Abstract
This article is concerned with changing approaches to understanding and conceptualizing some of the central themes confronting the study of East Asia and the Chinese diaspora. Making extensive references to the relevant works in Chinese, Japanese, and English and subjecting their findings to both spatial linkage and horizontal contextualization, the authors argue that the study of East Asia and the Chinese overseas should be taken beyond a rigid nation-state framework and that greater attention be directed to the important role of network and its interactions with the state and market in the transnational arena. After identifying a “revisionist turn” in the recent literature dealing with Asian Chinese business/social networks and discussing its shortfalls, the authors contend that four key issues should be critically tackled in an effort to construct a post-revisionist synthesis: the historicity, spatiality, institutionalization, and limitations of networks. The complex patterns of interplay between region, network, and ethnicity constitute a significant dynamic in the evolution of East Asia and Overseas Chinese societies in the 20th century and beyond.
