Author Archives: gililiah

Special CCR Issue Dedicated to Liah Greenfeld

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Comparative Civilizations Review, No. 95, 2026

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/ccr/vol95/iss95/24

Table of Contents

Guest Editor’s Introduction ¾ Liah Greenfeld and the Future of Comparative Civilizational Studies

Monika………………………………………………………………….. 1

Liah Greenfeld: A Reflection from the President of the Comparative Civilizations Forum

Bibi Pelić……………………………………………………………….. 7

From the Editor-in-Chief ¾ Liah Greenfeld: Scholar, Thinker, Friend

Joseph Drew…………………………………………………………… 9

Applying Liah Greenfeld’s Comparative Civilizations Framework

Introduction to Liah Greenfeld’s Scholarship on Nationalism, Civilizations, and Humanity

Zeying Wu……………………………………………………………. 12

Towards the Systematic Cross-Civilizational Comparison: How Civilizations Work Case 3: The Chinese Case

Tiantian Wu………………………………………………………….. 24

A Historical Inquiry into the CPC’s Century-Long Evaluation of Confucianism and Its Return to the “Great Unity” Cultural Tradition

Ye Liu………………………………………………………………….. 51

The First Principles of Chinese Civilization: Relationalism and Pragmatism

Sai Zhang and Yongnian Zheng………………………………. 80

Temporal Legitimacy and Civilizational Logic: A Sociological Perspective on the Foundational Principles of Chinese Civilization

Yuk Man Cheung…………………………………………………. 111

Cognitive Foundations of the Absence of Antisemitism in Japan: Towards A Civilizational Perspective

Chikako Takeishi…………………………………………………. 130

Children’s Literature as a Site of Cross-Civilizational Analysis: Hong Kong in Crisis after 2019

Faye Dorcas Yung Schwendeman………………………….. 150

The “Original Spirit” of Chinese Civilization: Wang Huning and the Indigenization of Reform in Post-Mao China

Chandler Rosenberger………………………………………….. 166

The Concept of a ‘State-Civilization’ in Russia: The Contest for National Dignity in the Form of a Civilizational Analysis

Ivan Nokhrin……………………………………………………….. 176

Shifting Faith Among Indigenous People in Arunachal Pradesh, India: Revisiting Greenfeld’s Civilizational Framework

M. Amin Khan……………………………………………………………………………… 185

The Family as a Mechanism of Civilizational Continuity: Absorption, Localization, and Rejection of Modern Values in the Indic Case

Monika……………………………………………………………………………… 200

Reflections on Liah Greenfeld’s Scholarship

Liah Greenfeld and Civilizational Dialogue: For Continuing a Legacy

Manindra Nath Thakur……………………………………………………………………………… 214

Reflection on Liah Greenfeld’s Influence on My Work: National Consciousness and the Sociological Imagination

Oliver Benoit……………………………………………………………………………… 219

Unconventionality in Liah Greenfeld’s Thought

Francesco Duina……………………………………………………………………………………………. 223

Following Through Dialogues: A Chinese Scholar’s Reminiscence of Professor Liah Greenfeld

Xinqi Jia……………………………………………………………………………… 229

Liah Greenfeld on Antisemitism as a Defining Characteristic of the Monotheistic Civilization

Efraim Karsh……………………………………………………………………………… 235

Was Love Invented in Sixteenth-Century England? A Few Comments on Liah Greenfeld’s Theory of Emotions

Dmitri Panchenko……………………………………………………………………………… 243

Greenfeld’s Unpublished Lecture Notes

Professor Greenfeld’s Last Class: Notes for online lectures on “The Science of Humanity,” delivered to students and scholars primarily from India, July 2025

Liah Greenfeld……………………………………………………………………………… 249

President of Indonesia Quoting Liah Greenfeld

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Jakarta (ANTARA) – President Prabowo Subianto emphasized that lasting economic growth depends on strong support mechanisms and mutual commitment from all elements of the country to nationalism.

“The nature of modern economy is that it does not progress or develop on its own. Growth is stimulated and sustained by nationalism,” Subianto said, while quoting the economic theory of sociologist Professor Liah Greenfeld, in Bandar Lampung, Lampung, on Wednesday.

President Subianto made the statement at the 18th National Conference of the Indonesian Young Entrepreneurs Association (HIPMI).

According to him, such principle has been adopted by countries with major economic powers. He cited the historical examples of the economic revival of Japan, the United States, Western Europe, and China, attributing their success to a strong foundation of nationalism.

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Obituary: When Ideas Still Mattered

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By Tim Orr

Liah Greenfeld’s death genuinely saddened me. While I did not know her well, we spoke every year at the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa conference in Washington, DC. We often ended up sitting together at breakfast before the conference sessions started, talking about politics, religion, nationalism, Islam, and whatever else happened to come up. What always struck me about her was how approachable and intellectually curious she was. Here was a world-renowned scholar and distinguished professor at Boston University, yet she never carried herself with the kind of arrogance that sometimes exists in academic circles.

I always thought that was a breath of fresh air because it’s so easy for the academic world to get wrapped up in showing off who’s more accomplished, instead of being about learning, listening, and figuring out what’s true. It wasn’t like that with Greenfeld. She had a way of being genuinely interested when she talked to people, even with someone like me who was far less accomplished academically. That really stuck with me. There was a humility about her that made conversations with her feel relaxed and natural. And maybe, looking back, it also was something that made her scholarly work so innovative and influential. People who remain open continue to see things that others do not.

Her influence on the study of nationalism was enormous. Her book Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, helped reshape how many scholars understood nationalism and modern identity. Greenfeld argued that nationalism was not simply extremism or tribal politics, but one of the major forces shaping the modern world itself. She connected it to democracy, economics, culture, identity, and even psychology. Later works like Mind, Modernity, Madness: The Impact of Culture on Human Experience explored how culture and systems of meaning shape human experience and mental life. What made her work stand out was that she was willing to ask large civilizational questions at a time when much of academia was becoming increasingly narrow and specialized.

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Obituary: A Jewish Intellectual in Dissidence

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By Agusti Colomines

Liah Greenfeld died in Boston on 13 May 2026. She had been born on 22 August 1954 in Vladivostok, the Russian city open to the Sea of Japan, and from an early age she dreamed of becoming a poet. In truth, she never ceased to be one: when a serious illness struck her in the early 2000s, she returned to writing verse with the same intensity with which she had analyzed nationalism, modernity, and madness. The loss is immense — for sociology, for nationalism studies, and for all those who knew and loved her. What bound me to her was a shared passion for the history of nationalism and for poetry.

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Liah Greenfeld at the CCCB, Barcelona, 2016 © Pere Fernández