商品詳細

In critical response to the long standing inadequacies of political science methods applied to non-western polities in general and Chinese politics in particular, the book is an attempt to rethink many of our taken-for-granted assumptions in the field. It illustrates how China has been treated in such ways that as an anomaly it serves to vindicate the "normal" paths and normative values of liberal capitalistm. Under systematic scrutiny is the working of key disciplinary concepts that sustain these intellectual processes of polarization. Taking issue with traditional (European-colonial) sinology to address Sinocentric bias and forms of Chinese exceptionism on the one hand, and with Cold War area studies to tackle EuroAmerican centric ideologies on the other, the book shows how and why China, at multiple levels and in various dimensions, is indispensable for received theories to be tested and recast. The size, depth, diversity and complexity of its historical and unfolding experiences are conceptually inescapable for any political scientist still faithful to universal reason and global causal explanations.