Framing Asian Studies: Geopolitics and Institutions
Author(s): Albert Tzeng, William L. Richter & Ekaterina Koldunova (ed.)
ISBN: 9789814786300
Publisher: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute
Year: 2018
Reviewed by Eyal Ben-Ari, Professor, Kinneret Academic College (Israel) and FEBA Associates.
For the past two or three decades, the production of knowledge in the scholarly fields called “area” or “regional” studies has been the object of rather forceful scrutiny. The end of the Cold War and the intensification of connections between geographically separated places led scholars in the English-using academic world to explore the nature of area studies and the boundaries between them and the disciplines. Indeed, approaches beginning with the debate about Orientalism in Middle East Studies and the subaltern intervention in South Asian Studies (SAS) critiqued western-centric preconceptions at base of “universal” theories applied to particular areas. Many of us, who focused on specific countries or regions, found that the objects of our study were no longer coherent entities linked with specific geographic areas. Because India, China or Vietnam (or for that matter Germany or Canada) were everywhere in the world, questions about the value of Asian (or indeed, European or African) studies emerged. Intense self-critique was joined during the decade following the end of the Cold War in the United States by diminishing funds for area studies that were no longer seen as relevant by governments and business enterprises and subsequently by heads of academic institutions. At the same time, in spite of lamentations about the imminent ruin of many such fields as Latin American or Southeast Asian Studies, many such area studies continued and even thrived. Moreover, since 9/11 with the emergence of “new” kinds of threats in the Middle East, Africa or East and Southeast Asia, funding for area studies was again found.
It is against this background the volume “Framing Asian Studies” should be seen. As the editors explain, the essays in this collection examine and critically reflect on the “social framing” of “Asian Studies” – what can be characterized as a rough and changing conglomeration of fields and disciplines. Specifically, they seek to chart out and explain the way in which geopolitics and institutions shape particular patterns or forms of knowledge. The volume both continues scholarly discussions dealing with the production of knowledge about “Asia” and offers new perspectives hitherto not covered by the English-using academic world centered mostly on US-based scholarship. It continues previous scholarship in that it deconstructs the idea of Asia by combining analyses of global developments and institutional conditions that reveal the way relations of power undergird scholarly fields. It goes beyond and complements such scholarship in two respects. On the one hand, it does so by extending previous focuses to countries and forms of knowledge that have hitherto received relatively little attention (see the essay on Lithuania and Russia). On the other hand, it offers what I see as an especially fruitful approach to exploring such commonplace practices as representations on book covers, school programs or curriculums by which area studies are normalized, that, is emerge as “natural, unquestioned, entities. The introduction and the essays a written very clearly and fluently and thus are a pleasure to read. The volume also contains a very useful index.
Let me begin with a description of the chapters to give readers an appreciation of the breadth of issues and countries covered and to underscore some insightful ideas they contain. The volume is divided into four parts apart from the introduction. The first takes up themes that have received previous scholarly attention: arguments contesting and debating the very term “Asia” and subsequently Asian Studies. Its three chapters do a good job of summing-up and developing much of the discussion that has taken place over the past decades. Maitrayee Choudry’s contribution (Chapter 2) looks at the European roots of Oriental Studies through the lens of Said’s account of Orientalism. Importantly, she adds that various Orientalists undertook important work in translating and introducing many languages found in Asia into European languages. She continues with an account of the Oriental Society of Bengal as an institution and how for long periods it excluded natives – the very objects of the Society. She ends with some thoughts about Asian Studies after 9/11. Using the concept of metageography (revealing assumptions about geographic areas and political entities) Kirrilee Hughes (Chapter 3) follows with an analysis of the Asia literacy program established in Australia. As she explains, the program centered on the “identity” of Australia and Asia as separate or joined. She ends with a suggestion about the potential of hybridity as a set of practices to help us move forward. The exploration of William Richter in Chapter 4 looks at how South Asia is constructed through everyday, mundane constructs such as maps found on the covers of books or logos of professional associations. Moreover, because he takes an historical view, he shows how such representations have changed over time. A central point of his analysis is the process of “naturaliztation’ of spatial and political entities both in the scholarly world and outside it. In other words, Richter suggests that we look “at” rather than “through” such commonplace items.
