Eastern University Books

The following review is based on the 1984 edition.

In "Discovering History in China" Cohen argues that much of the scholarship in the West that had occurred on China prior to the mid-1970's, (particularly American scholarship), had been conducted with an "ethnocentric distortion". Because the West had an impact in shaping modern China, pre-World War II (W.W. II) studies on China tended to focus on matters Western countries had a direct role in, such as the Opium Wars, missionary work, the Taiping uprising, sino-foreign trade, etc.. These studies tended to be from missionaries, diplomats, and others who had no formal training as historians.

In post-W.W. II studies of China (while the subject matter had widened) emphasis "was still to an overwhelming extent on the shaping role of the Western intrusion"(p.2). Much of what was written after W.W. II, according to Cohen, viewed the Western role in shaping modern China in a positive light. It was not until the liberalism of the late 1960's that historians began to question this purely positive look at imperialism and looked instead at ways the Western involvement in China had affected the "natural forward movement of Chinese history". However, many scholars still saw the West as the main antagonist in preventing China's 'modern development'.

Chapter one deals with the amount of influence Western nations had on events shaping China in the late 1800's. Cohen believes that the amount of influence the Western imperialist countries had on events inside China during the late 1800's was negligible overall. It was only after the Tongzhi Restoration that the Western presence in China played any significant role in shaping Chinese affairs. Even the reform efforts of 1898 - how much can be contributed to a reaction to the 'Western threat' and how much can be contributed to reactions to domestic conditions.

In the second chapter, "Moving Beyond Tradition and Modernity", Cohen takes aim at the notion of an unchanging China. Much of this section is a variant of the first chapter, where Cohen discusses the views of scholars from the 1950's and 1960's such as Joseph Levenson and John K. Fairbank. During this time the dominant view was that the concept of change or modernization in China was a product of direct contact with the West. In other words, China could not have "modernized" on its own without some kind of impetus from outside.

This concept of an unchanging China in American scholarship began to be questioned and negated with the introduction of Philip Kuhn's study "Rebellion and its Enemies in Late Imperial China"(1970). In this study, Kuhn attempts to redefine the question of Chinese modernity, moving away from a belief that change only occurred with help from the Western presence in the mid- to late 1800's to one that scrutinized domestic changes taking place in China long before the Western presence.

Much of chapter three "Imperialism: Reality or Myth?" analyzes the diatribe of James Peck, who in an article published in the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (Oct. 1969, 2(1)p.59-69), argued modernization theory was a construct that explained away America's imperialistic nature. Written while Peck was a graduate student during the Vietnam War in the late 1960's, the article takes the view of the Chinese Communists, that is, everything which went wrong in China from the Opium War to the 'liberation' of 1949 was caused in large part by Western imperialism.

While reading Cohen's analysis of Peck's argument I could not help but think why was he [Cohen] giving so much attention to someone who, as A. Feuerwerker has pointed out in his own review of Cohen's book, "knew little about China" (see the Journal of Asian Studies, vol.44, no.3, May 1985; pp.579-80).

However, later in the chapter Cohen, through his use of other's scholarship, shows that all of China was not affected the same way by imperialism. The effects felt in the treaty ports and the littorial regions, where much of the Western influence was felt, was not congruent with the effects felt in the hinterland, where daily life went on much as it always had.

This leads us to the final chapter, "A China-Centered History of China". In this chapter, Cohen reviews the trends that had taken place throughout the 1970's and at the time of Cohen's writing, the nascent years of the 1980's. The evolution of American scholarship during this time was increasingly focusing on what Cohen terms, "Chinese problems set in a Chinese context" (p.154) or put another way, studying Chinese history from a Chinese perspective. This involved breaking China down into more manageable "spatial units" - (regional or provincial centered studies) while detracting from a top down approach of Chinese society and concentrating more on lower levels of Chinese society.

Disintegration in Frames is theoretically insightful, but never too dense to be inaccessible to general readership. The book is a great resource for anyone interested in the role of cinema in the formation of Yugoslav ethno-nationalisms (and cinema as a reflection of these ethno-nationalisms). The book is full of fun insights, such as the discussion of phallic connotations of the Yugoslav ritual of carrying "the baton of youth," and the reference to such pan-Yugoslav rituals in the work of New Primitivs in late 1980s and early 1990s: "sucking of the pole". The chapter on Yugoslav "black wave" is extremely insightful for anyone interested in the works of such masters as Dusan Makavejev, Zelimir Zilnik and Karpo Godina. Levi's critique of Emir Kusturica's work sets high standards for future scholarship on this director's work. Highly recommended.

This work acts as a social history of the rise of nationalism in Syria during the short-lived Faisali gov't prior to the implentation the French and British Mandates following WWI and the King-Crane Commission. He aims at challenging two views prevalent (though quickly dying) of Arab nationalism: 1) that what occurred was an awakening of a perennial identity in remission rather than a construction of a national identity and 2) that intellectual histories of elites suffices to show the development of nationalism in the Middle East. Using an uncanny array of sources, novel approaches to investigation, and a particularly lucid picture of Syrian events of the time, he successfully demolishes both views.

