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- Title
The "Clash" of Civilizations? Or an Emerging "East Asian Modernity"?
- Authors
Wee, C. J. W.-L.
- Abstract
This paper examines Samuel Huntingtons influential article, ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’, particularly his interest in ‘Confucian’ civilizations. Huntington's ‘civilizational’ approach, this paper suggests, is marred by ahistorical and essentialist thinking on both the causes of the emergence of East and Southeast Asian newly industrializing economies (NIEs) and the reasons for the clashes between East and West in recent years. What is at stake instead is to a large measure a question of what an ‘East Asian modernity’ (often conceived of as a neo-Confucian modernity) might look like, and whether the NIEs have achieved such a modernity that could be an alternative to the Western version of it. The latter modernity could then no longer claim a universal standard. The creation of an Asian rather than Asianized modernity, further, would mark the arrival of post-colonial countries such as Malaysia and Singapore in the world; thus some argue, the East finally would have nearly eradicated the memory of what is called the ‘Age of Empire’. In this manner, East Asian modernity discourse functions as a successor to earlier anti-imperial and nationalist discourses.
- Subjects
ASIA; EAST Asian civilization; MODERNITY; HUNTINGTONS, Samuel; CONFUCIAN civilization; CIVILIZATION; DEVELOPING countries; MODERN society; NATIONALISM
- Publication
SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 1996, Vol 11, Issue 2, p211
- ISSN
0217-9520
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1355/SJ11-2B