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This book presents a range of issues from cultural self-representation in China to more general problems of reconceptualizing global relationships in response to contemporary changes. It offers "multi-historicalism," which presupposes a historically grounded conception of cultural difference.
As the People's Republic of China has grown in economic power, so too have concerns about what its sustained growth and expanding global influence might mean for the established global order. Explorations of this changing dynamic in daily reporting as well as most recent scholarship ignore the part played by forces emanating from the global capitalist system in the PRC's failures as well as its successes. China scholar Arif Dirlik reflects in Complicities on a wide range of concerns, from the Tiananmen Square tragedy to the spread of Confucius Institutes across more than four hundred campuses worldwide, including nearly one hundred in the United States. Eschewing popular stereotypes and simple explanations, Dirlik's discussion stresses foreign complicity in encouraging the PRC's imperial ambitions and disdain for human rights. Eager for economic gain, the United States, Europe, and other Western countries have been complicit in supporting the PRC's authoritarian capitalism. Such support has been a key factor in nourishing the PRC's hegemonic aspirations. Infatuation with the PRC's incorporation in global capitalism has been important to Communist Party leaders' ability to suppress all memory and mention of Tiananmen, and their continuing abuse of human rights. More recently, the PRC's focus has migrated to "soft power" as a means of expanding global influence, with organizations like the Confucius Institutes exploiting foreign educational institutions to promote the political aims of the state.
'An unusually perceptive and balanced appraisal of the globalization hype and its relation to the reality of global capitalism.' Immanuel Wallerstein
Essays that engage in critiques of hegemonic ways of knowing and critically evaluate counterhegemonic voices for change.
This work includes ideas and perspectives for those seeking deeper understanding of the concepts and historical, political, economic, and social force that constitute the "Pacific Rim".
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.
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. This title raises questions about earlier interpretations of Marxist historiography by scholars who based their opinions primarily on post-1949 writings.
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.
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.
Historical and comparative analysis of how globalisation has affected agrarian societies. Includes contributors from the UN, China and India.
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
Challenges to the study of history have been raised by globalization and by new transformations linked to postmodernism and postcolonialism. This book puts forward new approaches in historical research that emphasize the dual processes of integration and fragmentation in a globalized world.
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