Title
The Politics of Imagining Asia / Theodore Huters, Hui Wang.
ISBN
9780674061354
Published
Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2011]
Copyright
©2011
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (368 p.)
Item Number
10.4159/harvard.9780674061354 doi
Dewey Decimal Classification
950.072
Summary
In this bold, provocative collection, Wang Hui confronts some of the major issues concerning modern China and the status quo of contemporary Chinese thought. The book's overarching theme is the possibility of an alternative modernity that does not rely on imported conceptions of Chinese history and its legacy. Wang Hui argues that current models, based largely on Western notions of empire and the nation-state, fail to account for the richness and diversity of pre-modern Chinese historical practice. At the same time, he refrains from offering an exclusively Chinese perspective and placing China in an intellectual ghetto. Navigating terrain on regional language and politics, he draws on China's unique past to expose the inadequacies of European-born standards for assessing modern China's evolution. He takes issue particularly with the way in which nation-state logic has dominated politically charged concerns like Chinese language standardization and "The Tibetan Question." His stance is critical - and often controversial - but he locates hope in the kinds of complex, multifaceted arrangements that defined China and much of Asia for centuries. The Politics of Imagining Asia challenges us not only to re-examine our theories of "Asia" but to reconsider what "Europe" means as well. As Theodore Huters writes in his introduction, "Wang Hui's concerns extend beyond China and Asia to an ambition to rethink world history as a whole."
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 28. Sep 2020)
Frontmatter
Contents
Introduction
1. The Politics of Imagining Asia
2. How to Explain "China" and Its "Modernity": Rethinking The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought
3. Local Forms, Vernacular Dialects, and the War of Resistance against Japan: The "National Forms" Debate
4. The "Tibetan Question" East and West: Orientalism, Regional Ethnic Autonomy, and the Politics of Dignity
5. Okinawa and Two Dramatic Changes to the Regional Order
6. Weber and the Question of Chinese Modernity
Notes
Credits
Index