Between India and China: An Ancient Dialectic for Contemporary World Politics

China and India are emerging in terms of their economics, demographics and military forces. This has caused speculations to abound around how these two giants of Asia can get along, affecting not just the region but the world at large. The book develops a "Silk Road Ethos" perspective, which examines the notion of 'difference without alienation' in order to create a third space of "China-India" wherein learning, circulation and co-constitution produces rich, complex, and cosmopolitan legacies. The book uses these new concepts to examine how the exchange of trade, commerce and cultural products, and to explore how the role of military and security practices, can be interrogated to better understand the relationships between India and China. It shows where, how, and why the complementaries between these nations can defuse, if not transform, the conflicts, contradictions, and challenges that currently beset each.

Payal Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Smith College, Northampton, US. She has published in Critical Sociology, Race, Gender, and Class, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Irish Journal of Anthropology, Women’s Studies Quarterly, China Report. She has also published in Chinese, Huaqiao Huaren Lishi Yanjiu (Overseas Chinese History Studies) and in German, Sicherheit und Frieden (Security and Peace). From June-August 2012, Dr. Banerjee was a research fellow at the BRICS Policy Center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. L.H.M. Ling is an Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs, New School for Public Engagement (NSPE) and an Associate Professor, Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy, at The New School in New York City. She is the author of four books: Postcolonial International Relations (2002), Transforming World Politics (2009). She co-authored (with Anna M. Agathangelou) The Dao of World Politics (2014) and Imagining World Politics (2014). Dr. Ling is also editor or co-editor of the following anthologies: India and China: Rethinking Borders and Security (forthcoming), International Relations Theory: Views Beyond the West (co-edited with Nizar Messari and Arlene B. Tickner, forthcoming), Four Seas to One Family: Overseas Chinese and the Chinese Dream (co-edited with Tan Chung, forthcoming) and Decolonizing ＂Asia＂? Unlearning Colonial/Imperial Power Relations (co-edited with Pinar Bilgin, forthcoming).