anti area studies

8/8/2019 Anti Area Studies

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Communal/Plural, Vol. 8, No. 1, 2000

Anti-Area Studies

TESSA MORRI S-SU Z U K I

The rec ent resurgence of various forms of popular nationalism and ethnocentrism in

Australia and elsewhere raises questions about the impact which area studies have had in

promoting international understanding. In the contemporary context of globalisation, it

could be argued that the spatial framework of area studies is at times an obstacle rather than

a help to understanding the world we live in. By reviewing the emergence of area studiesand exploring the spatial concepts embodied in the area studies approach, this article seeks

to assess some of the strengths and we aknesses of this approac h, and to sketch out the

possibility of an alternative `anti-area studies agenda for future research.

Keywords: area studies; civilisation; culture; Australia; Japan

Writing 50 years ago, as area studies came into its own in the USA, anthropologist

Ju lia n S t ew ar d p ro clai m e d t h at t h er e w as ` ge ne ra l ag re em e nt a bo ut f ou r k ey

objectives of this new eld of research. The four objectives, wrote Steward, were to

`provide knowledge of practical value about im portant w orld areas; to `give students

and scholars an awareness of cultural relativity; to `provide an understanding of

social and cultural wholes as they exist in areas; and to `further the development of

a universal social science (Steward 1950: 2). Elaborating on his theme, Steward

pointed out that `any one who becomes familiar with a new and different culture

experiences what has been called a cultural shockan awareness that everything

in the new culture is somehow unfamiliar but is also part of a self-consistent and

i nt e llig i ble w ho le . B y u nd ers t an din g t h at e ac h u nf am i lia r c ult u re h ad s uc h a

`self-consistent and distinctive pattern, the student would come to appreciate that

`none is absolute or inherently superior to the others. This understanding, Steward

continued, `gives the layman greater tolerance of the peoples of the other areas, and

i t gives the scholar an objecti vi ty which wil l help him avoi d the m ethodol ogical

fallacy of ethnocentrism (Steward 1950: 4).

Re-reading those words half a century on, several thoughts spring to mind. One

is that `cultural shock no longer seems to be the exclusive preserve of area scholarswho journey to distant regions. Rather, it has become a regular part of daily life. In

a world of global ows, unfamiliarity presses in from every side, but, far from being

part of a `self-consistent and intelligible whole, this unfamiliarity is overwhelming

experienced as unintelligible i n term s of conventional notions of region, area and

space. International frontiers b ecome at once more porous and more ferociously

guarded, while new internal frontiers, often patrolled by the invisible but all-seeing

1320-7873 print/1469-3607 online/00/010009-15 2000 Taylor & Francis L td


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10 T. Morris-Suzuki

eye of the surveillance camera, divide islands of glittering wealth from seas of urban

decay. Transport and communications technologies increasingly detach temporal

from spatial proximity, m aking the centres of the great w orld cities closer to one

another in terms of travel-time, consciousness and c ulture th an they are to their own

rural hinterlands. It has become commonplace to speak not of the end of history but

of the end of geography.

A related thought i s that the contem porary encounter with the unfam i li ar has

ambivalent implications for the promotion of `tolerance or the conquest of ethno-

c en tri sm . O n t he o ne h an d, o ld c ert ain ti e s ab o ut n at io na l, e th ni c o r c ult u ra l

belonging are constantly exposed to challenges. But on the other, a rather common

response to the unintelligibility of the world is precisely an attempt to re-establish

these certai nti es by reasserting the power of national boundari es and patri oti c

symbols. The inuence of globally resurgent nationalisms in the 1990s can be seen

not only i n the appearance of certai n new form s of ri ght-wi ng pol iti cs, but also(more alarmingly, perhaps) in the popularity of mass-consumption chauvinism. As

an Australian scholar working m ostl y on Japan, I am repeatedly i ntri gued but

alarm ed both by striking sim i l ariti es i n the rhetoric of Japanese and Australian

popular nationalism in Australia and Japan, and by the way in which nationalist fears

a nd s te re ot yp es i n d if fe re nt c ou nt rie s s ee m t o fe ed o ff e ac h o th er, c re at in g a

continuing spiral of incomprehension.

Popular Nationalism in Japan and Australia

Consider, for example, two of the best-sellers of 1998: the 384 page comic book On

W ar [Sensoron], by Japanese manga writer Kobayashi Yoshinori, and Australian

journalist Paul Sheehans Among the Barbarians. In some respects, these are two very

different books. O n W a r , which was the number two best-seller in Japan in 1998, is

a b izar re am a lg am of 1 99 0s p op c ult ur e an d u nr ec ons tru ct ed 1 93 0s u lt ra-

nationalism. Its hero, as in all of K obayashis many best-selling comics, is the author

himselfor rather, an eternally young version of the author (who is now m iddle-

aged and rather paunchy). Striding fearlessly through the pages of his own comic,

and swapping his m ufti en route for an array of fetching military uniform s, this Peter

