Look for It
It is no surprise that many of us connected with FPR welcomed the release in mid July of Pope Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical, Caritas in Veritate. As John Médaille and…
Tocqueville on the Shores of Titicaca
Amid Alexis de Tocqueville’s writings on revolution in France, there is a passage that rings true for those of us who have spent time in the countryside. He observed that…