Erik Ringmar is Chaired Professor in the History and Theory of International Relations at Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China. He has recently published The Mechanics of Modernity in Europe and East Asia: The Institutional Origin of Social Change and Stagnation (Routledge, 2009) and Liberal Babararism and the Destruction of the Palace of the Emperor of China (Paradigm, 2010).
Jorg Kustermans is a PhD researcher at the Department of Political Science, University of Antwerp, Belgium. His dissertation research is concerned with questions of war and peace, and the issue of agency in world politics and social theory.Erik Ringmar is professor of Social and Cultural Studies at NCTU, Xinzhu, Taiwan. He has a PhD in political science from Yale University, taught at LSE in London for 12 years, and has published books with Cambridge UP, Routledge, Paradigm Publishers, and others. He is a faculty fellow at the Yale Center for Cultural Sociology.