Performing civilisational narratives in East Asia: Asian values, multiple modernities, and the politics of economic development

Abstract

This article aims to uncover the socially constructed normative foundation for the alternative East Asian economic development paradigm to neoliberalism in the context of civilisational politics. The question I seek to address is why East Asian states make value claims when promoting their alternative method of economic development. In addressing this question, I make two interrelated arguments. First, I argue that the politics of Asian values can be understood as another case of non-Western society's struggle to demonstrate multiple paths to modernity. Second, on a deeper level, I show that the discourse and narratives on Asian values is part of civilisation politics aimed to recalibrate the place of East Asia in a world consisting of the civilised and the uncivilised, a divide that still remains today in various forms following European expansion in the nineteenth century. In so doing, I shed light on the performative power of 'the standard of civilisation', which naturalises the temporal and sequential hierarchy of civilisational identities in world politics. On the basis of this article's findings, I draw out implications of a recalibrated East Asia for the ideas of hierarchy and progress in world politics.