Prasenjit Duara - Böcker

This study offers a systematic account of the relationship between the nation-state, nationalism, and the concept of linear history. Focusing primarily on China and including a discussion of India, Duara argues that many historians of postcolonial nation-states have adopted the linear, evolutionary history of the Enlightenment/colonial model. As a result, they have written repressive, exclusionary, and incomplete accounts. The backlash against such histories has resulted in a tendency to view the past as largely constructed, imagined, or invented. In this book, Duara offers a way out of the impasse between constructionism and the evolving nation; he redefines history as a series of multiple, often conflicting narratives produced simultaneously at national, local, and transnational levels. In a series of closely linked case studies, he considers such examples as the very different histories produced by Chinese nationalist reformers and partisans of popular religions, the conflicting narratives of statist nationalists and of advocates of federalism in early twentieth-century China.Duara seeks to demonstrate the necessity of incorporating contestation, appropriation, repression, and the return of the repressed subject into any account of the past that will be meaningful to the present.

Decolonization brings together the most cutting-edge thinking by major historians of decolonization, including previously unpublished essays and writings by leaders of decolonizing countries including Ho Chi-Minh and Jawaharlal Nehru.The chapters in this volume present a move away from Western analysis of decolonizaton and instead move towards the angle of vision of the former colonies. This is a ground-breaking study of a subject central to recent global history.

Decolonization brings together the most cutting-edge thinking by major historians of decolonization, including previously unpublished essays and writings by leaders of decolonizing countries including Ho Chi-Minh and Jawaharlal Nehru.The chapters in this volume present a move away from Western analysis of decolonizaton and instead move towards the angle of vision of the former colonies. This is a ground-breaking study of a subject central to recent global history.

China’s history tends to be studied from a national perspective only. The Global and Regional in China’s Nation-Formation attempts to train our eyes to see the picture of China less as a self-contained entity, a "geobody", than as part of a broader set of global and regional processes; from the "outside-in". It covers the major historical problems of China in the twentieth century, namely imperialism, nationalism, state-building, religion and the role of historyPart I views imperialism and nationalism in China from the perspective of global and regional circulations and interactions. It also examines the changing role of history over the twentieth century from the same perspective. Part II focuses on how myth, religion and Chinese conceptions of society and polity are re-shaped by external influences and forces, as well as how these internal practices themselves shape the external impact. Part III is a comparative section, examining how global processes become unique developments in China. The Global and Regional in China’s Nation-Formation is an ideal resource for anyone studying China’s history, society and culture.

China’s history tends to be studied from a national perspective only. The Global and Regional in China’s Nation-Formation attempts to train our eyes to see the picture of China less as a self-contained entity, a "geobody", than as part of a broader set of global and regional processes; from the "outside-in". It covers the major historical problems of China in the twentieth century, namely imperialism, nationalism, state-building, religion and the role of historyPart I views imperialism and nationalism in China from the perspective of global and regional circulations and interactions. It also examines the changing role of history over the twentieth century from the same perspective. Part II focuses on how myth, religion and Chinese conceptions of society and polity are re-shaped by external influences and forces, as well as how these internal practices themselves shape the external impact. Part III is a comparative section, examining how global processes become unique developments in China. The Global and Regional in China’s Nation-Formation is an ideal resource for anyone studying China’s history, society and culture.

A COMPANION TO GLOBAL HISTORICAL THOUGHT A Companion to Global Historical Thought provides an overview of the development of historical thinking from the earliest times to the present, directly addressing issues of historiography in a globalized context. Questions concerning the global dissemination of historical writing and the relationship between historiography and other ways of representing the past have become important not only in the academic study of history, but also in public arenas in many countries. With contributions from leading international scholars, the book considers the problem of “the global” – in the multiplicity of traditions of narrating the past; in the global dissemination of modern historical writing; and of “the global” as a concept animating historical imaginations. It explores the different intellectual approaches that have shaped the discipline of history, and the challenges posed by modernity and globalization, while illustrating the shifts in thinking about time and the emergence of historical thought. Complementing A Companion to Western Historical Thought, this book places non-Western perspectives on historiography at the center of discussion, helping scholars and students alike make sense of the discipline at the start of the twenty-first century.