Pan Kobayashi does battle with the politically correct `oldies [oyaji] of the Japanese

intellectual establishment, to whose lack of patriotism he attributes Japans current

economic and social decay (Kobayashi 1998: 713). The only cure for this decay, he

tells his readers, lies in a reassertion of Japans martial spirit. To achieve this, it is

necessary to reverse the postwar US-inspired `brainwashing which taught young

Japanese to be ashame d of their own h istory and to favour individualism over service

to the nation (Kobayashi 199 8: 4955). The Pacic W ar, as re-fought by K obayashi,was a war where self-sacricing Japanese com mon soldiers strove to liberate Asia

from the racist tyranny of European colonialism, leaving in their wake a landscape

adorned with new roads, railways, bridges and hospitals. Aw kward details like the

Nanking Massacre were simply products of the American and/or Chinese commu-

n is t p ro pa g an da m a ch in e. R at h er it w as t h e C h in es e ar m ie s t h em s e lv es w h o,

obviously mistaking Japans honourable intentions, went around inicting graphi-


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Anti-Area Studies 11

cally illustrated atrocities both on the Japanese liberators and on their own civilian

population (Kobayashi 1998: 130136).

By contrast to Kobayashi, who presents himself as the eternal naughty boy poking

fascist fun at his elders, Paul Sheehan presents himself as the sweetly reasonable

voice of A ustralian comm on sense besieged by the battalions of the m ulticultural

thought police. His rhetoric, in fact, follows an interesting pattern earlier adopted by

Geoffrey Blainey in All for Australia a nd b y t he a no nym o us au th o r/ s o f Pauline

Hanson: the Truth . Di scussions of a topic tend to begi n wi th an uni m peachabl y

b en ig n g en eral s ta te m en t o f t ole ra nc e an d g oo dw il l t o m an kin d. T h is is t he n

elaborated and modied by a fairly random collection of illustrations, quotations

and second-hand anecdotes which serve to radically undermine the message of the

opening statement.

For example, the chapter of Among the Barbarians dealing with im migration begins

with two pages outlining the success of Àsian students (that is, of anyone with av ag u ely C h in es e o r In dia n s ou nd in g n am e ) in H S C re su lt s . T h is in sp ir es t he

pronouncement that

Australia benetted from the economic surge in Asia over the past thirty

years, when East Asia accounted for the bulk of the growth of Australias

exports. The growing blends of Asian inuences in Australian culture and

cuisine, and the growing number of young interracial couples, are happy

by-products of this evolution. A pro-Asian immigration policy [`pro-Asian,

mind you, not just `non-discriminatory] is not merely the best policy forAustralia, it is the only viable immigration policy. It is important to the

countrys economic, cultural and moral future. (Sheehan 1998: 202203)

` But begi ns the next paragraph, and after that predictabl e ` but the reader is

treated to 17 pages of stories about Àsian school drop-outs, tax and welfare cheats,

drug dealers and rapists, many of these stories derived from a disgruntled ex-public

servants gossi p about his form er cli ents pri vate l ives. In the process we l earn

( courtesy of Sydney academ i c Ri chard Basham ) that ` the m oral authori ty of the

l arger soci ety i s often rejected by Asian im m i grants and that there is ` a sil ence,

an opaqueness, between the mainstream society and the Asian societies within it.

Thi s sil ence deri ves from the Asians ` ancient habi ts of i nward-looki ng group

consciousness (Sheehan 1998: 204).

Unlike Kobayashi Yoshinori, whose writings leave the reader in no doubt about

where he stands, Paul Sheehans logic is at rst sight puzzling. What can he mean

when he says that Australia should have a `pro-Asian immigration policy? What

message does Sheehan, as a media professional, really think he is conveying when he

appends a seri es of truism s about racial tolerance to an anthology of negati veanecdotes about Àsiansin which the tag Àsian is liberally applied to anything

f ro m t he C h in es e go ve rn m e nt s d es ec ra tio n o f t h e e nvi ro n m en t t o L e ban es e

migrants trying to balance the family budget with a little creative accounting.

Despite the obvious differences in style and content, indeed, Kobayashis comic

and Sheehans best-sell ers have som e features i n com m on. Both Kobayashi and

Sheehan seem impelled to write by a sense of a profound threat to the normality and


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12 T. Morris-Suzuki

stability of national life. In the case of Sheehans book, the threat is vividly depicted

by the front cover, with its arresting image of a burning gum leafa symbol at once

of environmental threat and imperilled national identity, but also of the tenacity of

the true Aussie spiri t ( for, as Sheehans opening pages rem i nd us, the gum tree

ourishes again after re). The starting point of Kobayashis crusade, meanwhile, is

a Japan which, although nominally at peace, is threatened with sinister forces from

within and withouteconomic instability, youth crime and prostitution, drug deal-

i ng ( im pl icitl y l inked to the ri si ng presence of foreign m i grants i n Japan). Al l of

these, according to Kobayashi, add up to the real antithesis of `peace, which is not

