Arif Dirlik - Böcker

In this volume, scholars question the current euphoria over the rapid growth of the Pacific rim - as an economic region and as a political ideal. They suggest that much of the discourse on the region is highly ideological, focusing on its potential for capitalist development while ignoring the limitations of such development, its human costs and consequences. This critique of the idea of a Pacific rim also seeks to redress the balance by focusing on the region in terms of human interactions.

In this volume, scholars question the current euphoria over the rapid growth of the Pacific rim - as an economic region and as a political ideal. They suggest that much of the discourse on the region is highly ideological, focusing on its potential for capitalist development while ignoring the limitations of such development, its human costs and consequences. This critique of the idea of a Pacific rim also seeks to redress the balance by focusing on the region in terms of human interactions.

The essays in this volume range from questions of cultural self-representation in China to more general problems of reconceptualizing global relationships in response to contemporary changes. Although the new era of global capitalism calls for the remapping of global relations, such remapping must be informed both by a grasp of contemporary structu

In "Revolution and History", Arif Dirlik examines the application of the materialist conception of history to the analysis of Chinese history in a period when Marxist ideas first gained currency in Chinese intellectual circles. His argument raises questions about earlier interpretations of Marxist historiography by scholars who based their opinions primarily on post-1949 writings.

Arif Dirlik's latest offering is a revisionist perspective on Chinese radicalism in the twentieth century. He argues that the history of anarchism is indispensable to understanding crucial themes in Chinese radicalism. And anarchism is particularly significant now as a source of democratic ideals within the history of the socialist movement in China. Dirlik draws on the most recent scholarship and on materials available only in the last decade to compile the first comprehensive history of his subject available in a Western language. He emphasizes the anarchist contribution to revolutionary discourse and elucidates this theme through detailed analysis of both anarchist polemics and social practice. The changing circumstances of the Chinese revolution provide the immediate context, but throughout his writing the author views Chinese anarchism in relation to anarchism worldwide.

This ambitious work provides a unique statement on the question of place-based activism and its relationship to powerful forces of international capital. Arguing that specific places around the world are sites for the defense and enhancement of daily life in the context of rapidly expanding global technologies and investment options, the contributors reach for a vision of social development that supports sustainable, humane cultures. Bringing together the local and the global, this work provides the first sustained linkage of ethnic groups in diaspora to macrocosmic processes of world capital that inevitably reach down to mediate even the most local experiences. The essays, ranging in their discussion of place from Los Angeles and New York to New Zealand and Indonesia, offer both reasoned argument and authoritiative information on how local experience interacts with larger processes of global capital and the diasporic phenomenon. The book will be an invaluable resource and launching point for scholars and students in ethnic and identity studies and will interest all readers exploring the production of place and identification.

Challenges to the conventional study of history have been raised by the recent paradigm of globalization and by new intellectual transformations linked to postmodernism and postcolonialism. In this book the noted historian Arif Dirlik argues for a new approach to the practice of historical research. Moving beyond mere critique, he synthesizes traditional historical methods with new approaches that emphasize historical memory, indigenous writing, place based history, and the dual processes of integration and fragmentation in a globalized world.

Representing a lifetime of research and writing by noted historian Arif Dirlik, the essays collected here explore developments in Chinese socialism and the issues that have occupied historians of the Chinese revolution for the past three decades. Dirlik engages Chinese socialism critically but with sympathy for the aspirations of revolutionaries who found the hope of social, political, and cultural liberation in Communist alternatives to capitalism and the intellectual inspiration to realize their hopes in Marxist theory. The book's historical approach to Marxist theory emphasizes its global relevance while avoiding dogmatic and Eurocentric limitations. These incisive essays range from the origins of socialism in the early twentieth century, through the victory of the Communists in mid-century, to the virtual abandonment by century's end of any pretense to a socialist revolutionary project by the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. All that remains of the revolution in historical hindsight are memories of its failures and misdeeds, but Dirlik retains a critical perspective not just toward the past but also toward the ideological hegemonies of the present. Taken together, his writings reaffirm the centrality of the revolution to modern Chinese history. They also illuminate the fundamental importance of Marxism to grasping the flaws of capitalist modernity, despite the fact that in the end the socialist response was unable to transcend the social and ideological horizons of capitalism.

The essays in this volume range from questions of cultural self-representation in China to more general problems of reconceptualizing global relationships in response to contemporary changes. Although the new era of global capitalism calls for the remapping of global relations, such remapping must be informed both by a grasp of contemporary structures of economic, political, and cultural power and by memories of earlier radical visions of society. Without these two conditions, Arif Dirlik argues, the current preoccupation with Eurocentrism, ethnic diversity, and multiculturalism distract from issues of power that dominate global relations and that find expression in murderous ethnic conflicts.In lieu of multiculturalism, Dirlik offers multi-historicalism," which presupposes a historically grounded conception of cultural difference, seeks in different histories alternative visions of human society, and stresses divergent historical trajectories against a future colonized presently by an ideology of capital. Arguing that the operations of capital have brought the question of the local to the fore, he points to indigenism" as a source of paradigms of social relations and relationships to nature, to challenge the voracious developmentalism that undermines local welfare globally.

