This book offers historical and comparative analyses of changes in agrarian society forced by the globalization of capitalism, and the implications of these changes for human welfare globally. The book gives special attention to recent economic development and urbanization in the People s Republic of China which have had a major impact on contemporary transformations globally. Case studies from South and Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America in turn place these transformations in a comparative global perspective. The contributors include distinguished scholars from the UN, PRC, India, Zimbabwe, and Latin America who are also active in policy issues."

Dialogues Across Civilizations sets the histories of China and Europe alongside one another. Each chapter stands as an essay that imaginatively places historical individuals and events in proximity to one another and explores a specific topic?gender relations, rural politics, artistic renderings of nature, to name a few?through the stories of perso

This book offers historical and comparative analyses of changes in agrarian society forced by the globalization of capitalism, and the implications of these changes for human welfare globally. The book gives special attention to recent economic development and urbanization in the People 's Republic of China which have had a major impact on contemporary transformations globally. Case studies from South and Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America in turn place these transformations in a comparative global perspective. The contributors include distinguished scholars from the UN, PRC, India, Zimbabwe, and Latin America who are also active in policy issues.

History as a discipline faces a crisis of identity as Eurocentrism fades in a world where globalized visions compete to explain historical processes. Facing the challenge squarely, this volume_comprising specialists on Asia, Africa, and Latin America_explores the state of historical analysis in various world regions and appraises current views on what defines and challenges historical knowledge. It is widely accepted that Eurocentrism no longer seem acceptable in a world where others are reasserting their own notions of past and future. The postDWorld War II spatialities that guided both historical analysis and the division of labor in historical work are in the process of disappearing into more globalized visions. Constituencies left out of history in the past are making demands for the recognition of their historical presence. History as epistemology is under attack as a marker of Eurocentric modernity from non-historical ways of thinking, as well as from ideologies of postmodernism that deny to history its claims to truth. Indeed, the current situation in the field has been described by one distinguished historian as a Ocacophonous confusion.O The challenge historians face is how to imagine new ways of writing history that overcome this confusion without falling back upon ideological and methodological prejudices that reproduce the problems of the past in new guises. The contributors discuss how these challenges are voiced and met in their different areas of specialization. Unsurprising in a volume that addresses a variety of regions and issues that are not only technically historiographical but also deeply cultural and political, the authors differ in their appraisal of the challenges presented by globalization, postmodernism, or postcolonialism. Yet they are united in their recognition of the validity of historical ways of knowing and their reaffirmation of the importance of history in grasping contemporary cultural and political problems. It is because history is entangled in a Eurocentric modernity that in a postmodern world it provides the medium for articulating alternatives to Eurocentrism_and to history itself.

"Dialogues Across Civilizations" sets the histories of China and Europe alongside one another. Each chapter stands as an essay that imaginatively places historical individuals and events in proximity to one another and explores a specific topic--gender relations, rural politics, artistic renderings of nature, to name a few--through the stories of persons who reflected on similar questions but in different social and cultural settings. Through this juxtaposition, Chinese and European civilizations illuminate each other's achievements, problems, and limitations in a range of areas from urban history to religious faith.Privileging neither Europe nor China, this work offers an innovative move away from relativism and multiculturalism towards an analysis that focuses on relationships between social choices and consequences. As a result, both common and divergent perspectives on the human condition emerge for discussion. Drawing upon a rich literature of cross-societal studies, "Dialogues Across Civilizations" generates reflection on themes central to the study of world history as well as European and Asian history.

This ambitious work provides a unique statement on the question of place-based activism and its relationship to powerful forces of international capital. Arguing that specific places around the world are sites for the defense and enhancement of daily life in the context of rapidly expanding global technologies and investment options, the contributors reach for a vision of social development that supports sustainable, humane cultures. Bringing together the local and the global, this work provides the first sustained linkage of ethnic groups in diaspora to macrocosmic processes of world capital that inevitably reach down to mediate even the most local experiences. The essays, ranging in their discussion of place from Los Angeles and New York to New Zealand and Indonesia, offer both reasoned argument and authoritiative information on how local experience interacts with larger processes of global capital and the diasporic phenomenon. The book will be an invaluable resource and launching point for scholars and students in ethnic and identity studies and will interest all readers exploring the production of place and identification.

From the perspective of village activists across China, this book tells the stories of farmers and rural laborers who raised the banner of opposition to constitutional reform during the first decade of the twentieth century. The author brings to life the stories of the Camel King of Zunhua county, Qu Shiwen and the Four Mountains of Laiyang county, and many others who criticized government modernization efforts, known collectively as the New Policy. Using county archives -including oral histories -as well as memoirs, periodical literature, missionary records, and official documents both Chinese and foreign, Of Camel Kings and Other Things constructs, from fragmented sources, a coherent historical view vital to our understanding of China's twentieth-century crises and the dilemmas of modernity itself."