Area Studies and the crisis of legitimacy: a view from South East Asia

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we set out Area Studies’ ‘crisis of legitimacy’, focusing on South East Asia. We distil this crisis down to three broad areas: ‘weak rules’ (the absence of an intellectual core), ‘hard borders’ (in the context of globalization) and ‘ancestral sin’ (Area Studies’ origins in the global North). We then use these as a springboard to explore three ways in which scholars have sought to address the crisis: the Inter-Asia initiative, process studies and comparativism, and the inter-Asia cultural studies movement. We conclude by arguing that Area Studies needs to adopt four doctrinal positions if it is to move forward. To treat regions as open and porous; to accept that regions are constantly in flux and not foundational; to be open and responsive to trans-regional comparative engagements; and to embrace deep inter-disciplinarity.

KEYWORDS:

• Area Studies
• Legitimacy
• Inter-Asia movement
• Territorial trap
• Globalisation
• Colonialism

ORCID

Jonathan Rigg http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6563-4640

Brenda Yeoh http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0240-3175

Notes

1 Liverman (2004, 737) also notes the tendency for departments to prefer thematic or methodological over regional expertise. She argues for the need for Area Studies in terms of its theoretical contribution, language training, and opportunities for international collaborations.

2 This extract from Tony Reid’s history of South East Asia is in a sub-section entitled ‘Not China, not India’.

3 This has opened up one justification for Area Studies, namely its interdisciplinarity. This apparent strength, and why it has not proved the fillip that was hoped, is explored later in the paper.

4 Chaudhuri uses this extract to address the question he poses for himself: ‘Is the “Indian Ocean” as a geographical space the same as “Asia”’ (Chaudhuri 1985, 4).

5 See Smith (2010) on this with regard to Area Studies.

6 ‘I propose that the study of Asia, thought of as an Inter-Asian space, and smaller than the whole globe, can provide tractable concepts for a new round of research to shed light on the social shapes of societies that are mobile, spatially expansive, and interactive with one other. In this sense, the notion that Area Studies receive theories and concepts but cannot generate them need not be true' (Ho 2017, 1).

7 For instance, the inter-Asian approach has been given considerable impetus by the New York Social Science Research Council’s (SSRC) InterAsia programme and initiative. This was launched in 2008, bringing together six partner universities and so far has mounted six international conferences from Istanbul to Seoul, most recently in Hanoi in December 2018.

8 For some of the key interventions, see Smith 1984; Taylor 1987; Brenner 1997; Marston 2000; Marston, Jones, and Woodward 2005; Moore 2008; MacKinnon 2011.

9 SAIS has ‘research and teaching programmes dedicated to the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, South Asia, China, Israel, Japan, Russia and Eastern Europe' (but not to South East Asia). It is a mix of countries (China, Israel), regions (Eastern Europe) and continents (Africa).

10 The report further resonates, albeit in very different language, with Tisdall’s paper of 1917, more than a century earlier (see below).

11 This was also a driving aim of the Inter-Asia cultural studies agenda, see below.

12 ‘While one would resist the temptation to equate Southeast Asian studies with ‘orientalism,’ it is difficult to entirely ignore or dissociate the two phenomena' (Heryanto 2002, 7).

13 A similar effort is seen in the work of urban theorists such as Robinson (2011) and Roy and Ong (2011) and their desire to theorize from the experience of cities in the global South.

14 For an alternative viewpoint, see Clarke (2016) who takes a position that cultural studies could be of service to the foreign policy goals of a country by offering the products of the cultural life of that country.

15 China’s ambitions may be better achieved if Yankelovich’s (2005) stand for Area Studies finds its way into China’s higher education policy. Incorporating Yankelovich’s (2005) suggestion will mean, however, China adopting an inward-oriented model of learning. According to Wu (2019, 81 and 84), China has shifted to an outward-oriented model aimed at ‘introducing domestic knowledge, culture, higher education models and norms to the world'. This is clear from China’s three exports. The Confucius Institutes disseminate cultural knowledge of China. International developmental aid in higher education operates to extend China’s education models, philosophies, and knowledge to recipient nations, notably in Africa. And the policy of higher education international student recruitment has the expressed aim that these students be ambassadors and bridges ‘connecting China to the rest of the world' (Wu 2019, 90).

16 But we think that any comprehensive endeavour needs to pay attention to all three.

17 This is developed from Anderson’s observation that ‘all disciplines, simply to be disciplines, have to think of themselves as having boundaries and certain kinds of internal rules, even if these change over time’ (2016: 157).

18 Chou (2017, 246) quotes Schwartz (1980, 16) who argues that while boundaries may weaken, the ‘areas’ that comprise ‘Area Studies’ are ‘always based on some concrete principles of coherence, which give due weight to the specificities of local conditions'.