Patterns Of Western Modernity Beyond The West

This major new book tackles key questions on Europe in the context of shifting parameters of East and West. The contributors - sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers and historians - show, from a variety of different perspectives, that the conventional equation of Europe with the West must be questioned. Featuring four thematically organized chapters, the book looks at: a post-Western world Asia in Europe: encounters in history between Europe and Asia otherness in Europe and Asia. Exploring new expressions of European self-understanding in a way that challenges recent ideological notions of the ‘clash of civilizations’, this outstanding work draws on recent scholarship that shows how Europe and Asia were mutually linked in history and in contemporary perspective. It argues that as a result of current developments and the changing geopolitical context, both Europe and Asia have much in common and that it is possible to speak of cosmopolitan links rather than clashes. This book will be of great value to students and researchers in the fields of sociology, European politics and history and cultural theory.

This book explores China’s encounter with architecture and modernity in the tumultuous epoch before Communism – an encounter that was mediated not by a singular notion of modernism emanating from the west, but that was uniquely multifarious, deriving from a variety of sources both from the west and, importantly, from the east. The heterogeneous origins of modernity in China are what make its experience distinctive and its architectural encounters exceptional. These experiences are investigated through a re-evaluation of established knowledge of the subject within the wider landscape of modern art practices in China. The study draws on original archival and photographic material from different artistic genres and, architecturally, concentrates on China’s engagement with the west through the treaty ports and leased territories, the emergence of architecture as a profession in China, and Japan’s omnipresence, not least in Manchuria, which reached its apogee in the puppet state of Manchukuo. The study’s geographically, temporally, and architecturally inclusive approach framed by the concept of multiple modernities questions the application of conventional theories of modernity or post-colonialism to the Chinese situation. By challenging conventional modernist historiography that has marginalised the experiences of the west’s other for much of the last century, this book proposes different ways of grappling with and comprehending the distinction and complexity of China’s experiences and its encounter with architectural modernity.

Increased flows of people, capital, and ideas across geographic borders raise urgent challenges to the existing terms and practices of politics. Comparative political theory seeks to devise new intellectual frames for addressing these challenges by questioning the canonical (that is, Euro-American) categories that have historically shaped inquiry in political theory and other disciplines. It does this byanalyzing normative claims, discursive structures, and formations of power in and from all parts of the world. By looking to alternative bodies of thought and experience, as well as the terms we might use to critically examine them, comparative political theory encourages self-reflexivity about the premises of normative ideas and articulates new possibilities for political theory and practice. The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory provides an entry point into this burgeoning field by both synthesizing and challenging the terms which motivate it. Over the course of five thematic sections and thirty-three chapters, this volume surveys the field and archives of comparative political theory, bringing the many approaches to the field into conversation for the first time. Sections address geographic location as a subject of political theorizing; how the past becomes a key site for staking political claims; the politics of translation and appropriation; the justification of political authority; and questions of disciplinary commitment and rules of knowledge. Ultimately, the handbook demonstrates how mainstream political theory can and must be enriched through attention to genuinely global, rather than parochially Euro-American, contributions to political thinking.

This book provides the first comprehensive account of the social and cultural aspects of modernity over the past two centuries.

Drawing on a vast archive of world history, anthropology, geography, cultural theory, postcolonial studies, gender studies, literature, and art, Susan Stanford Friedman recasts modernity as a networked, circulating, and recurrent phenomenon producing multiple aesthetic innovations across millennia. Considering cosmopolitan as well as nomadic and oceanic worlds, she radically revises the scope of modernist critique and opens the practice to more integrated study. Friedman moves from large-scale instances of pre-1500 modernities, such as Tang Dynasty China and the Mongol Empire, to small-scale instances of modernisms, including the poetry of Du Fu and Kabir and Abbasid ceramic art. She maps the interconnected modernisms of the long twentieth century, pairing Joseph Conrad with Tayeb Salih, E. M. Forster with Arundhati Roy, Virginia Woolf with the Tagores, and Aimé Césaire with Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. She reads postcolonial works from Sudan and India and engages with the idea of Négritude. Rejecting the modernist concepts of marginality, othering, and major/minor, Friedman instead favors rupture, mobility, speed, networks, and divergence, elevating the agencies and creative capacities of all cultures not only in the past and present but also in the century to come.

DIVA new and more concrete understanding of the inseparability of colonialism and modernity that also explores how the rhetoric of modernity disguises the logic of coloniality and how this rhetoric has been instrumental in establishing capitalism as the econ/div