Boundary displacement: Area studies and international studies during and after the cold war

Abstract

In this article I propose to examine the displacement and reordering of the boundaries of scholarly inquiry in the postwar period in two phases: the first, the determining burst of academic work that began during World War II but vastly expanded in the early years of the Soviet-U.S. confrontation, which is the necessary prelude to understanding the second phase, namely the contemporary revaluation of American studies of the rest of the world occasioned by the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Western communism. My position is that the ultimate force shaping scholarly studies of what used to be called “the non-Western world” is economic and political power, but the most interesting effects of such power are often the least observed, taking place” at those local points or “ultimate destinations” (in Foucault's phrase) where power “becomes capillary,” like universities and academic departments, and the organizations that mediate between academe and the foundations—for example, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). In this process of power-becoming-capillary but in newly rearranged rivulets, we can discern both the original strengths and weaknesses of the “area” boundaries, the disordering occasioned by watershed changes in power politics and the world economy, and emergent new relationships between power and knowledge.

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Notes on contributors

Bruce Cumings

I presented some of the ideas in this paper at the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) in 1993, on a panel held in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS) and its Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (BCAS). I presented a much-revised version at the 1996 AAS meetings, and future versions with different emphases will appear in books to be edited by Christopher Simpson (for the New Press) and by H.D. Harootunian and Masao Miyoshi (for Duke University Press). For their helpful comments I would like to thank Arif Dirlik, Bill and Nancy Doub, Harry Harootunian,Richard Okada, Moss Roberts, Mark Selden, Chris Simpson, Marilyn Young, Masao Miyoshi, and Stefan Tanaka. Obviously I am responsible for the views presented herein.