`war but `disorder. Though the authors them selves, as well-paid and high-prole

m edia gures, are both clearly part of a socially privileged stratum, the threat to

nationhood in both books is seen as com ing above all from a treacherous cosmopoli-

tan elite, which the authors somehow manage to present as entirely divorced from

themselves.I do not w ant to over-emphasise the importance of these expressions ofn-de-siecle

nationalism. Kobayashis and Sheehans books may have been best-sellers, but that

does not necessari l y m ean that those who bought thei r books also bought thei r

arguments. The popularity of the egregious Kobayashi has to be balanced against an

appreciati on of the changi ng rel ati onships between Japan and other East Asian

countries, and particularly of the (in some respects) encouraging recent opening-up

of rel ati ons between Japan and the Republi c of Korea. Si m il arl y, the success of

Among the Barbarians needs to b e assessed in the context of an Australian society

which has changed imm easurably since the days of the W hite Australia policy. At the

s am e t im e , t ho ug h, t he p ers is te nc e, a nd e ve n re su rg e nce , o f v ar io u s n eg at iv e

stereotypes of raci al and nati onal ` others i n the l ate 1990s has to be an i ssue of

concern to anyone involved in the exchange of ideas between Australia and various

parts of the Asian region.

Area Studies and Ethnocentrism

Having been involved in Asian studiesand more specically in Japanese studies

in Australia for about the past 18 years, I nd myself increasingly impelled to reect

on the effect that education about Àsia has had within Australian society. To what

extent has the enormous expansion of the study of Àsia fullled Julian Stewards

m i d-century vision of area studies as a cure for ethnocentrism ? Has the effort to

understand ùnfamiliar cultures as self-consistent and intelligible wholes served the

c au se o f g iv in g ` th e l ay m an gr ea te r t ol era nc e? I n a tt em p t in g t o an sw e r t ho se

questi ons, I have to begin by adm i tting to a deep personal antipathy to the w ord

` tol erance. ( W ho, after al l , wants to be tol erated? ) At the sam e tim e, though, i twould seem unreasonable not to sympathise with Stewards obvious longing for a

eld of study which would promote human understanding and mutual appreciation

rather than fear and loathi ng. It woul d al so be a m i stake to underesti m ate the

profound contribution which the great growth of Asian studies in Australia over the

past two decades has made to that understanding. It is surely not coincidental that

s u pp o rt f or g ro up s lik e O n e N a tio n i s l ow er a m on gs t yo un ge r g en era tio n s o f


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Australians than it is amongst older generationsalthough it is also worth noting

that the really sharp divide seems to be between the over-fties and younger groups,

with little appreciable difference in attitudes between the cohort who grew up in the

1960s and the cohorts who grew up i n the 1970s and 1980s.

At the same time, though, I feel that there are good reasons for some self-critical

reection, not simply about the am ount of Àsian content in the curriculum but

about the whole framework within which knowledge of the world beyond Australias

boundaries is taught, researched and debated. One issue which obviously prompts

that reection is the enduring inuence of sim plistic and reductionist generalisations

about Àsia and Àsians in the Australian media and in public discourse. It is w orth

noti ng how readil y the anal ysis of area special i sts l ike Ri chard Basham can be

m obilised to give a veneer of academic respectability to Paul Sheehans polemics.

More widely than this, though, there is also the problem that I referred to earlier

as the ùnintelligibility of the world. The global resurgence of nationalisms andethnocentrisms in the past decade seems to reect a very real and widespread feeling

of powerlessnessalmost, one might say, of disenfranchisementamongst the citi-

zens of many countries. This feeling of powerlessness in turn appears to derive from

a sense of being at the mercy of forces and institutionsm any of them crossing the

boundaries of nations and regionswhose workings are not just beyond the control

of ordinary people but are also almost totally inscrutable. Very few people now, I

think, would subscribe to Julian Stewards vision of the development of a ùniversal

social science which would render these forces and institutions totally transparent.

But it is worth asking how well education and research in Australia serve the cause

of helping to m ake a complex and rapidly changing world system at least a little bit

more comprehensible to the population at large. The argument that I want to make

here is that the spatial frameworks of understandingthe image of àreaswhich

has em erged from àrea studies is in some respects an obstacle which makes the

nature of the contemporary world system less rather than more visible and compre-

hensible. A rethinking of the spatial frameworks of teaching and research is therefore

an important element in working through ways in which education confronts the

problem of an unintelligible world. And the rst step in that rethinking has to be a

re-examination of the origins of the existing framework of area studies.

The Origins of Area Studies

Area studies can be understood as havi ng em erged from a re-im agining of space

which took place i n the m i ddl e decades of the twentieth century. A parti cularl y

important feature of this re-imagining was that it created a common spatial frame-

work which could be used by a variety of different humanities and social sciences,and which therefore marked out a space for the interdisciplinary study of societies

as totalities. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the various disci-

plines had tended to operate on different spatial planes. For geographers, the major

large-scale divisions of the world were continents, w hose boundaries were dened by

the physical geography of oceans, mountain ranges and so on. For political scien-

tists, on the other h and, nations and colonial em pires were more signicant divisions


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14 T. Morris-Suzuki

of space. Historians, meanwhile, also tended to operate mostly at the national level,

but if they thought in larger terms were more likely to use concepts such as Occident

and Orient ( as em pl oyed by writers l ike Oswal d Spengl er and Karl W i ttvogel ).

