It is a great pleasure to present the first special issue of 2023, the second focused on Eastern thought. Their articles deal with philosophical issues or ones of philosophical interest in this area of the planet or are developed by authors from that region dealing with philosophical subjects or humanities in general.
The partnership with researchers from the East has born fruit, whether through special issues or through the submission of texts for publication in regular issues. The success obtained is largely due to the partners that we could call associate editors, as is Kai Wang’s case, associate editor of this issue. In addition to capturing articles, these partners participate in the reviewers’ appointment to evaluate the submitted articles, as well as in the request for corrections of texts approved for publication. In all partnerships entered into, we make explicit our commitment to the quality of the texts, respecting the evaluation criteria of the journal, as a double-blind peer review.
Particularly in the special issues, following the habit of the journal, we seek to consider all methodologies, as well as the different areas of philosophy research and areas of philosophical interest. In 2019, to illustrate this issue, we had already published a special edition of the journal exclusively on the Western authors’ thoughts from the Northern Hemisphere. It should be noted, however, that works from this hemisphere, especially from the western side, are common and predominant in philosophy. We are trying to look back and offer opportunities to specialized research that does not have as much contact and ease of publication, especially in the southern and eastern hemispheres, democratizing access, production and socialization of knowledge. It is in this spirit that special issues have been published since 2020. Such publications, as well as all information about the journal, can be found on its homepage, which has been constantly reformulated and updated: https://revistas.marilia.unesp.br/index.php/transformacao/index.
In addition to geographic distribution in publications, the journal has also been promoting other actions, with a view to reducing inequalities and offering opportunities to all. We reconfigured, for example, the Executive Committee, whose representation is now equally divided between the research areas of the Department of Philosophy and the Graduate Program in Philosophy at UNESP, to which the journal is linked, as well as we sought a more equitable division of gender and external representation. The commission is mainly responsible for administrative issues and the ones related to the policy of the journal.
We also reconfigured the Editorial Board, seeking a more equal distribution of gender, as well as geographic and thematic one. Currently, female representation is equivalent to male. We intensified the directors’ participation, who have been established in the Southern Hemisphere, as well as members from all regions of Brazil and the world. The criterion adopted for choosing national members is their proven activity in their Lattes curriculum, especially considering, as a requirement, researchers with a CNPq/Category PQ-1 research productivity grant. For foreign members, the choice is made based on their curriculum, taking into account their production, impact factor and international reference. The Editorial Board has an advisory role and may be asked to suggest decisions on opinions on submitted material, in specific situations, to make suggestions on the editorial line of the journal, as well as to suggest or edit thematic issues. We also greatly expanded the number of reviewers. Currently, we have more than three thousand researchers in our database.
The actions of the journal, in recent years, can be evaluated through the considerable improvement in reputable rankings, such as in the Scopus and Redib indexes, or in classifications such as Qualis/CAPES, which, in 2022, classified Trans/Form/Ação in the Stratum A1, both in philosophy and in all other areas in which it has been evaluated. What makes it return to the select group of the best Brazilian and world journals in the area.
At Redib, we now occupy the 17th position among Philosophy journals from around the world registered in the index, appearing in the Q2 quartile. Also in 2022, we jumped 142 positions in the Scopus Cite Score. In this rank, in 2021, we occupied the 327th position, while, in 2020, we occupied the 469th one. In 2021, we occupied the 54th percentile group and, in 2020, we were in the 27th one. The JCR, in 2020, was 0.1; in 2021, it went to 0.4 and, in 2022, it is 0.6. The SJR, in 2021, was 0.116 and, in 2020, 0.102. This indicates that, in addition to the significant increase in citations, the Journal has also been cited by other well-evaluated journals, increasing its impact factor.
We have greatly reduced the time taken to evaluate submissions and make an editorial decision, which takes an average of three months. We understand that a quick evaluation is important, mainly with respect to the authors of the submitted manuscripts. However, this is not always possible, given the difficulty, many times, in finding reviewers and receiving the opinions in the requested time or even the need for new opinions, when there is an equal number of opinions favorable or contrary to the approval of the submission. In addition to the technical aspect in the evaluation process, we also believe that the dialogical and pedagogical element has a great value, which facilitates the debate and improvement of articles, both those approved and those not approved for publication.
