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Global Cultures
Lewis and Wigen pointed out several problems one of them being the geographical definition of continents (Lewis and Wigen 73). Both factions have openly differed over their status and magnitude. He offered the example of Europeans referring to their smaller cape as a continent while other bigger regions such as China remained subcontinents. In contrast, Indian mapmakers showed South Asia to be the biggest land mass in the world while Europe was a marginalized island. The inclusion of economic and political disparities between the East and the West served to complicate the definition of their relationship. The Cold War was instrumental in shaping the perceptions of the people in these two regions. Lewis and Wigen (2003) concluded that understanding the East and West depended greatly on the current geographical stand of the analyst (Lewis and Wigen 102).
Fogel refers to East Asia as the Sinic World because of its strong ties with China. In his argument, Fogel points out that defining Asia as a whole is relatively difficult but East Asia is “sinic” because of the massive Chinese influence. He states “…East Asia, what we have designated here as the “Sinic World”, the world that falls historically under Chinese cultural influence (Embree, and Gluck 683)”. The term also refers to the four countries located in Eastern Asia.
A
definite and stable acknowledgment of Japan as a nation-state emerged in
the early nineteenth century. The reason for the change in perception concerning
Japan
emerged from the fresh efforts to resolve conflicts between the state and other
neighboring societies. Another factor that clearly defined Japan was the change in ideology
towards a modernized one. Japan
finally acknowledged the frontier states as being neglected and underdeveloped
and this helped in changing the local and worldview of the state (Morris-Suzuki
10).
Works Cited
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Embree, Ainslie T, and Carol Gluck. Asia in Western and World History: A Guide for Teaching. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2015. Print.
Lewis, Martin W, and Kären E. Wigen. The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography. Berkeley, Calif. [u.a.: Univ. of California Press, 2003. Print.
Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. Re-inventing Japan: Time, Space, Nation. London, England; New York, New York: Routledge, 2015. Print.
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