グローバルな国民国家の時代?

問題提起

抄録

Social sciences have largely relied on the concept of the nation-state. In the nineteenth century, when Western imperial powers tried to establish their rule in far away Asia, modern types of government were introduced as colonial states. Newly independent states, however, distinguished themselves from their colonial predecessors by emphasizing their acquisition of demarcated territory as national homeland, registering their populations as nations, and promoting the superior integrating power of national sovereignty.
Nevertheless, the nation-state is only a man-made framework for social and intellectual construction, which is naturally vulnerable to change. As Saskia Sassen writes in her Territory, Authority, Rights (2006), we “are living through an epochal transformation, one as yet young but already showing its muscle. We have come to call this transformation globalization, and much attention has been paid to the emerging apparatus of global institutions and dynamics. Yet, if this transformation is indeed epochal, it has to engage the most complex institutional architecture we have ever produced: the national state.”
The International Symposium for the year of 2008 focused on the issue of migration and its impact on China as a nation-state as well as on international society. During the decades of expansion of the liberal market economy and media, the term “globalization” has become familiar to explain the world-wide change, necessitating the creation of a “globalized” nation-state and its society. But when we see the multidimensional waves of migration, it does not seem sufficient to explain the reality simply by putting the adjective “globalized” in front of “nation-state”. I have used the term “global China”, rather than “globalized China”, in order to suggest the emergence of a new global community of the Chinese nation inside/outside of the country.
SONODA Shigeto analyzes the increase of social fluidity in China and its domestic/global impact. ZHOU Min presents the historical development of Chinese international migration. WANG Chunguang proposes the right of “opportunity ownership” to counter the problem of inequality of new inhabitants in cities who come from rural areas. HAMASHITA Takeshi explains the historical process of Chinese migration and its impact on international regional orders in Asia. MORI Kazuko thoroughly overviews these presentations, and questions if it is necessary to bring a new paradigm shift in Chinese studies.