(In Japan, indeed, it was conventional until the mid-twentieth century to divide

historical knowledge into Oriental and Occidental historyToyoshi an d Seiyoshi).

T he con tem p ora ry im ag e of àr ea s s uc h as t he M id dle E as t an d E ast an d

S ou th eas t A s ia c ry st all is e d i n t he m i dd le o f t he t we nt ie th c en tu ry ag ain s t t he

background of the rising international tensions which culminated in the Second

World War. The expression `Middle E ast in its current m eaning, for example, was

rs t u se d b y th e B rit is h an d U S m i lit ar y in t he 1 9 3 0s 19 4 0 s, w h il e t he la be l

`Southeast Asia èntered popular consciousness in World War II, when military

s tra te gis t s u s ed it t o de si gn at e t h e t he at re o f w ar c om m a nd ed b y L o rd L o ui s

Mountbatten (Lewis & Wigen 1997: 6566, 172). During the war, the work of the

US Ethnogeographic Board helped to lay the foundations for the postwar boom inarea studies by dening the new classicatory system of `world regions (Lewis and

Wigen 1997: 162166).

T h e w ar an d it s af te rm at h d re w a tt en tio n t o t h e s tra te gic v al ue o f c ult u ra l

knowledge: information about the languages, histories and traditions of geographi-

c al ly d ist ant alli es an d e ne m ie s w as vit al t o t he con du ct o f w ar, an d t o t he

international power struggles of the Cold War world. During the 1950s US policy

m akers explicitly recognised that the development of area studies programs could

contribute to the successful exercise of US world power, and substantial funding for

this development was provided under the terms of the 1958 Defense Education Act

(Nash e t al . 1997: 91).

In Australia, too, the Pacic War drew attention to the need for expertise in the

languages, societies and political systems of neighbouring regions, particularly A sia,

and Òriental Affairs (as it was then called) was seen as an area of study deserving

special national attention (Botsman 1991: 241). T his led, amongst other things, to

the establishment of a School of Oriental Languages at Canberra University College

in 1952 and to the creation of a Department of Oriental Studies within the Research

School of Pacic Studies at the Australian National University. During the course

of the 1950s, fundi ng for Indonesi an and M al ayan studies was also provi ded to

Sydney and Melbourne Universities. In the postwar development in Asian studies,

therefore, most courses tended to be offered in interdisciplinary, regionally focused

departments (Ingleson & Nairn 1989: 34).

Fundamental to postwar visions of area studies were the notions of `culture and

`civilisation, which became key unifying concepts connecting varied disciplinary

approaches to the study of a given region. As we have seen, an em phasi s on the

relationship between society and culture, and on cooperation between the disci-plines, was central to the work of Julian Steward, who played a leading role in the

US Social Science Research Councils Committee on World Area Research. M ean-

while other scholars such as Robert Redeld, who in 1951 helped to establish the

Ford Foundations Cultural Studies Project, were focusing attention on the compar-

ative study of civilisations`civilisation being dened by R edeld as a culture wh ich

possessed not only a `little tradition of the largely unreective many but also a `great


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tradition of the reective few ( Sartori 1998; Redel d 1956: 70). Redel d, l ike

Steward, saw great potential for a bringing together of humanities and social science

disciplines in collaborative efforts to comprehend the past and present of particular

societies. K nowledge of the dominant civilisational patterns of each major world

region would, it was felt, provide a historical basis for interpreting the contemporary

and future desti ny of each region i n an interconnected m odern worl d. Such US

approaches had a substantial impact on the development of area studies in other

countri es i ncluding Austral ia, where studies by US area special i sts ( li ke John

Fairbank, Edwin Reischauer and Albert Craig in Asian studies) came to be widely

used as texts for an expanding range of area-focused courses.

The development of area studies in the U SA and Australia also resonated with

em erging European approaches to the study of the worl d. Redelds concept of

comparative civilisations, for example, drew on the ideas of British scholar Arnold

Toynbee, whose massive study of civilisational history was published in 12 volumesbetween 1934 and 1961. Toynbees classication of civilisations was idiosyncratic

based above all on the foundational role of the great religionsbut his research was

driven by many of the impulses which inspired other varieties of mid-century area

studies (Toynbee 1934 [1961]).

