日常生活中的“国家”以及新时代区域国别研究的问题意识——《小邦大治:新加坡的国家基本制度建设》书评

"State" in Daily Lives and the Problematic of Area Studies in the New Era——A Book Review on Good Governance in a City State:State-buliding in Singapore

本文试图在20世纪去殖民与革命历史的脉络中寻找今天中国新'区域研究'背后可能依赖的问题意识基础。我们发现,在抽象地进行国家'政体'讨论的同时,'国家的治理'这一与人民生活息息相关的层面也应当得到深入分析。本文认为《小邦大治》一书中透露出的对'国家治理能力'的兴趣及其对'政体'思维的反思,能够帮助我们理解第三世界独立运动浪潮中建立起的新国家,以及20世纪中叶以来的世界政治发展走向。本文还希望强调,必须从思想史发展的角度出发,将'传统'区域研究的问题意识还原到西方19世纪以来帝国史与殖民史问题意识脉络中,进而反映这种作为'帝国知识'的'区域研究'在西方学界逐渐细碎化与边缘化的内在历史与政治原因。

This paper grounds the problematic of Chinese newly found zeal for area studies in the history of decolonisation and revolution in the 20 th century.It argues that in addition to the attention to conceptualise the form of government,we should also engage in understanding how state rules,which is more closely associated with people’s daily lives.In Good Governance in a City State:State-buliding in Singapore,the author devotes the attention to illustrating the state capacity of governance.This approach allows us to better understand the political logic of states newly established in the wave of Third World national independence movement since 1945.This paper also gazes into the history of the development of area studies in Europe as an'imperial knowledge'.The problematic of this'conventional'area studies was deeply rooted in the hegemonic order that gave birth to the subject areas of imperial history and colonial history in the Western World.With the decline of the Western imperial power,area studies in the West begin to decline rapidly and focus on trivial issues.