We have also reduced the time between final approval of articles and their publication. This period, however, cannot be much shorter than seven months, given the process of grammatical corrections and their revisions, normalizations, editing, layout, publication on the FFC website, XML conversion and publication in databases such as SciELO and Redalyc, each one demanding its own time, in addition to the publication limit in each issue, due to the publication costs. Although we are seeking to maximize elements related to the agility of the service, the journal prioritizes the quality of the publication, whether the content itself or the presentation of the published material.
We have intensified communication with the community through social networks, mainly Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RevistaTransFormAcao, Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/revista.transformacao/ and other networks, such as ANPOF and Academia.edu, as well as through news sent by the journal on its own page. With this, we significantly increased the number of followers on social networks.
Finally, we highlight what may have been one of the greatest innovations of the journal: the new type of texts called “comments”. As described on its homepage, the journal adopts the socialization of knowledge as its objective, seeking to promote the debate and interlocution of ideas. In view of this, since 2020, we have inaugurated a new type of texts, which consists of comments on articles approved in the evaluation process. They are produced by the referees of the submitted manuscript and published with the original article, but independently. This is a constructive criticism, not more of the quality of the article, since the evaluation process has already been outdated.
According to Alves (2023, p. 09), “The commentator can expose possible disagreements of ideas, comparison of concepts among authors, perspectives or philosophical systems, hermeneutic, methodological, epistemological differences.” It is also possible to build an expansion, explanation or even the insertion of some important concept for the understanding of the argumentative line of the commented article, relevant explanatory notes or the commentator’s position regarding the exposed thesis.
By encouraging the production of texts such as comments, we seek to promote dialogue with the texts published in the journal, aiming at improving and expanding knowledge. In addition to providing a philosophical debate, the comments are also a way of formally valuing the journal evaluators’ work, offering them the opportunity to publish their ideas and reflections, which may even have originated from the analysis of the evaluated manuscript.
Following these ideas, we publish this special issue which, for each article, we associate a comment. There are 26 texts in all, distributed in 13 articles, displayed in their first authors’ alphabetical order, and 13 comments. The authors are linked to institutions in China, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Republic of Korea and Vietnam institutions.
The first article, titled “Research on countermeasures for the development of ecological civilization education in schools in the context of cultural diversity”, is written by Bingyu Chang, Xiaodan Liu and Chao Xian and commented by Qianqian Yu. According to the authors, ecological civilization is a form of civilization and has cultural values. In the process of economic and social development, different countries, regions and ethnic groups are bound to differ in their understanding of the connotation of ecological civilization and its external expression due to differences in social practices. In the context of cultural diversity, the development of ecological civilization education in China is a long-term systematic project, which requires all people’s participation, and can generally be carried out at three levels, including the social level, the national level and the school one. This paper argues that the whole society is the soil for developing ecological civilization education in China, the government is the external guarantee, the schools are the main battlefield and the government mainly relies on schools to achieve the goal of ecological civilization education. Therefore, this article will focus on the school level to discuss the countermeasures for the development of ecological civilization education in China in the present day of cultural diversity, which includes the goal system, teachers, students, curriculum, methodology and environment. Besides, the authors take Sichuan-Tibet region and Tianjin city as examples to elaborate the specific actions of integrating ethnic ecological culture into ecological civilization education in schools.
Then we publish “Research on the Integrated Training Mode of Higher Art Education for the Deaf”, authored by Fangfang Liu, whose comment was produced by Hui Shao. Liu says that the development of higher education for the disabled is one of the most important indicators of the development of education for the disabled in a country, whether the support policies are perfect, and whether the social civilization is advanced. The results showed that deaf students, with general school experience, had better adaptive ability. The integration model was more conducive to improve deaf students' school adaptive ability and social interaction awareness. The deaf students had higher demand for professional guidance and there is room for further improvement of the integration-training model. Based on the above research results and the problems in practice, this paper gives the corresponding countermeasure suggestions. The author suggests that we should build a "trinity" integration education model oriented to socially integrated talents in art applications and improve the management system of integration education. He argues we should also improve the deaf college students’ learning support system under the leadership of the school, modify and reconstruct the integration curriculum system of arts and crafts majors, and strengthen the support and guidance of the society for the construction of integration environment.
