EDITOR’S note:

Our world is confronting an array of environmental crises. While many are quick to blame these problems on bad governance, insightful thinkers believe there is more to the story. Professor Prasenjit Duara, a noted sinologist who teaches at National University of Singapore, believes that the world’s environmental concerns could be better addressed by transcending our modern notions of nation-statehood and sovereignty. This argument is central to his new book entitled “The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future.”

Duara recently sat down with Shanghai Daily reporter Ni Tao to talk about the book on the campus of New York University Shanghai.

Q: Tell us about your new book, especially about the “crisis of global modernity” mentioned in the title. What is this crisis?

A: The crisis of global modernity is the crisis of planetary sustainability — environmental sustainability — and the fact that we live in a world where biodiversity and natural resources are increasingly being threatened.

It’s often called the “period of anthropocene,” which refers to the fact that humans are having the biggest impact on the planet, bigger than any other natural creature.

So that is the crisis and I’m advocating a way in which we can try to have a more sustainable world with completely different principles from what we call “national modernization.”

There has to be sustainable modernity, which means we have to overcome ideas of national sovereignty as absolute.

Q: You appear to be arguing that climate change, more than anything else, has exposed the malaise plaguing the global economy and world politics. What led you to this conclusion?

A: If you go back historically, you’ll see that with the Enlightenment came the idea of modernity.

The basic principle is the conquest of nature, that humans can control nature, but the problem is that we have overreached ourselves.

We have conquered nature to the point that it is now beginning to diminish. If we do calculations about the environmental cost of every unit of GDP growth, you will begin to see that the cost may be greater than the growth.

If sustainable modernity is the new goal, then it will automatically reorder some of those other crises. It will reorder the question of poverty.

For instance, some say that you must keep increasing GDP growth, otherwise the poor cannot be made less poor.

But in fact, there are many ways of making the poor less poor by redistributing (wealth) — not only in a place like China, which is very rich, but even in a place like India.

You can create a very sustainable life without having to roll out gigantic projects all the time that have terrible environmental consequences. You can do much smaller-scale things.

But the point is how to get the world to accept that kind of mental change. My book is about the need to integrate sustainability into the “new transcendence.”

Q: Speaking of transcendence, in your book you asserted that the physical salvation of the world must transcend national sovereignty if it is to succeed. But isn’t it the case that sovereignty is already being eroded for the greater good?

A: Let’s just take an example. There are a lot of water resources that go between countries.

If you are going to build dams on one side or the other, you are going to affect somebody else. That’s part of the global crisis of planetary sustainability.

So it is very important for both sides to carry out evaluations of how damming activities on shared waters will impact a neutral party.

Some governments may deny that, saying it is a sovereign right. That’s the kind of sovereignty issue we need a lot of cooperation on.

I also agree with you though — in many ways, sovereignty is already being affected by many agreements that countries enter into.

My case for advocating shared sovereignty is that histories themselves are shared histories.

Histories are often interdependent. Things happen in one country because things happen in another place.

That’s why I call it “circulatory history.” How to conceptualize that whole idea of history — and therefore of sovereignty — is the key to understanding why it is a planetary problem that we are facing today.

Q: Nation-states and nationalism are central concerns in your scholarly pursuits. Is the new book a continuation of those concerns?

A: It certainly continues some of these (older arguments). But my argument about nations is more complex than that. I certainly agree that nations became necessary once the nation-state system was established in the world.

Although nations do a lot of valuable things, nonetheless they are based on the idea that the nation is the “self,” and all the others are the “other,” or potential enemies.

Of course this is not always the case, but do we have an alternative principle of organizing the world?

What I’m trying to say is that the sovereignty issue reinforces the view of “we” against “the rest of the world.”

That is what is now getting in the way of addressing the problems of planetary crises.

Q: You suggest that a viable foundation for sustainability might be found in the traditions of Asia. Why?

A: I started the book with a reference to Max Weber.

When he tried to understand what brought about modernity in Europe, he said it was Protestant ethics that not only led to capitalism, but also led to a whole modern, rational way of life.

Weber also spent a lot of time writing a book on the religions of China and India. And he said these were rich traditions but they don’t have what it takes to make a rational modern society.

So my point is that Max Weber may have been right, but now we have seen modernity overreach itself.

The idea is very much to conquer nature. And there is no larger reality, no transcendence.

Now the issue is that if modernity is overreached, clearly there is some force that can constrain wanton human behavior.

What about the kind of values that are available in the systems that Max Weber explored, namely, Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism and other ancient Oriental traditions and schools of thought?

What is it that he found there and what is it that he found lacking?

It seems to me that one big difference they have with Western philosophies is the relationship between nature and the self, as well as nature and human beings.

It’s not a radical dualism where there is a clear subject and object.

We may have to come back to some of those traditions for inspiration — but obviously not in the old ways, because these traditions have also changed.

The important thing is that the cosmology has to be there as a necessary condition.

Then you can create an organization and agenda. If you don’t have them as basic principles, there is no possibility of achieving transcendence.