The production of Asian theories of communication: contexts and challenges

Abstract

The past two or three decades have witnessed an intense interest in rediscovering Asian theories of communication and exploring their applicability to modern communication studies. I myself have been deeply involved in this project for the past thirty years. While this should be welcomed as a much-needed project, it is imperative that we realize that this effort is as important as it is complex and many-sided; there are several perilous pitfalls in the way such as those presented by romanticism, essentialism and ahistoricism. In this article, I discuss some of these issues, and the ways in which we can profitably engage Western formulations of communication, in relation to what I term Type A and Type B theories.

Keywords:

• Eurocentrism
• Orientalism
• postcolonial theory
• Buddhism
• reductionism
• agency

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Georgette Wang for encouraging me to work on this paper, and Yoshitaka Miike for helping me think through some of the issues discussed.