Encounters and Engagement in the Civilizational Analysis of Japan

Jeremy C. A. Smith

Encounters and Engagement in the Civilizational Analysis of Japan

Číslo: 2/2021
Periodikum: Historická sociologie
DOI: 10.14712/23363525.2021.16

Klíčová slova: civilizational analysis; the Pacific; migration; international relations; capitalism; technoscience

Pro získání musíte mít účet v Citace PRO.

Přečíst po přihlášení

Anotace: As a field of significant activity for historical sociologists in recent decades, civilizational analysis has produced extensive and incisive works examining Japan as a historical formation of Eurasia. However, the same cannot be said of Japan’s Pacific relationship with the

United States, which is neglected in the major historical sociologies of Japanese modernity. This
essay seeks to address that unnecessary oversight by putting that relationship into focus as an
international dimension of the institution of both states. It would be tempting to elucidate the
entanglement of the two as an encounter of civilizations, but the author instead casts it as intercivilizational engagement, that is a deeper set of connections generated by routine contacts and
migratory movements, trade in commerce and culture, and selective appropriation of models
of statehood. Delineating the lines of exchange in all four domains of connectivity between
Japan and the US, the essay profiles the international and imperial extensions of both states. In
altering the perspective on Japan’s relations with the world, the author outlines a larger potential
historical sociology of intercivilizational engagement between two Pacific-edge civilizational
constellations.