For many years, China and India have been powerfully shaped by both transnational and subnational circulatory forces. This edited volume explores these local and global influences as they play out in the contemporary era. The analysis focuses on four intersecting topics: labor relations; legal reform and rights protest; public goods provision; and transnational migration and investment. The eight substantive chapters and introduction share a common perspective in arguing that distinctions in regime type (“democracy” versus “dictatorship”) alone offer little insight into critical differences and similarities between these Asian giants in terms of either policies or performance. A wide variety of subnational and transnational actors, from municipal governments to international organizations, and from local NGO activists to a far-flung diaspora, have been—and will continue to be—decisive.The authors approach China and India through a strategy of “convergent comparison,” in which they investigate temporal and spatial parallels at various critical junctures, at various levels of the political system, and both inside and outside the territorial confines of the nation-state. The intensified globalization of recent decades only heightens the need to view state initiatives against such a wider canvas.

In this powerful and provocative book, Prasenjit Duara uses the case of Manchukuo, the Japanese puppet state in northeast China from 1932-1945, to explore how such antinomies as imperialism and nationalism, modernity and tradition, and governmentality and exploitation interacted in the post-World War I period. His study of Manchukuo, which had a population of 40 million and was three times the area of Japan, catalyzes a broader understanding of new global trends that characterized much of the twentieth century. Asking why Manchukuo so desperately sought to appear sovereign, Duara examines the cultural and political resources it mobilized to make claims of sovereignty. He argues that Manchukuo, as a transparently constructed 'nation-state,' offers a unique historical laboratory for examining the utilization and transformation of circulating global forces mediated by the 'East Asian modern.' Sovereignty and AUthenticity not only shows how Manchukuo drew technologies of modern nationbuilding from China and Japan, but it provides a window into how some of these techniques and processes were obscured or naturalized in the more successful East Asian nation-states. With its sweepingly original theoretical and comparative perspectives on nationalism and imperialism, this book will be essential reading for all those interested in contemporary history.

In the early twentieth century, the Chinese state made strenuous efforts to broaden and deepen its authority over rural society. This book is an ambitious attempt to offer both a method and a framework for analyzing Chinese social history in the state-making era.The author constructs a prismatic view of village-level society that shows how marketing, kinship, water control, temple patronage, and other structures of human interaction overlapped to form what he calls the cultural nexus of power in local society. The author's concept of the cultural nexus and his tracing of how it was altered enables us for the first time to grapple with change at the village level in all its complexity.The author asserts that the growth of the state transformed and delegitimized the traditional cultural nexus during the Republican era, particularly in the realm of village leadership and finances. Thus, the expansion of state power was ultimately and paradoxically responsible for the revolution in China as it eroded the foundations of village life, leaving nothing in its place.The problems of state-making in China were different from those of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe; the Chinese experience heralds the process that would become increasingly common in the emergent states of the developing world under the very different circumstances of the twentieth century.

In this major new study, Prasenjit Duara expands his influential theoretical framework to present circulatory, transnational histories as an alternative to nationalist history. Duara argues that the present day is defined by the intersection of three global changes: the rise of non-western powers, the crisis of environmental sustainability and the loss of authoritative sources of what he terms transcendence - the ideals, principles and ethics once found in religions or political ideologies. The physical salvation of the world is becoming - and must become - the transcendent goal of our times, but this goal must transcend national sovereignty if it is to succeed. Duara suggests that a viable foundation for sustainability might be found in the traditions of Asia, which offer different ways of understanding the relationship between the personal, ecological and universal. These traditions must be understood through the ways they have circulated and converged with contemporary developments.

In this major new study, Prasenjit Duara expands his influential theoretical framework to present circulatory, transnational histories as an alternative to nationalist history. Duara argues that the present day is defined by the intersection of three global changes: the rise of non-western powers, the crisis of environmental sustainability and the loss of authoritative sources of what he terms transcendence - the ideals, principles and ethics once found in religions or political ideologies. The physical salvation of the world is becoming - and must become - the transcendent goal of our times, but this goal must transcend national sovereignty if it is to succeed. Duara suggests that a viable foundation for sustainability might be found in the traditions of Asia, which offer different ways of understanding the relationship between the personal, ecological and universal. These traditions must be understood through the ways they have circulated and converged with contemporary developments.