Knowledge and Power in the Discourse of Modernity: The Campaigns against Popular Religion in Early Twentieth-Century China

1991 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prasenjit Duara
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Religion ◽  
Western World ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
The West ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Historical Transition ◽  
Modern Era

Ever since the enlightenment—the dawn of the modern era—historical understanding has been much concerned with the passage to modernity. In our present century, questions and dilemmas of the transition to modernity and the evaluation of “tradition” in the non-Western world have been central to the historical problematique the world over. I have chosen to analyze the modernist understanding of this historical transition in China not only among professional historians in the West, but among Chinese advocates of modernity. Specifically, I will examine the campaigns attacking popular religion during the first three decades of this century. As a movement advocating the establishment of a rational society, these campaigns offer a view of the understanding of this transition, not just in theory and historiography, but in practice.

The Old Rhetoric

2019 ◽  
pp. 27-68
Author(s):  
Anthony Ossa-Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Philosophical Analysis ◽  
Persuasive Communication ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
The West ◽  
The Third ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Persuasive Speech

This chapter discusses the Old Rhetoric, sketching the long persistence in the West—from Aristotle to the early twentieth century—of a ‘single meaning model’ of language, one that takes ambiguity for granted as an obstacle to persuasive speech and clear philosophical analysis. In Aristotle's works are the seeds of three closely related traditions of Western thought on ambiguity: the logicosemantic, the rhetorical, and the hermeneutic. The first seeks to eliminate ambiguity from philosophy because it hinders a clear analysis of the world. The second seeks to eliminate ambiguity from speech because it hinders the clear and persuasive communication of argument. The third, an extension of the second, seeks to resolve textual ambiguity because it hinders the reader's ability to grasp the writer's intention. The chapter then considers Aristotle's two types of verbal ambiguity: homonym and amphiboly. The solution to both—whether their presence in a discussion is accidental or deliberate—is what Aristotle calls diairesis or distinction, that is, the explicit clarification of the different meanings involved.

Chinatowns and the Rise of China

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 1367-1393 ◽  
Author(s):  
IEN ANG
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Chinese Immigrants ◽  
Development Projects ◽  
The West ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Rise Of China ◽  
Dominant Society ◽  
The Rise Of China

AbstractIn the early twentieth century, Chinatowns in the West were ghettoes for Chinese immigrants who were marginalized and considered ‘other’ by the dominant society. In Western eyes, these areas were the no-go zones of the Oriental ‘other’. Now, more than a hundred years later, traditional Chinatowns still exist in some cities but their meaning and role has been transformed, while in other cities entirely new Chinatowns have emerged. This article discusses how Chinatowns today are increasingly contested sites where older diasporic understandings of Chineseness are unsettled by newer, neoliberal interpretations, dominated by the pull of China's new-found economic might. In particular, the so-called ‘rise of China’ has spawned a globalization of the idea of ‘Chinatown’ itself, with its actual uptake in urban development projects the world over, or a backlash against it, determined by varying perceptions of China's global ascendancy as an amalgam of threat and opportunity.

scholarly journals Afterword. Tendencies of religious change in the world of the twentieth century and their implications in the Ukrainian context

2008 ◽  
pp. 314-339
Author(s):  
Viktor Ye. Yelenskyy
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
The West ◽  
New Era ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries

How will religion develop in the 21st century? How optimistic can her outlook be on her future? What will be the meaning of global religious change in the coming decades? Despite being very advanced in the West, the answers to these questions remain problematic. In the famous work, "Returning the Sacred: Arguments for the Future of Religion," D. Bell noted that in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, most thinkers expected that religion would disappear in the twentieth century. At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many sociologists believed that sociologists believed that "At least since the Enlightenment, most Western intellectuals have expected the death of religion as fervently as the ancient Jews of the coming of the Messiah," reminds American religious scholars R. Stark and R. Bindbridge. and the social sciences were particularly distinguished in the prediction of the inevitable triumph of rationality over “prejudice.” The most celebrated figures in sociology, anthropology, and psychology unanimously expressed the belief that their children, or indeed grandchildren, would witness a new era in which, from Freud, the infantile illusions of religion humanity will outgrow ”

Some Recent Studies of Revolutionary Movements in China in the Early Twentieth Century

1972 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 588-605 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart R. Schram
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Chinese Revolution ◽  
Democratic Movement ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Real Change ◽  
Revolutionary Movements ◽  
Opposite Extreme