Third, comes “A Study of the Styles and Characteristics of Basic Music Theory Textbooks in China in the Past 100 Years”, written by Feng Yu, Qiming Zhang and Pham Minh Thuy and commented by Yukun Qiao. According to the authors, due to various historical and realistic reasons, the development of basic music theory in China lags behind in the teaching system, teaching content and other aspects. It is an important task for Chinese music workers to revise or supplement the current basic music theory and related textbooks and then build a discipline system of basic music theory in China. Yu, Zhang and Thuy synthesize the theories of music education and music history, music culture, music morphology and other related disciplines. They use scientific, objective and rational values and holistic and comprehensive concepts. They take the development of the basic music theory education of China as the research object and takes history as a mirror to further consider and prospect the construction of the basic music theory discipline system of China. The basic theory of Chinese Music can be roughly divided into three stages. It can be seen, from the development of the basic theory education of Chinese Music and its teaching materials, that the development of western music theory in China, before the founding of the People's Republic of China, was a process from passive acceptance to active absorption. The scope of spreading western music theory was from the palace to the church, then to the school, and, finally, to the society, which made the music theory teaching in China gradually develop into a major and minor system as the leading mode. The basic theory of Chinese Music gradually deviated from its own track. With the deepening of music research after the founding of the People's Republic of China, the discipline development of basic music theory has witnessed a prosperous situation, and the construction of basic music theory is moving towards the direction of diversification and deepening. Based on the principle of "combining history with the theory" and combing the development of basic music theory in China, the ideal model of Chinese music theory discipline construction is conceived to promote the integration between traditional music theory and modern music theory from a diachronic perspective. The authors argue that this is relevant to strengthen the unity of the nation and the world in basic music theory from a synchronic perspective, and to pay attention to the connotation of technology and culture in music theory teaching. But also to strengthen the scientific and logical concept in music theory textbooks.
The next article, commented by Cheng Cheng R. and written by Fengrong Zhang and Qianwen Xiao, is “Marxist view on global political economy and new marked trends”. The authors remember that it has been clear from the beginning that capitalism is a dishonest business model, say Zhang and Xiao. Capitalism, on the other hand, has been connected with enormous wealth accumulation. As stated, capitalism has been associated with exploitation, the widening of the gap between the rich and the poor, economic collapses and global conflict. Political economy has long examined the relationship between the faces of capitalism. Is it possible to eliminate all flaws of capitalism while maintaining its merits, as the proponents of the system believe? After dealing with this and other questions and presenting some data referring to capitalism and Marxism, the authors argue that the Marxism cannot be fully contained in a 19th-century framework due to the critical tradition it generated, which cuts across the humanities and social sciences. Even in places where he was rejected, Marx in some ways managed to permeate the water we drink and the air we breathe. The first two decades of the twenty-first century have shown us that Marxism is everywhere. Modern Marxism does not discourage modern economic trends such as entrepreneurship and free enterprise as long as they become catalysts for the welfare and prosperity of society.
The fifth article, “A Study on the Ancient Theater of Official House in the Taihang Mountain Area of North Henan Province in China”, by Hengli Peng and Hanwen Li, is commented by Baohong Xu. Peng and Li remember that as a particular type of ancient Chinese theater, talented theater of official house was mainly found in the Taihang Mountain area, in North Henan Province, which was formed in the middle of the Qing Dynasty. The appearance of it is related to the local natural environment, folk culture and agricultural productivity. Through field investigation, it is found that there are eight existing theaters in the Taihang Mountain area of North Henan Province; among which, three ones are newly discovered that have not been documented by the academic circle before, as well as several traditional Chinese opera steles and wall inscriptions. This is the first time the academic circle discloses relevant data and information. These provide physical evidence about the performance of the village opera in the Taihang Mountain area of the Qing Dynasty, in China. Especially the inscriptions on the steles and the stage wall can reflect some features of the local opera performance since the Qing Dynasty, such as the type, time, troupe, and so on. To some extent, the authors argue, the richness of these ancient theaters of official house, with the architectural styles of ancient Chinese opera, has a significant value related to historical material and cultural relics. The first-hand data obtained in the investigation will also provide the latest research materials on ancient Chinese opera and theater architecture.
“How peace corps volunteers influence the United States: an analysis based on pragmatism” was written by Long Ye, Zhihua Liao and Yuanyuan Yu. This paper is commented by Zhi Li. From the perspective of pragmatic diplomatic philosophy, Peace Corps can benefit the United States, which is an important reason for the domestic support it receives within the United States, say the authors. Through the volunteers’ acculturation experience, cultural exchanges between the United States and host countries are promoted and the awareness of the American society about the Third World countries is raised, which is the true value of the Peace Corps from the perspective of American interests. As members of American society, Peace Corps volunteers gain a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the Third World in their host countries, which is not only an important part of improving the awareness of the American society in the Third World, but is also an important bridge to spread this awareness in the United States. The authors show: when volunteers return to the United States after finishing their service, they bring their understanding of the Third World to different industries and fields in American domestic society. Among them, American education and diplomacy are mostly affected. These are of great significance in improving the international vision and awareness of American education and the reliability of American foreign policy.
