Political Cultural Developments in East Asia ― Interpreting Logics of Change

This book offers an interpretive and critical comparative politics analysis of the post-1945 development trajectory of the broad East Asian region and its component countries. Against the claims of globalization theorists that the global system is becoming unitary in form, here, Preston considers the region and its countries in terms of their historical legacies (colonialism, war and the preoccupation with development) and argues that each country has constructed their own way of ordering political life. This volume not only shows that there are diverse routes to the still developing modern world, but also demonstrates the paradoxical nature of comparative work - although this approach very rarely leads us to any definitive agreement about other cultures or our own, this is not a problem; scholarship is always provisional, part of its enduring pleasure. This book will be of interest to all those concerned with the histories and dynamics of political cultures in East Asia.

P.W. Preston is Emeritus Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Birmingham, UK. He has lived and worked in East Asia and has published widely on the politics of this region and his own home country, England.