In this collaborative effort by two leading scholars of modern Chinese history, Ming K. Chan and Arif Dirlik investigate how the short-lived National Labor University in Shanghai was both a reflection of the revolutionary concerns of its time and a catalyst for future radical experiments in education. Under the slogan “Turn schools into fields and factories, fields and factories into schools,” the university attempted to bridge the gap between intellectual and manual labor that its founders saw as a central problem of capitalism, and which remains a persistent theme in Chinese revolutionary thinking.During its five years of existence, Labor University was the most impressive institutional embodiment in twentieth-century China of the labor-learning ideal, which was introduced by anarchists in the first decade of the century and came to be shared by a diverse group of revolutionaries in the 1920s. This detailed study places Labor University within the broad context of anarchist social ideals and educational experiments that inspired it directly, as well as comparable socialist experiments within labor education in Europe that Labor University’s founders used as models. The authors bring to bear the perspectives of institutional and intellectual history on their examination of the structure and operation of the University, presenting new material on its faculty, curriculum, physical plant, and history.

The Pacific, long a source of fantasies for EuroAmerican consumption and a testing ground for the development of EuroAmerican production, is often misrepresented by the West as one-dimensional, culturally monolithic. Although the Asia/Pacific region occupies a prominent place in geopolitical thinking, little is available to readers outside the region concerning the resistant communities and cultures of Pacific and Asian peoples. Asia/Pacific as Space of Cultural Production fills that gap by documenting the efforts of diverse indigenous cultures to claim and reimagine Asia/Pacific as a space for their own cultural production.From New Zealand to Japan, Taiwan to Hawaii, this innovative volume presents essays, poems, and memoirs by prominent Asia/Pacific writers that resist appropriation by transnational capitalism through the articulation of autonomous local identities and counter-histories of place and community. In addition, cultural critics spanning several locations and disciplines deconstruct representations-particularly those on film and in novels-that perpetuate Asia/Pacific as a realm of EuroAmerican fantasy. This collection, a much expanded edition of boundary 2, offers a new perception of the Asia/Pacific region by presenting the Pacific not as a paradise or vast emptiness, but as a place where living, struggling peoples have constructed contemporary identities out of a long history of hegemony and resistance. Asia/Pacific as Space of Cultural Production will prove stimulating to readers with an interest in the Asia/Pacific region, and to scholars in the fields of Asian, American, Pacific, postcolonial, and cultural studies.Contributors. Joseph P. Balaz, Chris Bongie, William A. Callahan, Thomas Carmichael, Leo Ching, Chiu Yen Liang (Fred), Chungmoo Choi, Christopher L. Connery, Arif Dirlik, John Fielder, Miriam Fuchs, Epeli Hau`ofa, Lawson Fusao Inada, M. Consuelo LeÓn W., Katharyne Mitchell, Masao Miyoshi, Steve Olive, Theophil Saret Reuney, Peter Schwenger, Subramani, Terese Svoboda, Jeffrey Tobin, Haunani-Kay Trask, John Whittier Treat, Tsushima Yuko, Albert Wendt, Rob Wilson

Few countries have been so transformed in recent decades as China. With a dynamically growing economy and a rapidly changing social structure, China challenges the West to understand the nature of its modernization. Using postmodernism as both a global frame of periodization and a way to break free from the rigid ideology of westernization as modernity, this volume’s diverse group of contributors argues that the Chinese experience is crucial for understanding postmodernism. Collectively, these essays question the implications of specific phenomena, like literature, architecture, rock music, and film, in a postsocialist society. Some essays address China’s complicity in-as well as its resistance to-the culture of global capitalism. Others evaluate the impact of efforts to redefine national culture in terms of enhanced freedoms and expressions of the imagination in everyday life. Still others discuss the general relaxation of political society in post-Mao China, the emergence of the market and its consumer mass culture, and the fashion and discourse of nostalgia. The contributors make a clear case for both the historical uniqueness of Chinese postmodernism and the need to understand its specificity in order to fully grasp the condition of postmodernity worldwide. Although the focus is on mainland China, the volume also includes important observations on social and cultural realities in Hong Kong and Taiwan, whose postmodernity has so far been confined-in both Chinese and English-speaking worlds-to their economic and consumer activities instead of their political and cultural dynamism.First published as a special issue of boundary 2, Postmodernism and China includes seven new essays. By juxtaposing postmodernism with postsocialism and by analyzing China as a producer and not merely a consumer of the culture of the postmodern, it will contribute to critical discourses on globalism, modernity, and political economics, as well as to cultural and Asian studies.Contributors. Evans Chan, Arif Dirlik, Dai Jinhua, Liu Kang, Anthony D. King, Jeroen de Kloet, Abidin Kusno, Wendy Larson, Chaoyang Liao, Ping-hui Liao, Sebastian Hsien-hao Liao, Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu, Wang Ning, Xiaobing Tang, Xiaoying Wang, Chen Xiaoming, Xiaobin Yang, Zhang Yiwu, Xudong Zhang

