The Introduction outlines the theoretical framework, starting with a review of the existing literature on musical modernism, global musicology and related theories, including discussions of universalism, methodological nationalism, the centre versus periphery paradigm, multiple modernities, hybridity and postcolonial and decolonising approaches. It further introduces the interdisciplinary concept of ‘entangled histories’, which is illustrated with three short cases studies: the Orchesta Experimental de Instrumentos Nativos (OEIN) from Bolivia, the Bow Project from South Africa and Uwalmassa, a trio creating ‘deconstructed gamelan music’ from Jakarta, Indonesia. What unites these cases is that they are rooted in local traditions, rather than on the adoption or imposition of Western practices, although they undoubtedly respond creatively to Western ideas.

Instead of beginning from intellectual traditions or bodies of thought as the units of analysis in comparative political theory, in this chapter Ken Tsutsumibayashi focuses on the ways in which the meaning of concepts derives from their practical use in particular historical moments. The distinction between “East” and “West,” which still frames so many debates in comparative political theory, dissolves under this contextualizing gaze: from the perspective of Japan as the “far eastern province,” “the West” signified China before it signified Europe. Yet the flow of ideas between Japan and other societies has not always been from West to East. In the late nineteenth century, Japanese thinkers engaged European ideas, and their innovative use of these ideas shaped, in turn, the terms of political discourse in China and Korea, shifting them toward institutions and subjectivities that could be rendered congruent with modernity. The chapter traces the remarkable efflorescence in Japan of innovative constructions of Min (“the people”) in Meiji-period thought, which played a key role in the production of new and “multiple modernities.” Tsutsumibayashi argues that we should relinquish cultural “ownership claims” over ideas; the history of ideas can serve as a common pool resource that can enrich practical reason.

This chapter summarizes the book and advances a synthetic theory on the development and maintenance of political orders. It argues that theories of political order in general and the state in particular have been one-sided in their emphasis on coercive power and the monopoly of violence. This books shows that coercion and violence must be complemented by consent, co-operation and integration as preconditions of stability in order to create more comprehensive social science theories of political order. Concerning modernity, there was no single path to the secular and egalitarian societies that developed in the West during the twentieth century. We could have ended up with societies that were administratively and technically modern but not egalitarian and democratic. Thereby the book problematizes the idea that premodern and modern forms of political orders are the timeless concepts claimed by modernization theory.

The Ottoman Empire is the most long-lived Islamic polity in world history. It is of particular interest to understanding if kinship is incompatible with or in fact central to stable political order. A long tradition in Western political and social thought argues that the Ottoman Empire terminated hereditary elite groups and established an impersonal despotic state in which all subjects, from the most exulted vizir to the most humble Anatolian peasant, were slaves of the sultan. This is also the image given by Ottoman political theory. Since the Renaissance Western social and political thought has tended to cast the Ottoman Empire as the radical ‘other’ of European realms. The efficiency and seemingly absolute rule of the sultans were originally the envy of European observers. To them, the Ottoman Empire differed from Europe where hereditary lords were essential and without whose support kings were powerless (Machiavelli, 1993:30–1; Çirakman, 2002:62ff; Bisaha, 2004). Later, the image of the Ottomans shifted. In the nineteenth century the weakened Empire was often portrayed as the ‘sick man of Europe’.

Christianity, like “religion” in general, evokes passionate responses, positive and negative. Yet many of these reactions, on the part of scholars and broader publics alike, indicate that at least two problems continue to pervade thinking about religion, including Christianity. First, observers too often think of given religions as single entities defined by rigid dogma, an oversimplification that ignores the fluidity, contestation, and multiple manifestations within all religious traditions. Religions simultaneously encompass sets of practices, ethical guidelines, doctrines and sacred texts or text analogs, imagined ideas, and historical legacies. Second, oversimplifying religion lends itself to emphasizing and caricaturizing extremist interpretations of religious traditions, especially by those who use religious teachings to justify violence, terror, and coerced conformity on the part of others. It also risks representing such interpretations as an easily definable core of complex religious traditions themselves.1