The Changing Landscape of Asian Studies

抄録

Asian studies in changing. Until now, as a global scholarship, Asian studies has been shaped by the European Oriental studies and the American “area studies”. Each of them has its notion of ‘Asia’ and its emphasis on certain fields, subjects, and disciplines of studies that responded to the demands of the colonial and the Cold War environments respectively. Currently, however, those environments have gone, although the legacies of both styles of Asian studies will remain for some time to come. Meanwhile, Asia is on the rise in many respects, including in the global higher education. Scholarship from Asia is likely to become more prominent in Asian studies too.
Two particular changes are notable in Asian studies in recent years. First, the demography and the location of the production of knowledge in Asian studies has changed. The number of scholars from Asia or with Asian heritage is rapidly increasing even in the Euro-American academia. They do not approach Asia as the Other. Programs, networks and associations for studying Asia among scholars within Asia are emerging, stronger, active, and recognizable, adding to the previous ones mostly in the Euro-American academia. Secondly, the spatial notions of ‘Asia’ and its regional division based on the American view of geo-politics during the Cold War, has been challenged. The new space of Asia as put forward in the field has become more diverse: from new definitions of regionalism, transnational or trans-border and trans-Asian subjects, sea and ocean-centered studies that emphasizes networks and connections, to the upland areas as opposed to the lowland centers as conventionally studied. The configurations of scholars and scholarship are changing.
Although the style of the emerging Asian studies is still unclear, the prospect of Asian studies is up to scholars in Asia. In order to engage in shaping the emerging Asian studies, two tasks are urgently needed. First, given the multiple sites of knowledge production, we should understand the different “environments” of the academia in Asian countries: their historical backgrounds and developments, their strength and weaknesses or limitation, and so on. Second, language and academic translation are critical to the emerging Asian studies. Apart from the likely prevalence of English that could remain a problem for many academies, mediations across Asian languages and academies themselves are urgently needed as language differences are barrier to intellectual engagement.