Group 6 Culture : Outline

The Eurasian regional powers—Russia, China and India—have social and spiritual cultures that cannot be explained solely by Western nation-state theory and democratic measures.

Through the cooperation of Eurasian cultural researchers, this study will examine how these countries’ past identities, which were rooted in the idea of the spheres of civilization they led, impact on their current state in the cultural environments of the modern world, and what the major characteristics are of the Eurasian world as a cultural sphere.

Specifically, this study will take the following three approaches:

1. Ideologies for cultural unification: A comparative analysis of the cultural unification theories such as Eurasianism, Chinese world order philosophy and Hindu nationalism, their histories, religious and cultural backgrounds, main characteristics and functions.
2. Languages and communication: An analysis of the communicative situation in Eurasia as seen through issues such as the language map of each cultural sphere, the formation of cultural identity in multilinguistic societies, methods and functions of translation and so forth.
3. Cultural identity in literature and art: An analysis of cultural identity as seen in issues such as the relationship between pre-modern, modern and post-modern literatures; significance of the classics for contemporary culture; cultural representation of “us” and “others.”