Meanwhile in France a somewhat different version of civilisational history was

emerging from the postwar work of the Annales school. From its founding in the late

1920s, the Annales group had envisioned large-scale collaborations between scholars

trained in demography, psychology, social statistics and other disciplines, working

together to produce a `total history of the everyday life of particular societies (see,

for exam ple, Febvre 1973; Dosse 1994). Duri ng the 1 950s and 1960s, Fernand

Braudel built on this approach to present a vision of the global history centred upon

m a jo r c iv ili s at io n al a re as e ac h o f w h ic h `h as it s o wn ge o gra ph y w it h it s o wn

opportunities and constraints, some virtually permanent and quite different from

one civi li zati on to another ( Braudel 1994: 11). Braudel s fam ous textbook for

French high school students, Grammaire des Civilizations, divided the world into six

m ajor areas: Am erica, the M usli m W orld, Afri ca, the Far East, E urope and that

`Other Europe constituted by the Soviet Union. Each area, he argued, possessed its

own deep underlying structures`religious beliefs, for instance, or a timeless peas-

antry, or attitudes to death, work, pleasure and fam il y l ifestructures which

persisted with only the most gradual of changes beneath the ever-shifting surface of

transient historical events (Braudel 1994: 11).

Mapping Cultures

Braudels study indeed offers a vivid illustration of some of the key strengths andweaknesses of the postwar area approach. On the one hand, it represented a genuine

and deeply felt desire for a more universal understanding of social phenomenaan

approach which w ould transcend the bounds of narrow nationalism or ethnocen-

tri sm . O n the other, however, its tem poral and spatial fram eworks alm ost i nes-

capably imposed particular limitations on the image of the world which it presented.

In order to deal with the study of very large areas such as `the Far East, Braudels


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16 T. Morris-Suzuki

account begi ns by singli ng out certai n features which were seen as fundam ental

cultural characteristics of the entire area. In the case of the `Far East, for example,

these included rice cultivation, the tenacious inuence of old-established creeds such

as Buddhism and Confucianism, and the eternal antagonism between settled civili-

sations and the `barbarian hordes who constantly threatened their borders (Braudel

1994: 155170). Such deep structures provi ded the foundations on which the

distinctive, and more rapidly changing, political, economic and social formations of

individual nations within th e area were built. N ations in turn em braced local regions

whichw ith their particular productive systems and cultural traditionsformed the

locus of everyday life. This structure closely parallels that of many of the major area

studies texts of the postwar decadesworks like Reischauer and Fairbanks East

Asia: the Great Tradition i n which an overvi ew of the underl yi ng civili sational

patterns of the region provi ded the starting point for m ore detai led analysis of

the i ndividual desti ni es of parti cul ar nations ( See Reischauer & Fai rbank 1958;Reischauer e t al . 1973).

The difculty with this approach is that, since a region like `the Far East or `East

Asi a i s a vast and diverse one wi th few overarching com m onal ities, those few

characteristics which are shared by m uch of the regi on tend to be si ngl ed out as

` fundam ental and ( it could be argued) given disproporti onate weight. A good

example of this is the obsessive attention paid to that shifting complex of ideas and

practices commonly labelled `Confucianism. It seems clear that the inuence of

`Confucianism has varied enormously across the region according to place, time

and social class, and that for many people in many times it had little or no inuence

at all. But the visions of `Chinese, `Japanese and `Korean histories as contained

within the fram ework of `East A sian history makes it alm ost inevitable that plausible

common denominators like `Confucianism will come to be seen as the underlying

motive forces of the regions past.

The overal l outcom e tends to be an i m age of the i ndivi dual as standing at the

centre of a series of ever-expanding circles of shared history, culture and memory.

The richest and most varied array of common experiences, traditions and beliefs are

shared with the im mediately proximate communities of family, local community,

v ill ag e o r t ow n . A s o ne m o ve s o ut w ar d in s pac e t he s har in g o f m o re t ra ns ie nt

m emories and experiences dim inishes, leaving only the deeper strata of enduring

culture which (it is suggested) are shared, rst with other members of the national

com m uni ty and, at the profoundest l evel , wi th fel low i nhabitants of the entire

civilisational area.

US area studies scholars l ike Steward and Redeld, rather sim i l arl y, saw area

s tu die s as o pe ra ti ng a t a n um b er o f s pat ia l le ve ls , r an gi ng f ro m ` co m m u nit ie s

through regions, states and nations to large cultural areas (Steward 1950: 20; seealso Redeld 1956: ch. 3). Area studies required both detail ed, usual ly ethno-

graphic, studies of small local communities and larger interdisciplinary studies of

nations and world regions. Steward thus likened multilevel area research on human

societies to multilevel biological research on living organisms, in which `the cell is

i ncom pletel y understood i f i t i s not studied as part of an organ; and an organ is

intelligible only as part of a total organism (Steward 1950: 109).


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But mapping the world in this way obscures human commonalities not based on

geographical proximity, not containable within the frontiers of `nation, `area or

`civilisation. Of course, the area scholars of the 1950s recognised that civilisations

i nteracted, and above al l that ` m odern western civili sati on affected the l ives of

people throughout the worl d. The very nature of area studies, however, m ade i t

difcult to pursue i nvestigati on of the cul tural com m onal ities which m i ght l ink

people in widely dispersed geographical locations on the basis of occupation, age

or i nterest ( for exam pl e, the com m onal ities between Catholi cs i n Ireland and

Zimbabwe, or between soccer fans in The Netherlands and Brazil).