The volume’s second part examines the framing of Asia in Western discourses through the cases of Java, Cambodia and Taiwan and how they have been constructed in Europe and the United States. Riwanto Tirtosudarmo’s Chapter 6 looks as how scholars have approached Javanese Islam during the Cold War and its aftermath. He carries out his analysis by focusing on the writings of three key researchers to show how the analyses they produced reflected their geopolitical contexts. While he does not develop this idea, his essay can also be read in terms of how scholarly writings shape wider perceptions of areas through their popularization, participation in governmental bodies, or consulting work. It is this idea that is developed in Gea Wijer’s Chapter 7, a chapter that I found to be one of the most insightful of the essays. Her contribution takes us to the media coverage of the Cambodian situation following the Khmer Rouge’s takeover and subsequent Vietnamese rule, to illustrate how accepted discourses in the media and scholarly world shape ideas about “genocide” or affect how refugees are resettled. Importantly she adds a comparative perspective between the United States and France and the different ways that these issues were, and are, constructed. Indeed, the very power of the label “genocide” (or indeed, “victim”, “survivor”, or “suffering”) as a political resource, attests to the kinds of mobilizing labels we use and how scholarly ideas may take on a life of their own after being published. In another insightful contribution, Hardina Ohlendorf’s contribution (Chapter 7) is devoted to the relatively new scholarly area of Taiwan Studies. This thought-provoking essay raises questions about the accepted models of area studies and the potential for their creation and recreation. She skillfully shows is how this new scholarly area emerged bottom-up in line with the emergence of a new, separate Taiwanese identity and forms of local knowledge. Finally, she raises an issue touching upon the effects of receiving official funding from the country scholars are studying. This issue is especially pertinent as Taiwan, like many countries around the world, has been very active in inviting foreign scholars to spend time in country pursuing their studies.
The third part may be especially interesting for members of the English-using academic world. It turns to Russia and Lithuania, formerly parts of the Soviet Union although the former was the dominant power at the time. The essays comprising this part demonstrate the very different trajectory of Asian Studies found in them. In this regard, this part of the volume is especially significant as a corrective to the over-emphasis of scholars (myself included) on Western European and US based approaches. Chapter 8 by Ekaterina Koldunova examines Southeast Asian Studies in Russia from the pre-Soviet to the post-Soviet periods and how changing geopolitical circumstances affected the scholarly fields comprising these studies. She persuasively argues that institutions and networks in and of themselves have staying power that adapt to shifting global and domestic conditions. In this respect, her essay illuminates a wider point made by this volume that cautions us from an over-reductive emphasis on external forces shaping the world of academic studies. Valdas Jaskunas looks at Indian studies in Lithuania during the country’s periods of statelessness and subjugation to Soviet domination. He offers an interesting suggestion that in contrast to other dominant scholarly centers such as the UK, France of the Netherlands, India Studies developed not an outward but an “inward” orientalism through scholars finding an initial affinity with India. Shifting to institutions, he explains that since Lithuanian scholars were not free to pursue Indian Studies as part of the Soviet Union, to continue their endeavors they found other frameworks such as inter-country friendships associations.
The fourth, and final, part is devoted to the generation of knowledge within Asia and represents another important aspect of this collection: as a corrective to the conventional academic view of Asian Studies found in much of US-based scholarship. Brij Mohan Tankha (Chapter 10) offers a view of Indian perspectives on Japan and China in order to uncover how Indian intellectuals sought to shape an Asian identity at the end of the 19th and beginning if the 20th centuries. Ideas about a shared Asian-ness, however, changed with the Imperial expansion of Japan and WWII. After the war and the country’s new independence, interest faded to more practical matters. We could well conjecture that interest is already rising given the country’s wariness of China’s emergence as a security superpower. Huei-Ying Kuo’s chapter (11) is a comparative study of British and Japanese classification systems of the South Seas Chinese. Through the use of diverse sources, she shows how these categorizations were shaped differently due to a combination of domestic and global conditions. One important insight she offers is that in contrast to the British homogenization of a unitary Chinese, the Japanese were much more aware of the different speech groups that comprise this culture. The final Chapter 12 by Clair Seungeun Lee compares Chinese studies in Japan and (South) Korea and finds not only national differences but also within-country divergences. Among the factors she cites to explain these differences are the political status of Taiwan, the normalization between Korea and Japan and with China, and the historical role of Sinology in the two countries. As the other chapters of this section, so Lee’s contribution underscores the long historical significance of Asian Studies within Asia.
As I see it, the volume has four significant contributions to make to ongoing scholarship about the production (and reproduction) of Asian Studies. First, it continues and develops previous arguments about the hidden assumptions at base of much of what we take to be Asian Studies. Second, and more significant, many essays are devoted to the mechanisms – to the “how” – through which these studies are shaped. In other words, a focus on specific practices, institutional processes, and wider forms of public representation allows us to appreciate the way these studies are constantly stabilized and destabilized. Third, most of the essays squarely move us beyond the mainly US-based approaches to intra-Asian debates on the one hand and to the dynamics of other European countries on the other. It is especially the latter kind of cases that have hitherto received relatively little attention in the scholarly world. Fourth, I found that the volume as a whole and the essays comprising it raises further questions such as the relations between area studies and the disciplines (anthropology and demography are aligned differently to local data), the differences between area studies (Latin American, African or American studies, for instance) and ultimately the potential for theory to be produced outside the dominant US-based core.
To the editors’ great credit, this is a well written and integrated volume that I found though provoking. For readers interested specifically in East Asian Integration, this volume offers a focus on the potential for academic discussion and dialogue across national boundaries.