In the seventh place, we have “Mao Zedong’s thought and the construction of socialist ideology”, authored by Min Zhang, Haiyong Zong, David Zeen and commented by Renjun Cao. According to the authors, the 70-year practice of New China shows that our party has, permanently, attached importance and strengthened the leadership of ideological work, which is an essential factor for the Chinese nation to achieve the leap from standing, wealthy to powerful, and consolidate continuously the ruling position of the party. The successive leadership collectives of the party have explored and innovated the theory of socialist ideology in different periods of the history of China in light of the international and domestic situation, providing the CPC with a scientific theoretical basis and action guidelines for breaking through ideological barriers in its long-term rule. Mao Zedong made significant historical contributions to explore the road to new Chinese socialism, institutional design, theoretical innovation and ideological construction. Following these ideas, the authors, in this paper, intend to combine the basic principles of Marxism with the specific reality of China, creatively put forward the basic principles and basic directions of national ideology construction, and systematically elaborate the essential connotation, guiding ideology, primary objectives, fundamental nature and realization path of socialist ideology construction. Your study crave shows that the first theoretical leap of the localization of Marxist ideology in China has laid a solid foundation to build a scientific and complete country and a scientific and complete national ideology system.
The eighth article is “The evolution and spread of the image of "nagas bathing siddhartha" in buddhism art”, by Xiaodan Liu, Huiwen Xia, Tao Ma and Qi Dang. This article is commented by Jie Tong. The image of the "Nagas Bathing Siddhartha", an important theme in Buddhist art, say the authors, was produced in India. It has appeared successively in Xinjiang, Gansu, Qinghai, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Henan, Shandong, Jiangsu, Sichuan, Tibet and other places in China during the process of Buddhism spreading to the East. However, its forms and contents differ in different regions and distinct periods. Therefore, it is conducive to understand the sinicization process of Indian Buddhist art and it can deepen the understanding of the specific contents of Buddhist art exchanges to study the differences. According to the authors, the innovative point of view of this paper is that the distribution of "Nagas Bathing Siddhartha" is "regional," and the variation of its style reflects the route and regional characteristics of Buddhist transmission.
Yanrui Xu and Junwei Wang produced “Yang Naimei - life practice of a chinese “flapper” of women's development in China”, followed by Shuang Zheng’s commentary. As one of the earliest movie stars in China, Yang Naimei's life reflects the process of Chinese women’s professionalization and modernization in the early 20th century. This study discusses Yang Naimei’s life practices and significance as a Chinese flapper. Flapper refers to the modern girl who arose in Europe and America in the 1920s as a challenge to traditional lifestyles. Yang Naimei fully embodied the flapper’s characters. She often played an unruly woman on the screen, and she had many relationships in her life, accumulating wealth and a reputation with her acting career. However, society at that time did not provide enough space for the sustainable development of the women’s generation, like Yang Naimei, in economic, political and personal life. After the loss of her youth, she was disposed of by the film industry and suffered from poverty and disease in the latter half of her life. Taking Yang Naimei as an illustration of the times can reflect the twists and turns in the Chinese women’s treatment offered by the society, argue the authors.
The tenth article is “Ansai peasant paintings: inheritance of Chinese primitive culture and primitive philosophy” was written by Yaqian Chang, Liming Zhou, Peng Lu, Samina Yasmeen and commented by Ke Li. Chinese primitive philosophy, as the unity of cosmological ontology, epistemology and methodology of the Chinese philosophical system, is a complete and mature philosophical system formed in the late primitive society as early as before the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties, define the authors. It is also the unity of the concept of Yin and Yang and constant life that is sublimated from the human-beings’ basic cultural consciousness: life consciousness and reproduction consciousness. The Chinese primitive culture, from the painted pottery culture 7,000 years ago to today, from the underground archaeological culture to the group culture on the ground, is a plastic art based on the concept of viewing objects and taking images. It is a broad concept of fine arts that determines the philosophical and the artistic views, emotional temperament, psychological quality and national spirit of the Chinese nation. The most primitive culture and primitive philosophy in China have been preserved with extremely rich and complete historical remains in the group's cultural and social life. It is for this reason, argue the authors, that China is the only country with an ancient history of civilization that has not experienced a cultural break. The primitive culture and the philosophical system of China, as the hilosophical basis and main connotation of ethnic group culture, are completely accumulated in the ethnic groups’ social life. The authors aim to show that the rapid development of the times makes the traditional folk customs and folk arts, which are generally deposited in the rural areas of China, become precarious. As a result, the research advantages of the unique human culture and the original culture of China will cease to exist. Therefore, it is an urgent historical task to make use of this advantage to study the original culture of China and the philosophical genes of the Chinese nation. Protection is imminent, and inheritance is the historical mission, which highlights the deeper significance of studying primitive culture and primitive philosophy in modern society.
