Rezension zu: Rebecca E. Karl: The Magic of Concepts. History and the Economic in Twentieth-century China. Durham 2017

Abstract

In this collection of five essays, Rebecca Karl, who serves as professor of history at New York University, explores how a selected number of economic models were discussed and disseminated by Chinese intelligentsia and utilized in the historiography of China worldwide. Among the concepts discussed are the Asiatic mode of production (AMP), semi-colonialism, semi-feudalism, and the methodological individualism of the Austrian School. With this book, Karl continues the legacy of her late mentor Arif Dirlik, whose work on economic historiography was widely influential in the field. In tradition with Dirlik, self-ascribed “professor […] and activist” (p. ix) Karl does not disguise her goals as limited to the academic, but openly outlines her agenda to critique “antidemocratic, retrograde culturalist, politically oppressive, and unjust economic principles” (p. ix).

Biographical Note

Thorben Pelzer (SFB 1199)

Since September 2017, Thorben Pelzer holds the position of university lecturer for Society and Culture of Modern China at Leipzig University. He graduated in Chinese Studies, Japanese Studies, and East Asia Studies at Ruhr-University Bochum. Further, he studied at Osaka University, at Tongji University in Shanghai, and at National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei. He is an alumni of the German Merit Foundation. As a social and cultural historian of the Republican period, he currently researches Chinese engineers who studied in the USA.