Administering wealth

The concept of “economy” and the epistemic foundations of nationalism in late-imperial China (late-nineteenth–early-twentieth century)

Datos Bibliográficos

ID20209999
AutoresPablo A Blitstein, Pablo Blitstein (0000-0003-1560-474X, École des Hautes Études en Santé Publique, autor de correspondencia)
Año2021
Volumen18
Número2
Páginas185-206
Fecha de publicación2021-07-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaInternational Journal of Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1479-5914 • E-ISSN: 1479-5922
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1479591420000509
OpenAlexW3094508405
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas23

In this paper, I will focus on the emergence and uses of political economy in late-nineteenth–early-twentieth century China. I will discuss how the concept of “economy” came to be conceived as an autonomous sphere of human life, with its own rules and its own order, and how the production of “wealth” was conceptually divorced from ethics, politics, and administration. For this purpose, I will focus on a group which played a key role in reshaping the social and political discourse of the empire: a group of nationalist reformers who wanted to transform the Qing empire into a constitutional monarchy. I will explore how these reformers brought together two different sets of traditions – the Chinese imperial traditions of literati statecraft on the one hand, and mostly British, French, and German traditions of political economy on the other – and how they used them to naturalize a particular idea of what the “Chinese nation” was and should be

China · Empire · Monarchy · Nationalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Chinese history and philosophy · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law