The Crisis of Planetary Sustainability, Asian Secularisms

Prasenjit Duara, the Oscar Tang Chair of East Asian Studies at Duke University, will present the Scholars’ Convocation at 11 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 29, in Joe Rosenfield ‘25 Center, Room 101.

In “The Crisis of Planetary Sustainability: A Long View from Asia,” Duara will explore how Asian traditions of circularity and collective action offer promising insight into solving the global sustainability crisis in a post-modern, increasingly secularized and nationalistic world.

A scholar who has published several books focused on East Asian culture and religion, Duara also will give the Gates Lecture at 7:30 p.m. the same day in Sebring-Lewis Hall, Bucksbaum Center for the Arts. The Gates Lectures were established in memory of George Gates, the College’s second president, and are intended “to bring to campus the very best of modern thought.”

Both the Scholars’ Convocation and Gates Lecture are free and open to the public.

In the Gates Lecture, Duara will explore the past and present of religious accommodation across Asian societies, using the Asian tradition as a model for how the global community might approach sustainability from a pluralist, rather than a secularist, perspective. This lecture is titled “Asian Secularisms: China, Japan, and India in the era of Abrahamic Hegemony.”

There is an emerging view that secularisms in different societies are shaped by how religion has evolved in those societies. Duara will address that theory, as well as develop a comparative framework that critically compares the nature of religious accommodation historically in China, India and Japan with Europe in order to explore the limitations of Western secularism and potential alternative ideologies from Asia.

Duara’s first book, Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942, was published in 1988, and won the Fairbank Prize of the American Historical Association as well as the Levenson Prize of the Association for Asian Studies. Among his other books are Rescuing History from the Nation, Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern and, most recently, The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future.” His works have been widely translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and European languages.

Duara earned his B.A at the University of Delhi and his M.Phil. from Jawaharlal Nehru University, both in India. He went on to receive his Ph.D. from Harvard University. Before joining the faculty at Duke University, he was a professor and chair of the history department and chair of the Committee on Chinese Studies at the University of Chicago.

The religious studies department and the Gates Lecture are sponsoring this event. The College welcomes the participation of people with disabilities. Room 101 in the Rosenfield Center is equipped with an induction hearing loop system, which enables individuals with hearing aids set to T-Coil to hear the program. Accommodation requests may be made to Conference Operations, 641-269-3235.