Arif Dirlik
Biography
Arif Dirlik is Knight Professor of Social Sciences (History and Anthropology), University of Oregon. He is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow, the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, University of British Columbia, and has held honorary appointments at China Center for Comparative Politics and economic, Central Compilation and Translation Bureau, Beijing, the Center for the Study of Marxist Social Theory, Nanjing University, and Northwest Nationalities University, Lanzhou, PRC. He has taught at Duke University, 1971-2001, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2007-2009. He presently has been appointed visiting scholar at the Academy of National Studies, Tsinghua University, where he will deliver the Liang Qichao Memorial Lectures in October/November 2010. He serves on the editorial boards of over ten periodicals in Chinese, Asian and Cultural Studies, and is the editor of two book series, "Studies in Global Modernity," with the State University of New York Press, and "Asian Modernities," with the Chinese University of Hong Kong Press. His most recent book-length publications are "Selected Works of Arif Dirlik"(2010, in Turkish), "Snapshots of Intellectual Life in Contemporary China"(2008, special issue of boundary 2), "Pedagogies of the Global"(2007), and "Global Modernity: Modernity in the Age of Global Capitalism." He has recently completed two edited volumes, "The Formation and Indigenization of the Disciplines in China: Sociology and Anthropology," and, "The End of the Peasant? Global Capitalism and the Future of Agrarian Society.
Title of Paper
Revisioning Modernity: Modernity in Eurasian Perspectives
Abstract
This presentation offers a reflection on our conceptualization of modernity, using the case of Ming China as an illustration. Intellectual developments associated with globalization have called into question the identification of modernity with Euro/America. There is much discussion presently concerning 'multiple' or 'alternative' modernities. As a consequence, 'modernity' appears increasingly as a floating signifier. I argue that the disassociation of modernity from Euro/America has implications not just for the present but also for the past. The discussion will pursue these implications to the period from the 16th to the 18th century, to the period that has been described conventionally as 'premodern'.