Rather than opening the way to exploration of sharedor differingexperiences

of the `m odern, area studies encouraged a com parative approach to the understand-

i ng o f a p ro ce ss c all e d ` m od er nis at io n . T o w h at e xt en t, in o th er w o rd s, d id

`modernity represent the triumph of the Western model of civilisation? To what

extent could the fundamental patterns of other civilisations survive within, and adaptto, the modern order? Which areas possessed the patterns of culture and tradition

that would best equip them for participation in the competitive struggle for social

and economic development?

Area studies also involved a distinctive relation of scholars to their subject matter.

The classical Orientalists of the nineteenth century had found it necessary to rely

substantial l y on the interpretation of the wri tten archive. Their work, unti l the

m id-twentieth century, was supplemented by the writings of colonial ofcials, whose

social experiences were shaped by the hierarchical structures of life in the colonies,

yet who had often been required to immerse themselves in the details of administer-

i ng a parti cular conned territory. The postwar area scholar l ived i n a different

w o rl d: a w or ld o f ai r t rav el, an a ge o f ` eld w ork a c on ce pt e xt e nd ed fr om

anthropol ogy to a wide range of other disci pl ines i n the m i ddl e decades of the

century. From their base in the cam puses of the developed world, area specialists

were abl e to venture forth, arm ed wi th a trai ning i n di sciplinary techniques and

theories as well as language, for regular stints of research in `the eld. Implicitly,

this research was envisaged as using the latest `universal social theories, generated

within the academic realms of Western Europe and North America, to interpret the

diverse complexities of the particular region on which the area specialist focused.

The scholar would thus return from the eld with empirical data and case studies to

enrich the development of universal social theory. No one can doubt that postwar

area scholars in the still-dominant nations of Western Europe and North America

contributed greatly to a deeper understanding of Asian, African and other societies

and histori es. Yet the very fram eworks within which thei r work was conducted

meant that this understanding did not necessarily lead to any fundamental rethink-

ing of the vision of `western civilisation as interpreter of the world, and as crucibleof the modern.

Critiques of Area Studies

In recent decades, of course, area studies has been criticised from several directions.

A frequent focus of criticism has been the intimate connection between this eld of


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18 T. Morris-Suzuki

research and US Cold War strategy (e.g. Wallerstein 1997; Cumings 1997). While

m any U S scholars resolutely resisted efforts by th e state to mobilise their research for

strategic purposes, there are numerous well-documented examples of government

m anipulation of area research in the C old War period. G eorge K ahin, for exam ple,

c it e s t he c as e o f Vietnam Perspectives, an ostensibly `academic journal launched

i n 1967 with substantial support and funding from the US m i litarys Hi stori cal

Evaluation and Research Organization (Kahin 1997).

At a methodological level, area specialists have been accused of exaggerating the

autonomy of individual civilisations and for paying insufcient attention to connec-

ti ons between one regi on and another. The civil isati on theory of scholars l ike

Toynbee has also been taken to task on the grounds that, by identifying `civilisation

with powerful urbanised communities, it neglected large swathes of human society

( see Lewi s & W i gen 1997: 130131; Nash e t al . 1997: 164171). Yet this critique

has not necessarily led to a rejection of the organising framework of large contiguousregions dened in terms of an underlying common culture. Instead, it has tended to

produce modications of that image, in which boundaries are redrawn in the effort

to create a more coherent and inclusive picture (see, for example, Lewis & Wigen

1997: 157).

One important modication to the postwar image of area studies was the emerg-

ence of the concept of the ` AsiaPaci c or ` Paci c Rim , which enjoyed a vogue

particularl y i n the 1970s and 1980s. This new vision of geography transcended

traditionally dened visions of `civilisations, and sought to bring together the study

of Asian, American and Australasian regions, which were in fact increasingly being

linked by economic and cultural ows. As Arif Dirlik points out, however, the new

concept itself was deeply embedded in the emerging economic and political power

structures of the late twentieth century. The concept of the AsiaPacic area served

to:

s et u p a d om ai n o f e co nom i c ac t iv it y an d p ow e r f or t ho se w ho p la y a

hegemonic role in the area (at present, the U nited States and Japan), to

c on tai n w it hi n it t he re lat io ns hi ps t h at in an d o f t h em s elv es ar e n otconned to it, and thereby to assert a regional identity (and power bloc)

against other similar regions in the world system, of which the European

Economic Community is the immediate instance. (Dirlik 1992)

The new interest in the `AsiaPacic coincided with a renewed wave of expansion

of A sian studies in Australia, now driven less by strategic concerns than by a growing

awareness of the regions economic importance. A central element in this expansion

w as t he gr ow in g n um b er o f s tu de nt s s tu dyi ng A s ia n la ng ua ge s. B y 1 9 96 , 3 5 o f

Australias 43 universities taught Japanese, 29 taught Chinese and 25 Indonesian(Aveling 1998: 33). The relative strength of Australian scholarship in some areas of

Asian studies (particularly research on Southeast Asia) was reected by the fact that

40 per cent of the articles published in Cambridge University Presss Modern Asian

Studies b et w ee n 1 9 8 6 an d 1 9 96 w e re w ri tt en b y s ch ola rs b as e d i n A u st ra lia n

universities (Ingleson 1998: 253).

