Reconceptualizing India Studies: Lecture at the book release in Brussels, 14 December 2012 (original) (raw)

Indian and Oriental studies in a Euro-Indian perspective for the 21st century

Acta Orientalia Vilnensia

Collegium Civitas; University of WarsawThe basic presumption is the need in Oriental studies to go much further than mere description of different civilisations. They should be compared with our own, and the question of whether the concepts evolved by those civilisations can help us better understand the reality in which we actually happen to live should be asked. For the adoption of this approach to the study of South Asia, it is suggested that European and Indian civilisations are ‘twins-unlike’. The paradox is intended since certain—so to say—general structural aspects of both civilisations are similar (geographical magnitude, variety of climate, size of population, and its anthropological, ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity), but as far as content is concerned they are of course very much unlike each other. The conclusion of our comparison is that Indian traditional civilisation is that of sustenance and containment while the European one is that of progress, development...

Introduction to the Modern Spirit of Asia / 《亚洲的现代灵性》之 导论

Cultural Diversity in China, 2015

increasing specialization it is important to do comparative work if it succeeds in highlighting issues that are neglected or ignored because of the specialist's focus on a singular national society. The nation-form itself is a global form 2that emerges in the nineteenth century and cannot be understood as the product of one particular society. It is the dominant societal form today and India and China have been gradually developed into nation-states. That is why one can compare India and China at the level of nation-states, although these societies are internally immensely differentiated and the particular nation-form they have taken is historically contingent. While India and China are taking a globally available form that is characteristic for modernity they follow pathways that are quite different. These differences can be highlighted and understood through comparison. China's and India's nation-forms are comparable, because they are based on huge societies with deep cultural histories that have united large numbers of people over vast territories and long periods of time. Both have taken the nation-form in interaction with Western imperialism. The comparative analysis that is introduced here takes the nation-form not as something natural or already preconditioned by deep civilizational or ethnic histories, but as something historically contingent and fragmented.3 In its focus on the comparative analysis of the different pathways of two nation-states in a global (imperial) context the argument goes beyond methodological nationalism.4

Major essay s3410129 Modern Asia (1)

During 18th century, thanks to industrialized revolution, many countries in the West became superior in military powers and economic development. At the same time, some countries such as Asia, Africa, and Latin America still had to suffer from a deepening poverty and increasing unrest as being colonizing and stereotyped from the West. This connects to the point made by Zakaria (2008) that for hundred years after fifteen century when the West achieved the stage of industrialization, urbanization and modernization, the rests were still sunk into poverty and backward farming and rural style. Moreover, according to Said 1994, the West portrayed the Eastern countries as exoticness but backward civilization. Under shadow of the Western countries, several independent countries decided to follow and learn from their path to develop sufficient and well-being lives for their citizens. When it comes to the real life, Schramm, Lerner, Pye, Ithiel De Sola Pool and Rostow argued that the development process involves the unidirectional transformation from traditionalism to modernization and finally reaches Wetern status. However, in my opinion, there are three solid reasons to support that we do not need to adopt all Western values to become “Modern.” Therefore I think that modernization is not synonymous westernization by analyzing the case study of Japan and other cultural text of other Asian countries.

Civilization, Nation and Modernity in East Asia

Civilization, Nation and Modernity in East Asia, 2012

This book explores the crisis of cultural identity which has assaulted Asian countries since Western countries began to have a profound impact on Asia in the nineteenth century. Confronted by Western 'civilization' and by 'modernity', Asian countries have been compelled to rethink their identity, and to consider how they should relate to Western 'civilization' and 'modernity'. The result, the author argues, has been a redefining by Asian countries of their own character as nations, and an adaptation of 'civilization' and 'modernity' to their own special conditions. Asian nations, the author contends, have thereby engaged with the West and with modernity, but on their own terms, occasionally, and in various inconsistent ways in which they could assert a sense of difference, forcing changes in the Western concept of civilization. Drawing on postmodern theory, the Kyoto School,

Theorizing Alternative Futures of Asia: Activating Enabling Traditions

2018

This chapter explores culture, and its possibilities and limits, in the light of Asia’s great potential for recovery in the twenty-first century. It is not a question of Asian ascendancy but of how that ascendancy will be expressed that lies at the heart of futures thinking for Asia. Asian futures, and the traditions that inform them, are first framed though the biographies of two thinkers engaged in developing new criteria for thinking about Asia 2060. The concept of enabling tradition is offered as an alternative to traditional conservatism and an adjunct to critical traditionalism. In this light the concepts of renaissance and an Asian renaissance are also explored. The interrelated nature of this new emerging theoretical development provides the point at which this chapter closes. The concept that we all inter-are reminds us that the future belongs to us all, both humanity and its planetary system, and challenges the parochial to rethink its relationship with a world that is tur...

Guest Editors's Introduction: What's Left of Asia

positions: east asia cultures critique, 2007

When we began organizing this special issue two years ago, we were motivated by two imperatives for rethinking "Asia." 1 One has a long history: the project of rethinking Asia has infused the complex histories of struggles that defined and redefined what and how Asia means. The fluctuating meanings and valences of Asia were particularly driven by Europe's subjugation of regional empires and societies in Asia since the mid -nineteenth century, which marked a watershed in the global expansion of capitalism. Yet Asia was also mobilized by multiple social imaginaries and enlisted in the imperialist projects of the United States and Japan, as well as by various anticolonial movements, alliances, and revolutions. In an important sense, we inherit this historical terrain, full of the past's contradictions, tensions, and mixed legacies as still-living forces to be contended with in the current global conjuncture. Ours is a moment, of course, marked by the reasserpositions 15:2