JONES, David Martin 1951- (Jonah M. David)

PERSONAL: Born August 21, 1951, in Cardiff, Wales; son of John Cynan (a clerk) and Betty (a nurse; maiden name, Hutchings) Jones. Ethnicity: "Welsh." Education: University of Reading, B.A. (with honors), 1971; McMaster University, M.A., 1973; University of Toronto, doctoral study, 1975-76; London School of Economics and Political Science, Ph.D., 1984. Politics: Liberal. Religion: "Atheist."

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of Government, University of Tasmania, G.P.O. Box 252-22, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Teacher at secondary schools in Brent borough, London, England, 1975-77; Brent Educational Workshop, London, England, coordinator of truancy project, 1981-88; history teacher and department head at a girls' school in Bushey, England, 1988-90; National University of Singapore, lecturer in political science, 1990-95; University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, senior lecturer in political theory, 1995—. University of London, teacher at London School of Economics and Political Science, 1984-90, researcher at Kings College Centre for Urban Education, 1987-90, and visiting fellow in war studies; North East London Polytechnic, teacher fellow, 1986-87.

WRITINGS:

(With D. A. Bell, D. Brown, and K. Jayasuriya) Toward Illiberal Democracy in Pacific Asia, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1995.

Political Development in Pacific Asia, Polity Press (Oxford, England), 1997.

Conscience and Allegiance in Seventeenth-CenturyEngland: The Political Significance of Oaths and Engagements, University of Rochester Press (Rochester, NY), 1999.

The Image of China in Western Social and PoliticalThought, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2001.

Contributor to books, including Michel Foucault and Education: Disciplines and Knowledge, edited by Stephen Ball, Routledge (New York, NY), 1990, 2nd edition, 1992; Crossing Borders: Transmigration in the Asia Pacific, edited by Chan Kwok Bun, Prentice-Hall (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1995; Critical Theory and Educational Research, edited by P. McLaren and J. Giarelli, State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 1995; and Pacific Studies, edited by D. Goldblatt and R. Maidment, Open University (Milton Keynes, England), 1998. Contributor of articles and reviews to periodicals, including National Review (under pseudonym Jonah M. David), World Today, Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, Comparative Politics, Contemporary Security Policy, Constitutional Political Economy, National Interest, Australian Financial Review, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, International Affairs, and Pacific Review. Book review editor, Asian Journal of Political Science, 1992-95.

WORK IN PROGRESS: ASEAN and the Growth of Regional Delusion; research on Islamist terrorist groups in southeast Asia.

SIDELIGHTS: David Martin Jones once told CA: "I have always found writing both therapeutic and satisfying, something that, as Paul Bowles observed, 'keeps the evil on the outside.' The difficulty with writing is its obsessive nature; it is also difficult to find an audience, or more precisely a publisher or editor, who believes that what I write might reach an audience.

"What motivates me to write on issues of contemporary politics is generally an experience that I have had which seems to conflict with a prevailing academic or ideological (currently the two are disturbingly interchangeable) orthodoxy. In terms of the anxiety of influence, I was fortunate to have attended the London School of Economics government department when the skeptical legacy of Michael Oakeshott, Elie Kedourie, and Ernest Gellner prevailed. It was through this influence that I gradually realized that jargon was often an excuse for thought and that it was the duty of a writer to try and express ideas in an interesting manner. To think clearly is also to write clearly.

"With regard to the subjects I have chosen, they are all ultimately concerned with the languages of self-understanding and self-disclosure. Whether writing on seventeenth-century understandings of conscience and obligation, or twentieth-century Asian reinvention of traditional values, I am interested in the ways in which culture and contingent historical experience shape political destiny. In this context, I am currently interested in the manner in which a contemporary politics of identity selectively deploys the historical record."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

English Historical Review, February, 2001, G. E. Aylmer, review of Conscience and Allegiance in Seventeenth-Century England, p. 217.

International Affairs, April, 1998, Amit Gupta, review of Political Development in Pacific Asia, p. 438; January, 2002, Carl Bridge, "Reinventing Realism: Australia's Foreign and Defense Policy at the Millennium," p. 216.

Political Science Quarterly, summer, 1997, Lee Feigon, review of Toward Illiberal Democracy in Pacific Asia, p. 360.

Renaissance Quarterly, winter, 2000, Arthur F. Kinney, review of Conscience and Allegiance in Seventeenth-Century England, p. 1255.

Studies in Comparative International Development, summer, 1998, Daniel Bell, review of Toward Illiberal Democracy in Pacific Asia, p. 127.