Meanwhile, however, a somewhat different criticism of area studies was increas-


11/15


ingly making itself heard. Area studies schools and departments, it was argued, were

not giving their students a sufciently rigorous disciplinary grounding. In Australia,

almost exactly 10 years ago, the Report of the Inquiry into the Teaching of Asian

Studies and Languages in Higher Education observed that the Àsian studies model

had

tended to m argi nal iz e the study of Asia, by cutting i t off from the m ajor

disciplines and producing graduates who had a great deal of knowledge of

one or m ore Asian country, often p rociency in a language as well, but who

were inadequately trained in one of the social sciences disciplines, such as

history, politi cs, soci ol ogy or econom ics. I t also acted as an excuse for

discipline departments ignoring the study of Asia. (Ingleson & Nairn 1989:

260)

The report went on to propose greater integrati on of Asian content i nto ` m ai n-stream humanities and social science departments, recommending that by the year

2000 at least 20 per cent of student enrolments in those departments should be in

Àsia related subjects (Ingleson and Nairn 1989: 265).

In practice, though, this proposal seems to h ave proved remarkably difcult to p ut

i nto effect. The 1998 Austral ian Research Council review of the hum aniti es in

Australia revealed that initial efforts at greater integration had wilted in the face of

the harsh econom ic cli m ate of the 1990s ( Hooper 1998: 58; Coaldrake & W el ls

1998: 155; Ingleson 1998: 259). Although som e of the newer cross-discipli nary

areas like (predictably enough) Postcolonial Studies pay substantial attention to

various Asi an soci eties, m any of the older discipli nes rem ai ned overwhel m i ngl y

focused on Europe and North America. In philosophy, which we are told ìs usually

thought of as a distinctively W estern discipline, recent developments in the teaching

of Asian philosophy can be dealt with in a couple of sentences (Gaukroger 1998:

223). The situation in relati on to areas l ike Earl y M odern Studies i s even m ore

i nteresti ng. Here, ` Asia rates a m ention onl y because Asi an history i s seen as a

potential competitor with Early Modern Studies for student enrolments. Did places

l ike Japan have an ` Earl y M odern ( as m ost Japanese hi stori ans clearly seem to

believe it did), and, if so, how does this relate to the Early Modern studied by Èarly

Modern Studies?

The ongoing tension between area studies and disciplines reects, I think, some-

thing more than institutional rigidities and budgetary constraints. It reects the fact

that both the traditional disciplines and area studies often i ncorporate sim i l ar

underlying assumptions about the nature of social space. Both, in other words, tend

t o t ak e f or g ra nt ed t he re ali t y an d i nt eg rit y o f e nt it ie s lik e `L a ti n A m e ric a o r

`Southeast Asia. They also incorporate similar ideas about the relationship betweenscholar and subject of study. That is to say, disciplinary as well as area studies often

embody an implicit image of `the West as the fountainhead of theories with which

to interpret the rest of the w orld. So comm endable efforts to encourage the inclusion

of material from Asian societies in various disciplinary courses in Australia have gone

hand in hand with a worrying tendency to insist that the object of the exercise is to

prom ote ` Asia l iteracyas though ` Asi a were a sort of hierogl yphi c docum ent


12/15

20 T. Morris-Suzuki

which would become legible if only we could crack the code. The `Western scholar

is still assumed to stand within a legible, transparent space which is the source of

theories with which to interpret the enigmatic areas outside. From this perspective,

A u st ra li a ca n all t oo re ad il y c om e t o b e p re se nt ed as an ou tpo st of W e st ern

universal ism fortunately l ocated close to the perplexing real m s of Asi a, and so

offering a convenient salient from which to ìnterpret Asia to the (English-speaking)

world.

The Possibility of Anti-Area Studies

In this context, it is crucially important to resist one particular variant of the critique

of area studies: the view that the entire legacy of area studies should be abandoned

in favour of a new brand of universalism based on the dominance of disciplinary

knowledge. This view, recently popular in some schools of economic and politicalthought, proposes that all societies are to be understood in terms of a single set of

rul es of behaviour, centred around noti ons such as ` rati onal choi ce. Detai led

knowledge of language and history of specic societies thus b ecomes irrelevant to

interpreting contemporary trends, for once one has mastered the rules contained in

the latest texts from Chicago or MIT, the behaviour of everyone from Javanese rice

farmers to Taiwanese pop stars will be readily understandable and predictable.

What I would like to suggest here is a different approach to the rethinking of area

studiesone that retains its sensitivity to complexity and difference, and therefore

its emphasis on the importance of detailed knowledge of human lives in particular

places. At the same time, this approach would seek to reverse the process of spatial

integration, through which area studies sought to create a single framework for the

interdisciplinary study of social wholes. In trying to m ake sense of the contemporary

system it seems instead important to be able to make simultaneous use of a range of

different spatial maps to analyse different social processes and interactions (Mazlish

1993: 19, 1998).