What emerges in its place is not only more cogent and probable but also bespeaks the multi-layered experience of nationalism and mass politics as it developed in Syria as he narrates the dialectic between the top-down efforts of the Faisali administration to secure a broad and stable influence over society and various, polyvalent efforts of local popular committees to appropriate national discourse into their own emerging interpretations.

Gelvin's work should be read by any student of the modern Arab World.

You will read nothing else like it and spend the rest of your life searching for something comparable.

If the price reflected the value of the book, I'd have to give it five stars. Otherwise, I'd hesitate to give it half a star. I am not disapproving when it comes to educated English, but this book is atrocious to read. Its style seems less like academic prose, and more like academic pose. It seems like murdering Dogen, to me. There is surely a limit to the degree of academic jargon you can bring to the task of surveying a tradition, for which it was axiomatic "not to speak too plainly" (pu shuo pu).

P.S. Heine's contributions elsewhere(not least 'The Koan:Texts and Contexts. The Zen Canon etc.) are meaningful and valuable. I didn't find those laboured. Alas, the present work left me feeling that I was lifting dumbells with my eyeballs. In short, as regards the hermeneutical horizons of the two textual properties or modules under current evaluation, there were certainly infrastructural resemblances to the literary proclivities of the Japanese cenobite, productive of the key Buddhological source materials at hand. However, the excruciatingly didactic, pedagogical patterns and profusion of multi-complex, multivalenced academic jargon, made me somewhat catatonic, and in an irrational upsurge of neuromuscular exertion, mediated through the biceps and triceps, the said tome ullulated through the ambient ether, and thus found itself laying, functionally redundant, in a circular waste receptacle, pending further functional assignments, morphologically modified in the phenomenological sense, as waste paper.

Great book. Picks right up where the Lord's Oyster left off. It really is nice to read a book of historical nature that has a sort of recognizability to it. I am from the Eastern Shore of Md and perhaps I am some-what biased in opinion. Read it for yourself though, you'll be suprised to see how much like Huckleberry Finn this is. (but on the bay not the Mississippi.)

This is a truly fabulous book about the possible history of temple women during the Chola period in South Indian. Ms. Orr has very thoroughly and comprehensivly examined and explained her sources and theories. I learned a great deal from this text and was gratified to see all of her assertions backed by epigraphical surveys or the well-documented work of other authors. My one critique would be that the work limits itself to only epigraphical evidence, and does not consider other sources, such as literature, before it draws firm conclusions. I don't think it a failing of the text so much as a gaping hole waiting to be filled.

The book is a detailed study of the university examination systems in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. As Zeng astutely notes, "The history of exams is a history of an institution, a system. On the other hand, this system is not an empty shell, but a structural order governing human behavior and consciousness. In that sense, what we have been studying is a key behavioral pattern, the history of the pattern, and the power behind that power". This book is an excellent introduction to what can be called the "culture of exams" in the Far East. It is a badly needed sourcebook and rare history of a topic which encompasses such diverse subjects as history, education, politics, and religion. Zeng is quite good at delineating the precise influence of Japan on the exam systems, general historical trends in the development of these systems, and the social roles that the exams serve.

There are, however, several drawbacks to the book. Zeng's writing style is often quite dry and sometimes awkward, and in certain sections the book is not very well organized. Finally, at $... US, quite pricey. But these faults do not ultimately detract from the importance and novelty of this study.

I find this book an objective and encompassing account of a fascinating people. Betts includes excerpts from many references on these people and explains the political and historical context of each statement. He then adds his own perspective from in-depth research and first-hand personal experience. It is concise but covers the subject extensively by addressing historical, social, political, and traditional aspects of it with an interesting section on Druze Women.

The origins of the school of thought known as the Advaita Vedanta in medieval India is a subject that is fraught with numerous controversies. This is a very important study on the relationship between the Advaita Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism. It is important because it approaches the study of Advaita Vedanta from a historico-philosophical perspective, that is, it situates Advaita Vedanta squarely within the context and influence of Mahayana Buddhism. This is a context that is usually ignored in present-day studies. This is an approach that is at once distinctive and penetrating, for it gives us a deeper insight into how the medieval Indian philosophers (i.e. Sankara) understood their project, rather then imposing our usualy presuppositions on them. What is the relationship between Advaita Vedanta and MAhayana Buddhism? Is it appropriate to view Sankara as a Buddhist in disguise? What is the philosophical basis of Advaita Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism? These are but some of the questions that the author explores. This is a must-buy for any serious student of Indian thought in general. BE WARNED though, because just as this work is illuminating, it may also be deconstructive of our most deeply entrenched beliefs about Advaita Vedanta and MAhayana Buddhism.