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Tomorrow, a new thread on why we care that the word "Korea" is a derivation of the name of the Koryo dynasty (918-1392): 고려 (高麗). And, much more importantly, Goryeo's name itself was a derivation of Goguryeo (57 BC-668 CE) -- 고구려 (高句麗). Even back in 918, a sense of...
"Nation" or "country" existed. And, Wang Kon, the Koryo founder, explicitly linked his new dynasty with Koguryo's rich and glorious cultural, social, and political past. The idea that nationalism is a 20th century invention is wrong. Humans have always looked back and linked...
...ourselves to a past. The sense of "nation" clearly existed over a thousand years ago in East Asia. Not necessarily 국가주의 (I'd call that "state nationalism"), but 민족주의 ("country-ism" perhaps)...a sense of place, society, culture.
The point for today? In asking how...
The point for today? In asking how...
...the past affects the present, there are two extreme views and a middle ground. In between an unchanging essential Chineseness on the one hand, and everyone is unproblematically modern on the other, lies the plausible point that the past affects the present partially...
...and we should understand it. This is both history forwards (path dependence, choices made earlier constrain later choices); but more importantly history backwards: who's side of the story gets told? What stories do we tell and not tell about our past? What narratives arise...
...and change over time? It is so obvious that the past affects us partially in the present both fowards and backwards. The US today is engaged in a tumultuous time because of events from 1861-1865 are still affecting us, both as choices made then and stories we tell now...
...what I find so obvious about East Asia or China is that the past affects these countries today; and modernity is not obvious and unproblematic. The humanists are far ahead of us social scientists on this. When "modernity" arrived in the 20th century, nobody knew what it was...
...is it modern to wear Western dress? To write novels instead of shijo poetry? What does education look like? These are not straighforward. So why would we think that politics, the economy, or foreign policy is any different? https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674073265
...Taking seriously what elements might affect us today seems to me to be the most obvious task. Unfortunately, many people seem to read my work and think I am promoting an essentialist view of the world. But, I ask rhetorically, is it more essentialist to think that the...
...Peloponnesian War holds eternal truths about human behavior and predicts China's future? Or, to ask what elements of Chinese choices, narratives, and culture might affect how its people view the world today? To call for beginning with East Asia seems to me the most...
...obvious place to start, rather than forcing us to start with European history and have to convince people to even try to look at East Asia. Of course interpreting China's intentions are hard if you never even bother to learn anything about China!
For anyone interested, this roundtable about power transition theory and East Asia prompted this thread: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-east-asian-studies/article/power-shifts-connecting-ir-theory-with-the-chinese-case-when-right-makes-might-rising-powers-and-world-order-by-stacie-goddard-ithaca-cornell-university-press-2018-twilight-of-the-titans-great-power-decline-and-retrenchment-by-paul-macdonald-and-joseph-parent-ithaca-cornell-university-press-2018-safe-passage-the-transition-from-british-to-american-hegemony-by-kori-schake-cambridge-ma-harvard-university-press-2017-rising-titans-falling-giants-how-great-powers-exploit-power-shifts-by-joshua-shifrinson-ithaca-cornell-university-press-2018/AF3375006F99F0E185C344F11FF841EA
