Transnational East Asian Studies [Paperback]

This book is a must for students studying East Asia. It will introduce them to the transcultural interactions that have shaped diverse but interrelated East Asian regions from the past up to the present. It will deal with many themes that are important to develop a comprehensive and coherent understanding of the transcultural complexity and richness of the East Asia.Transnational East Asian Studies demonstrates how transnationalism as a mode of intellectual enquiry has wide-ranging interdisciplinary potential and has immense value when examining the past, just as much as much as when examining the present. Artificially erected borders, which appear on maps and globes, fail to consider the ways people in diverse regions live and practice their everyday lives, existing beyond boundaries. The people of East Asia have always been on the move, they have never been homogeneous, and have evolved together, not apart. In this sense, people around the globe and also in East Asia have always been involved in a process of change and transformation. Hence, transnationalism is a way to overcome methodological nationalism, not only as a concept of identity and spatiality, but also as a concept temporally situated in the modern, because as a methodology, transnationalism does not take the national as a precondition. It allows us to move beyond and across borders, and to examine how ideas have been used and transformed in different contexts. This book thus underscores the complex interactions in the context of East Asia, past and present, while shaping the future of this complicated region.This book is a must for students studying East Asia. It will introduce them to the transcultural interactions that have shaped diverse but interrelated East Asian regions from the past up to the present. It will deal with many themes that are important to develop a comprehensive and coherent understanding of the transcultural complexity and richness of the East Asia.Kevin Cawley is a Senior Lecturl“8