The Modernization Project in East Asia and the Dual Compression of Time

Abstract

　Since the second half of the twentieth century, East Asian societies such as Japan, Korea and China have successively embarked on modernization projects based on developmentalist ideals. In the process of social change aiming at the realization of modern society, the unique temporal perception within East Asian societies has formed and transformed, and has had a dominant influence on its members to the present day. However, few studies by far have theoretically discussed the perception of modern time in East Asia. This paper will focus on the formation and evolution of conceptions regarding modernity in East Asian official discourses and social science researches, and analyze their implications to the perception of time by East Asian people. Subsequently, the study will examine the Confucian capitalism theory and the compressed modernity theory respectively, both the validity and problems, in capturing the sense of time among modern Asia societies. Based on these, I will propose the concepts of ‘general compression’ and ‘specific compression’ in an attempt to characterize the dual characteristics of the sense of time in modern East Asia.