Following, “The relationship between the debate on the monetary system during the Eastern Jin and Southern Dynasties and East Zhejiang economic region” is produced by Yi Yang, Jie Tong, Zhou Chan and commented by Ji Ma. Not only the indigenous aristocratic families but also northern immigrant families living in East Zhejiang were involved in the debates on monetary theory and policy thought in the Eastern Jin and Southern Dynasties. The debates, according to the authors, were often focused on the commodity prices and forced labor in East Zhejiang. This special historical phenomenon reflects two questions. On the one hand, the chaos caused by the war in the north and scholar families migrating southward greatly promoted the development of southern China, which made the five counties in East Zhejiang the most important and active areas of economy. On the other hand, it reflects the relationship changes between immigrants and indigenous gentries. Namely, the indigenous aristocratic families and northern immigrant families cooperated in economy so as to enhance the prosperity and development of the East Zhejiang region. Later, argue Yang, Tong and Zhou, with the rise of "common people", the scholars’ economic status was increasingly impacted, which resulted in the gentries’ anxiety and crisis consciousness.
The penultimate article, “Cultural Design Methodology from the Perspective of Cultural Philosophy: A Case of Ningbo”, is written by Wang Zuyao, Jia Xin, Qiao Song and commented by Tao Ma. Cultural design integrates cultural content into the design process. It is an important means to realize the innovation of traditional culture in inheritance. Cultural design behavior is subtly influenced by cultural philosophy, argue the authors. They go on to claim: specifically, cultural environment analysis, cultural semantic association and cultural imagery extraction, from the perspective of cultural philosophy, are helpful in realizing the explicitness of designers' implicit knowledge in the process of encoding and decoding cultural genes. The authors say they select Ningbo as a sample to deeply mine the regional cultural genes, explore the generation mode of cultural design, and further propose a framework for building a cultural design knowledge service system. So as to provide methodological guidance for regional cultural design practice to build sustainable cultural design capabilities.
Finally, the thirteenth text, commented by Yuemeng Ge and written by Zhanmin Cui, Zhihua Liao and Yuxiao Luo, is entitled “How should we think about common prosperity and challenges in the context of financialization?” The authors say that China is actively promoting common prosperity to address the contradiction of unbalanced and inadequate development. Financialization has become the backdrop for common prosperity. How understanding the changing connotations of common prosperity and the factors influencing it in this context becomes the subject of this paper. They argue that the imbalance between income from assets and labor and the new forms of value generation are the reasons why common prosperity is difficult to achieve. To justify this conclusion, this paper examines financialization from the critical perspective of the Marxist political economy, cites the financialization case in China and discusses the real and ideological challenges facing common prosperity. The authors analyze the nature of a new form of fetishism, financialization fetishism, and introduce the concept of narrative value, thus exposing the distortion of people's value ideology by financialization fetishism and the obscuring and erosion of labor value by the mystification of narrative value.
This is how this special issue of Trans/Form/Ação is constituted. We hope, with the practices listed above, to continue seeking the quality of our publications, promoting the sharing of knowledge in all areas and in all regions of Brazil and the world. We wish you a good reading of this issue. Thank you very much for your company!!!
Reference
ALVES, M. A. Apresentação. Trans/Form/Ação: revista de filosofia da UNESP, v. 46, n. 1, p. 07-14, 2023.
Received: 01/02/2023
Approved: 10/02/2023
[1] Editor of Trans/Form/Ação: Unesp journal of Philosophy. Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Postgraduate Program in Philosophy at São Paulo State University (UNESP), Marília, SP – Brazil and Leader of the Study Group in Philosophy of Information, Mind and Epistemology – GEFIME (CNPq/UNESP). CNPq Researcher. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5704-5328. E-mail: marcos.a.alves@unesp.br.