When revolution broke out in China in 1911 and rapidly led to the overthrow of the dynasty and the founding of a republic, opinion throughout the world was startled and deeply impressed. The European press expressed amazement that a quaint Oriental people such as the Chinese should take it into their heads to carry out an anti-monarchical revolution, and that hard-headed political realist Vladimir Ilich Lenin waxed positively lyrical about the Chinese revolution and its leader. ‘The East’, he wrote, ‘has committed itself to the Western path,…further hundreds and hundreds of millions of people will from now on join in the struggle for the ideals for which the West has striven’. In Sun Yat-sen, he saw ‘a revolutionary democrat, imbued with that nobility and heroism peculiar to a rising rather than a declining class’. Even when Sun had been supplanted as President by Yüan Shih-k'ai, Lenin still saw a ‘mighty democratic movement’ in progress throughout Asia, whereby hundreds of millions of people were ‘awakening into life, light, and freedom’. Succeeding generations of scholars and political observers, instructed by the spectacle of corruption, division, and military domination which unfolded itself in various guises throughout the era from 1911 to 1949, have gone almost completely to the opposite extreme. What happened in 1911 was not a revolution at all, or only in the most superficial sense; the monarchical system was indeed overthrown, but there was no real change in the locus of power in society.

Western Countries: Future of Multiculturalism in Context of Employment

2012 ◽  
pp. 16-25
Author(s):  
M. Klupt
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Statistical Information ◽  
Western World ◽  
The West ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
The World

Will immigrant minorities change the Western world? Two decades ago this question seemed irrelevant as it was expected that the West will change the world in its image. Today, the same question is perceived as rhetorical. The answer is obvious, and the dispute is merely over directions, extent and possible consequences of future changes. The center of this dispute is the multiculturalism – the concept, policy and praxis praising diversity of cultures and denying any of them a vested right to dominate not only in the world at large, but even in a particular country. The assessment of its perspectives presupposes a variety of research approaches in view of its complexity. In the present article only one of them is be used for the analysis focused on the employment of immigrant minorities from the world's South. The viability of such approach is based on two circumstances. Firstly, the employment indexes considered in ethnical context belong to the most important characteristics of ethno-social structure of a society. Secondly, the availability of broad statistical information about employment allows for resting upon empirical data, possibly avoiding a needless bias toward purely theoretical constructions.

Englishness, Empire and Nostalgia: A Heterodox Religious Community's Appeal in the Inter-War Years

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 374-392
Author(s):  
Jane Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Belief Networks ◽  
Healing Ministry ◽  
World War ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Sense Of Identity ◽  
The Rich

This article looks at the ways in which the Panacea Society – a heterodox, millenarian group based in Bedford during the inter-war years – spread its ideas: through personal, familial and shared belief networks across the British empire; by building new modes of attracting adherents, in particular a global healing ministry; and by shipping its publications widely. It then examines how the society appealed to its (white) members in the empire in three ways: through its theology, which put Britain at the centre of the world; by presuming the necessity and existence of a ‘Greater Britain’ and the British empire, while in so many other quarters these entities were being questioned in the wake of World War I; and by a deliberately cultivated and nostalgic notion of ‘Englishness’. The Panacea Society continued and developed the idea of the British empire as providential at a time when the idea no longer held currency in most circles. The article draws on the rich resource of letters in the Panacea Society archive to contribute to an emerging area of scholarship on migrants’ experience in the early twentieth-century British empire (especially the dominions) and their sense of identity, in this case both religious and British.

scholarly journals A MODEL OF EXPRESSIONIST STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT IN THE WORK OF THE WRITER (ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE WORKS OF LEO PERUTS)

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (78) ◽  
pp. 59-63
Author(s):  
E.A. Radaeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Strategy Development ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Large Interval ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Historical Past ◽  
First Time

The purpose of this study is to present a model for the development of the expressionist method in the genre of the novel using the example of the evolution of the novelistic work of the Austrian writer of the early twentieth century L. Perutz. The results obtained: the creative method of the Austrian writer is moving from scientific knowledge to mysticism; in the center of all novels created with a large interval, there is always a confused hero, broken by what is happening (in other words, the absurdity of the world), whose state is often conveyed through gestures; the author finally moves away from linear narration to dividing the plot into almost autonomous stories, thematically gravitating more and more to the distant historical past. Scientific novelty: the novels of L. Perutz are for the first time examined in relative detail through the prism of the aesthetics of expressionism.

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