The Asian Modern: Culture, Capitalist Development, Singapore | 
| Author: C. J. W. L. Wee
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $59.50
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Sales Rank: 1294899
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 210
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1
ISBN: 9622098592
Dewey Decimal Number: 302.23095957
EAN: 9789622098596
ASIN: 9622098592
Publication Date: December 30, 2007
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Book Description
How does one comprehend the phenomenon of the modernization of an Asian society in a globalized East Asian context? With this opening question, the author proceeds to give an account of how the modernization processes for postcolonial societies in Asia, ones such as India, Malaysia, and Singapore, are fraught with collaborations and conflicts between different socio-political, historical, economic and cultural agents. Such ambivalent dynamics contribute to what Wee argues as a 'distortion' of the extant models of Western modernity, which is nonetheless rooted in the politics of worldwide capitalism. Wee's narrative refuses to accept the uncritical interpretation of the modernizing processes in Asia as liberation from the hegemony of Euro-American capitalism. Nor is Wee prepared to concede that all cultural initiatives in the postcolonial societies are, therefore, denied all power to devise alternative forms of expression in the face of this haunting presence. It is the persistent effort to see the many faces of modernization in Asia in their full complexity that marks this book apart. Readers will discover that what seems to be the modernization of a single geopolitical entity is inevitably linked to the dynamics of various agents in other locations at different times which makes us reflect on the existence of the many 'distortions' in our societies.
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