Disassembly and Reconstruction -- The Evolution of Modern Chinese Historiography and Confucian Thought

Author: Sheng Banghe
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-09-08
Features: Eastern Scholars Series. In a sense, the 20th century of China was a century of cultural construction. The transformation from an agricultural China to an industrial China, and the evolution from a traditional China to a modern China, the progress of social history, all urged China to put cultural construction on the agenda. This book aims to explain how modern Chinese culture is connected with major discourses of social change, interacts and responds, and is renewed and recreated. In the book, the author not only discusses Confucianism but also directs his attention to the changes in modern historiography, interpreting the mechanisms of mutual connection and inspiration between Chinese historiography and Confucianism in cultural construction. This logical structure of the book discusses the complete disintegration of the "old history" and the comprehensive creation of the "new history," the ashes and smoke of the "old Confucianism" and the whereabouts of the "new Confucianism," as well as describing the winding path of "suggestions," "deconstruction," "reconstruction," and "synthesis" in the cultural construction of modern China. The author emphasizes the discussion of modern Chinese academic schools, their evolution, and their cultural construction theories, exploring the significance implied in the call for "nation" in the wave of "globalization," and answering how to create the "modernity adaptation" of "tradition." This book is both a reiteration of the theme of "cultural renewal" from the author's previously published works "Core and Periphery" and "East Asia: The Spiritual Journey Towards Modernity," and also a new interpretation of the author's research on the history of modern Chinese academic thought and historiography, gathering the fruits of his reflections. Those who are concerned about the direction of modern Chinese academia, cultural changes, and the prospects of modernization should read this book.