Modernity and inter-imperiality: Rethinking social theory in East Asia

This paper aims to contribute to global social theory by contextualizing modernity/coloniality in East Asia. It begins with a reconstruction and evaluation of three sociological accounts of East Asian modernity, namely Kazuko Tsurumi's theory of endogenous development, Sun Liping's theory of communist civilization, and Chang Kyung Sup's theory of compressed modernity. Despite their insights, these theorists fail to transcend the Eurocentrism and methodological nationalism implicit in the paradigm of latecomer modernization. These problems can be better addressed by anti-colonial perspectives, including Tani Barlow's colonial modernity, Chen Kuan-Hsing's inter-Asia, Xie Lizhong's post-Western sociology, and Wang Mingming's civilizational anthropology. Yet European hegemony continues to define the spatiotemporal frame of these perspectives. To overcome the lingering problem of Eurocentrism, Laura Doyle's notion of inter-imperiality is employed to highlight the power-laden interaction and interdependence among imperial powers in the global and regional history of East Asia. This alternative approach, I argue, can shed new light on East Asian modernity and delineate its dialectical formation.