This pathbreaking, multidisciplinary work challenges our unthinking acceptance of such terms as 'Asia Pacific' and 'Pacific Rim.' Clarifying the hidden power relationships and hegemonic struggles that are disguised by ideological constructions of the region, the contributors uncover fundamental contradictions_including the human costs and consequences_that underlie the much-celebrated economic boom. In evaluating the idea of 'Asia Pacific,' the book shifts our focus from abstract relationships between capital and commodities to the human interactions that have played a formative part in the region's constitution. The contributors agree that it is these interactions that constitute the region, rather than the physical boundaries of the Pacific. This revised and updated edition brings in additional essays focusing on conceptualizations of the Pacific, considers more fully interactions among countries, and strongly emphasizes peoples within the Pacific, who are routinely ignored in most discussions of the 'Rim.'

Chinese immigrants played a dynamic role in frontier America, yet scholars of Asian America have focused for the most part only on the Pacific Coast, especially California. This reader fills that gap by collecting memoirs, documents, and historical analyses from the other Western states—from the Cascades to the Great Plains—to provide a comprehensive overview of the Chinese in nineteenth-century America. Selecting among a wealth of primary and secondary material, Dirlik has chosen works that enlarge our understanding of the Chinese presence in the West and the development of Chinese cultural formations on the frontier. Providing insights not only into frontier society in the United States, but also into U.S.-Chinese relations of the time, this volume will be invaluable for all readers interested in China, Western history, and the history of Asian America.

History as a discipline faces a crisis of identity as Eurocentrism fades in a world where globalized visions compete to explain historical processes. Facing the challenge squarely, this volume—comprising specialists on Asia, Africa, and Latin America—explores the state of historical analysis in various world regions and appraises current views on what defines and challenges historical knowledge. It is widely accepted that Eurocentrism no longer seem acceptable in a world where others are reasserting their own notions of past and future. The post–World War II spatialities that guided both historical analysis and the division of labor in historical work are in the process of disappearing into more globalized visions. Constituencies left out of history in the past are making demands for the recognition of their historical presence. History as epistemology is under attack as a marker of Eurocentric modernity from non-historical ways of thinking, as well as from ideologies of postmodernism that deny to history its claims to truth. Indeed, the current situation in the field has been described by one distinguished historian as a “cacophonous confusion.” The challenge historians face is how to imagine new ways of writing history that overcome this confusion without falling back upon ideological and methodological prejudices that reproduce the problems of the past in new guises. The contributors discuss how these challenges are voiced and met in their different areas of specialization. Unsurprising in a volume that addresses a variety of regions and issues that are not only technically historiographical but also deeply cultural and political, the authors differ in their appraisal of the challenges presented by globalization, postmodernism, or postcolonialism. Yet they are united in their recognition of the validity of historical ways of knowing and their reaffirmation of the importance of history in grasping contemporary cultural and political problems. It is because history is entangled in a Eurocentric modernity

These essays consider the implications for Chinese socialism of the repudiation of the Cultural Revolution and the legacy of Mao Zedong as well as the meaning of the new definition and direction Mao's successors have given socialism. The themes have been selected for conceptual coherence within a socialist problematic of social change. Representing anthropology, art history, economics, history, literature and politics, various inquiries point in a twofold direction - the meaning of socialism for China and the meaning of Chinese Socialism for socialism as a global phenomenon - "meaning" not in some abstract sense but rather as it is constituted in the process of political ideological activity, which articulates and defines social relationships within China as well as China's relationship to the world.

These essays consider the implications for Chinese socialism of the repudiation of the Cultural Revolution and the legacy of Mao Zedong as well as the meaning of the new definition and direction Mao's successors have given socialism. The themes have been selected for conceptual coherence within a socialist problematic of social change. Representing anthropology, art history, economics, history, literature and politics, various inquiries point in a twofold direction - the meaning of socialism for China and the meaning of Chinese Socialism for socialism as a global phenomenon - "meaning" not in some abstract sense but rather as it is constituted in the process of political ideological activity, which articulates and defines social relationships within China as well as China's relationship to the world.

