E-Book, Deutsch, Englisch, Band 23, 335 Seiten
Reihe: Eigene und fremde Welten
Feuchter / Hoffmann / Yun Cultural Transfers in Dispute
1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-3-593-41122-4
Verlag: Campus
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark
Representations in Asia, Europe and the Arab World since the Middle Ages
E-Book, Deutsch, Englisch, Band 23, 335 Seiten
Reihe: Eigene und fremde Welten
ISBN: 978-3-593-41122-4
Verlag: Campus
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
1;Contents;6
2;Acknowledgments;8
3;Foreword: Representations and Transfers – Hartmut Kaelble;10
4;Cultural Transfers in Dispute: An Introduction – Jörg Feuchter;16
5;The Middle Ages: Representations of Transfers between Islam and Christianity;40
5.1;Jewish or Islamic Influence? The Iconoclastic Controversy in Dispute – Wolfram Drews;42
5.2;Did the Medieval West Receive a »Complete Model« of Education from Classical Islam? Reconsidering George Makdisi and His Thesis – Tim Geelhaar;62
5.3;Emperor Frederick II, »Sultan of Lucera«, »Friend of the Muslims«, Promoter of Cultural Transfer: Controversies and Suggestions – Dorothea Weltecke;86
5.4;Medieval Western Perceptions of Islam and the Scholars: What Went Wrong? – Kristin Skottki;108
5.5;Does the History of Medieval Political Thought Need a Spatial Turn? The Murals of Longthorpe, the Secretum secretorum and the Intercultural Transfer of Political Ideas in the High Middle Ages – Bee Yun;136
6;Between »Core« and »Periphery«: Representations of Transfers of Fascism, Violence, and Law;148
6.1;Western Representations of Fascist Influences on Islamist Thought – Joseph-Simon Görlach;150
6.2;Transfers, Formations, Transformations? Some Programmatic Notes on Fascism in India, c. 1922–1938 – Benjamin Zachariah;168
6.3;Colonialism and Violence: Alleged Transfers and Political Instrumentalisation – Andreas Weiß;194
6.4;Legal Authenticity, Cultural Insulation and Undemocratic Rule: Abd-al-Razzaq Ahmad al-Sanhur ’s (1895–1971) Sharia Project and Its Misrepresentation in Egypt – Friedhelm Hoffmann;212
7;East Asia: Representations of Transfers of Democracy and Human Rights, Civilisation, and Love;262
7.1;The Global Diffusion of the Western Concept of Civilisation to Nineteenth-Century Korea – Young-Sun Ha;284
7.2;Importation of Love from Modern Europe to Korea – Jungwoon Choi;300
8;Notes on Contributors;314
9;Index of Persons and Places;320
Transfer in Dispute: The Case of China (S. 263-264)
Heiner Roetz
China poses a particular challenge when it comes to discussing cultural transfer in terms of a specific example. In comparison to other parts of the world, it seems to be especially resistant against foreign influences, in spite of the impact of the modern West in nearly all fields from technical knowhow through economics, statecraft and law to the sciences, literature, philosophy and religion. It has often been regarded as a relic of the past, with the greatest internal continuity of all civilizations since ancient times.
The Chinese like to talk of themselves as the »children and grandchildren of the Yellow Emperor«, who is traditionally dated to the third millennium BC, and speak of a unitary Chinese history going back five thousand years. The construction of a distinct Chinese identity through the ages is today oYcially sponsored by the political regime of the People’s Republic of China, which has discovered the »culture factor« (wenhua yinsu) that figures so prominently in Western »cultural studies« as a new source of legitimation.1 What Sun Jiazheng, the Chinese Minister of Culture, had to say at the National Press Club inWashington inOctober 2005 is typical of the oYcial Chinese point of view:
Each country has the right to choose its own culture; and it is only up to the country itself to determine what kind of culture is suitable. It is as obvious as the fact that the fish chooses the water it wants to live in and the bird picks the forest for its habitat. No matter how others comment on our thoughts or system, only we ourselves know what suits us best, just like the fact that in order to judge whether a pair of shoes fit or not, you have to ask the one who wears them. DiVerences among various national cultures have existed since the start of history, and they are the precondition for maintaining the richness and diversity of world cultures. China claims a sanctity of its political system based on unique cultural values that reach back to the Stone Age.
This position has Western counterparts – not always so broadbrushed but in principle similar – for example in forms of communitarianism. Civilizational analysis is a widespread tendency in the humanities, replacing the »outdated« universalistic evolutionary schemes that Maoist China also adhered to.3 In fact, Chinese culture, like any culture, has always been the constantly changing result of the confluence of knowledge and experience from quite different sources, nucleus theories having proven archeologically untenable.
Many of these influences were met with unspectacular acceptance, while others have vanished and some have brought about far reaching change, but they have not forestalled onedimensional essentialistic theories contending a unity of Chineseness to the present day. They have been accompanied by rejecting, playing down, denying, or »nostrifying« foreign impacts that have in fact had a central role in shaping China. However, hostility has not been the primary response. The fiercer the opposition, the more successful the transfer processes have actually been.
