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

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