The Dynamics of Transculturality: Concepts and Institutions in Motion (Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context)

The purpose of this volume is to identify and analyze the mechanisms and processes through which concepts and institutions of transcultural phenomena gain and are given momentum. Applied to a range of cases, including examples drawn from ancient Greece and modern India, the early modern Portuguese presence in China and politics of elite-mass dynamics in the Peopleℓ́ℓs Republic of China, the book provides a template for the study of transcultural dynamics over time. Besides the epochal range, the papers in this volume illustrate the thematic diversity assembled under the umbrella of the Heidelberg Cluster of Excellence ℓ́ℓAsia and Europe in a Global Context.ℓ́ℓ Drawing from both the humanities and social sciences, stretching across several world areas and centuries, the book is an interdisciplinary work, aptly reflected in the collaboration of its editors: a historian and political scientist Front Matter....Pages i-ix Introduction....Pages 1-23 Front Matter....Pages 25-25 Marxism, Modernity, and Revolution: The Asian Experience....Pages 27-38 From Religious Contact to Scientific Comparison and Back: Some Methodological Considerations on Comparative Perspectives in the Science of Religion....Pages 39-73 Front Matter....Pages 75-75 Hippodamos and Phoenicia: On City Planning and Social Order in a Transcultural Context....Pages 77-97 A Forgotten Landscape of the Forms of Government: The Case for the Counterfactual History of Political Theory....Pages 99-111 Military Intelligence and Early Modern Warfare: The Dutch East India Company and China 1622–1624....Pages 113-135 ‘Cultural Citizenship’ and Media Representation in India: Towards a Trans-Policy Approach....Pages 137-156 The Era of Crowds: Gustave Le Bon, Crowd Psychology, and Conceptualizations of Mass-Elite Relations in China....Pages 157-183 Front Matter....Pages 185-185 The Goddess’s New Clothes. Conceptualising an ‘Eastern’ Goddess for a ‘Western’ Audience....Pages 187-217 Across Central Asia: Cultural Crossroads, Religious Interactions? The Monastery, H.2153 fol. 131v, Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi, Istanbul....Pages 219-253 Importing and Exporting Gods? On the Flow of Deities Between Egypt and Its Neighboring Countries....Pages 255-277 The purpose of this volume is to identify and analyze the mechanisms and processes through which concepts and institutions of transcultural phenomena gain and are given momentum. Applied to a range of cases, including examples drawn from ancient Greece and modern India, the early modern Portuguese presence in China and politics of elite-mass dynamics in the Peopleĺls Republic of China, the book provides a template for the study of transcultural dynamics over time. Besides the epochal range, the papers in this volume illustrate the thematic diversity assembled under the umbrella of the Heidelberg Cluster of Excellence ĺlAsia and Europe in a Global Context.ĺl Drawing from both the humanities and social sciences, stretching across several world areas and centuries, the book is an interdisciplinary work, aptly reflected in the collaboration of its editors: a historian and political scientist