What is ‘Modern’ China? Desperately Seeking for ‘a’ Birthday

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_chapter_10858
dc.contributor.author	Ferlanti Federica
dc.title	What is ‘Modern’ China? Desperately Seeking for ‘a’ Birthday
dc.type	Chapter
dc.language.iso	en
dc.description.abstract	Historians have been obsessed with pinpointing the birth of modern China. However, what do we (historians) look for when we try to trace its birth? And more importantly, how do we understand the term ‘modern’ and by extension ‘modernity’? Has its meaning changed over time? This essay addresses these problems by focussing on two main aspects. The first aspect concerns Chinese modernity in relation to historians’ subjectivity and periodisation. The concept of modern and modernity is not set in stone and what is modern depends on who is asking the question, with context, nationality/ ethnicity and gender accounting for historians’ subjectivity. One should also take into account that new perspectives are gained due to the passage of time and the concept of what makes China modern at any given point shifts accordingly. The second aspect is the nation‑ and state‑building process. The changing relationship between the individual and the state seems a good vantage point from which to explore modernity. From citizenship to mass politics, the essay draws on different examples to illustrate the main trends that emerged and bedded in during the Republican period, and beyond, and explain why we might (or might not) consider them markers of modernity.
dc.relation.ispartof	Sinica venetiana
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Venice University Press, Fondazione Università Ca’ Foscari
dc.issued	2023-10-11
dc.dateAccepted	2022-12-07
dc.dateSubmitted	2022-07-26
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/libri/978-88-6969-724-1/what-is-modern-china-desperately-seeking-for-a-bir/
dc.identifier.doi	10.30687/978-88-6969-723-4/001
dc.identifier.issn	2610-9654
dc.identifier.eissn	2610-9042
dc.identifier.isbn	978-88-6969-724-1
dc.identifier.eisbn	978-88-6969-723-4
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
item.fulltext	with fulltext
item.grantfulltext	open
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Hybrid modernities
dc.subject	Modern citizen
dc.subject	Nation and state‑building
dc.subject	Periodisation
dc.subject	Subjectivity

Chapter
open access peer reviewed

What is ‘Modern’ China? Desperately Seeking for ‘a’ Birthday

Federica Ferlanti Cardiff University, UK

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abstract

Historians have been obsessed with pinpointing the birth of modern China. However, what do we (historians) look for when we try to trace its birth? And more importantly, how do we understand the term ‘modern’ and by extension ‘modernity’? Has its meaning changed over time? This essay addresses these problems by focussing on two main aspects. The first aspect concerns Chinese modernity in relation to historians’ subjectivity and periodisation. The concept of modern and modernity is not set in stone and what is modern depends on who is asking the question, with context, nationality/ ethnicity and gender accounting for historians’ subjectivity. One should also take into account that new perspectives are gained due to the passage of time and the concept of what makes China modern at any given point shifts accordingly. The second aspect is the nation‑ and state‑building process. The changing relationship between the individual and the state seems a good vantage point from which to explore modernity. From citizenship to mass politics, the essay draws on different examples to illustrate the main trends that emerged and bedded in during the Republican period, and beyond, and explain why we might (or might not) consider them markers of modernity.

Published

Oct. 11, 2023

Accepted

Dec. 7, 2022

Submitted

July 26, 2022

Language

ISBN (PRINT)

978-88-6969-724-1

ISBN (EBOOK)

978-88-6969-723-4

Keywords: Subjectivity • Periodisation • Hybrid modernities • Nation and state‑building • Modern citizen

permalink: http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-723-4/001

Copyright: © 2023 Federica Ferlanti. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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