The essays in this collection address questions raised by a modernity that has become global with the victory of capitalism over its competitors in the late twentieth century. Rather than erase difference by converting all to European-American norms of modernity, capitalist modernity as it has gone global has empowered societies once condemned to imprisonment in premodernity or tradition to make their own claims on modernity, on the basis of those very traditions, as filtered through experiences of colonialism, neocolonialism, or simple marginalization by the forces of globalization. Global modernity appears presently not as global homogeneity, but as a site of conflict between forces of homogenization and heterogenization within and between nations. Prominent in this context are conflicts over different ways of knowing and organizing the world. The essays here, dealing for the most part with education in the United States, engage in critiques of hegemonic ways of knowing and critically evaluate counterhegemonic voices for change that are heard from a broad spectrum of social, ethnic, and indigenous perspectives. Crucial to the essays' critique of hegemony in contemporary pedagogy is an effort shared by the contributors, distinguished scholars in their various fields, to overcome area and/or disciplinary boundaries and take the wholeness of everyday life as their point of departure.

The essays in this collection address questions raised by a modernity that has become global with the victory of capitalism over its competitors in the late twentieth century. Rather than erase difference by converting all to European-American norms of modernity, capitalist modernity as it has gone global has empowered societies once condemned to imprisonment in premodernity or tradition to make their own claims on modernity, on the basis of those very traditions, as filtered through experiences of colonialism, neocolonialism, or simple marginalization by the forces of globalization. Global modernity appears presently not as global homogeneity, but as a site of conflict between forces of homogenization and heterogenization within and between nations. Prominent in this context are conflicts over different ways of knowing and organizing the world. The essays here, dealing for the most part with education in the United States, engage in critiques of hegemonic ways of knowing and critically evaluate counterhegemonic voices for change that are heard from a broad spectrum of social, ethnic, and indigenous perspectives. Crucial to the essays' critique of hegemony in contemporary pedagogy is an effort shared by the contributors, distinguished scholars in their various fields, to overcome area and/or disciplinary boundaries and take the wholeness of everyday life as their point of departure.

"A compelling essay on the contemporary human condition." William D. Coleman, Director of the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University "An unusually perceptive and balanced appraisal of the globalization hype and its relation to the reality of global capitalism." Immanuel Wallerstein, Yale University In his provocative new book Arif Dirlik argues that the present represents not the beginning of globalization, but its end. We are instead in a new era in the unfolding of capitalism -- "global modernity". The fall of communism in the 1980s generated culturally informed counter-claims to modernity. Globalization has fragmented our understanding of what is "modern". Dirlik's "global modernity" is a concept that enables us to distinguish the present from its Eurocentric past, while recognizing the crucial importance of that past in shaping the present.

"A compelling essay on the contemporary human condition." William D. Coleman, Director of the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University "An unusually perceptive and balanced appraisal of the globalization hype and its relation to the reality of global capitalism." Immanuel Wallerstein, Yale University In his provocative new book Arif Dirlik argues that the present represents not the beginning of globalization, but its end. We are instead in a new era in the unfolding of capitalism -- "global modernity". The fall of communism in the 1980s generated culturally informed counter-claims to modernity. Globalization has fragmented our understanding of what is "modern". Dirlik's "global modernity" is a concept that enables us to distinguish the present from its Eurocentric past, while recognizing the crucial importance of that past in shaping the present.

This book offers historical and comparative analyses of changes in agrarian society forced by the globalization of capitalism, and the implications of these changes for human welfare globally. The book gives special attention to recent economic development and urbanisation in the People's Republic of China which have had a major impact on contemporary transformations globally. Case studies from South and Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America in turn place these transformations in a comparative global perspective. The contributors include distinguished scholars from the UN, PRC, India, Zimbabwe, and Latin America who are also active in policy issues.

This book offers historical and comparative analyses of changes in agrarian society forced by the globalization of capitalism, and the implications of these changes for human welfare globally. The book gives special attention to recent economic development and urbanization in the People s Republic of China which have had a major impact on contemporary transformations globally. Case studies from South and Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America in turn place these transformations in a comparative global perspective. The contributors include distinguished scholars from the UN, PRC, India, Zimbabwe, and Latin America who are also active in policy issues."

Offering critical perspectives on a number of ideological issues that have figured prominently in Chinese intellectual discourse since the beginning of the so-called reform and opening (gaige kaifang) in the late 1970s, these essays range widely in subject matter, from Marxist historiography to sociology and anthropology in China to guoxue/national studies. Together they are conceived as different windows into a basic problem: the deployment of culture and history in postrevolutionary Chinese thought. Dirlik touches on a number of themes, including the repudiation of the revolutionary past after 1978, which has led to a rise of cultural nationalism. He further places these developments within a global context, ultimately making a case methodologically for 'worlding' China: bringing China into the world, and the world into China.