T h e p oi nt i s n ot t ha t t he c on ce pt o f àr ea s lik e E a st o r S ou th eas t A s ia is a n

anachronism to be thrown on to the intellectual scrap heap. The area studies vision

of world regions as a basis for understanding has obvious uses. For a historian who

wants to study the spread and evolution of the character-based writing system which

originated in China, for example, the geographical category Èast Asia makes sense

(though it would make even better sense if it were expanded to encompass most of

Vietnam now usually classied under the heading `Southeast Asia). But using

Èast Asia as the primary space for understanding the whole past and present of the

a re a n ow e nc om p as s ed b y t he n at io n s o f C h in a, M o ng ol ia, Ja pa n, K o re a a nd

Taiwan i s m uch m ore probl em atic. Di fcul ti es ari se when concentri c circl es ofcontiguous space come to be seen as the framework for a total understanding of the

past and present, for this m odel of space obscures a host of experi ences vital to

interpreting the contemporary global system.

What I would like to suggest here, then, is not a bland erasure of differences, but

rather an attem pt to rethi nk the way i n which to m ap difference. One i m portant

element in this new mapping might be the development of an ànti-area studies,


13/15


whose aim is not to plot the communal trajectory of a civilisational area within the

m a rc h o f g lo b al p ro gr es s, b ut t o o bs er ve m ajo r g lo b al f orc es fr om a v ar ie t y o f

p os it io n s w h ic h ar e as f ar a par t a s p os sib le . L e t u s c on si de r s om e e xa m pl es o f

possible themes of this type of ànti-area studies.

One them e could be a topic which I am currently particularly interested in: the

past and present of indigenous communities in various parts of the world. Despite

their great diversity, indigenous societies world-wide face certain sorts of common

challenges and problems which arise not from innate cultural similarities, but from

shared experiences of the encounter between small, relatively decentralised com-

munities and the modern nation-state. Forms of study and teaching which link the

experiences of indigenous societies in (say) Australia, the Philippines, Japan, Russia

and Brazil can bring to light important issues, differences and commonalities, which

remain invisible when the history of indigenous societies is studied in a national or

even a conventional àrea studies framework.Another type of ànti-area studies concerns the way in which a particular set of

ideas or ideologies is understood, applied and developed in quite different situations.

Examples of this are recent research projects on the varied experiences around the

worl d of the l ate 1960s student m ovem ent. Here i t becom es possi bl e to consi der

how people from a broadly similar social stratumm ostly young, middle-class and

university educatedrel ated to a broadl y com m on set of i deologi es i n radicall y

different circumstances. What is important, though, is that the `map of 1968 should

include not only places like Paris, B erkeley and London but also T okyo, Mexico

Ci ty, M elbourne and Calcutta. In a sim i l ar vei n, one m i ght consi der the w ay in

which various new (and not so new) forms of religious thoughtScientology or the

Unication Churchare received and evolve in distinct locations.

A thi rd possible vari ant of ` anti -area study woul d be research on the soci al

formation of global systems or organisations: organisations like the World Bank or

UNICEF. Such studies would explore both the evolution of these organisations and

their interaction with local society in many parts of the world. This research might

help to i ll um inate the ways i n which i nternational bodi es, with thei r worl d-wide

networks of employees and ofces, develop their own set of cultural resources and

behavioural patterns: shared `traditions w hich transcend the boundaries of conven-

t io na lly d e ne d à re as . T h e m ap a pp ro p ria t e fo r t his s ort o f s tu dy c an not b e

predicted in advance but would need to be carefully tailored to the research task. It

m i ght, however, focus on sel ected poi nts i n Asia, Africa and the Am ericas, and

i nc lu de u rb an as w e ll as v ill ag e c om m u n it ie s. R e se ar ch an d t ea ch in g o n t he s e

themes seems particularly important as a means of confronting the sense of incom-

prehension and powerlessness induced by the increasing complexity of international

rules, systems and cultural ows in the contemporary world.Pushing this point a bit further, we could consider whether understanding of the

so-called Àsian (but increasingly global) economic crisis might be improved if we

stopped tryi ng to understand it in ` Asian term s, wi th the help of a ready-m ade

tool-kit of concepts like `crony capitalism and the `developmental state. An alterna-

tive might be to look at the crisis in terms of the practical, everyday ways in which

people experience and deal with the unsettling effects of global economic change in


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22 T. Morris-Suzuki

a n um b er o f ve ry d if fe re n t s it e s t hro ug ho ut t he w orl d: s it es w h ic h m i gh t , f or

instance, include Adelaide, Sapporo, Hong Kong, and Sa o Paulo. Such a study

would not, of course, assume a sameness of experience in all these places, but could

allow differences to become visible in action, rather than starting out from a set of

preconceptions about Àsian (or other) culture and its economic consequences.

` Anti-area studies in this sense woul d require m any of the skil l s traditi onal l y

demanded of area studies specialists. It would need people with a real knowledge of

different languages and societies, and with a strong theoretical understanding of the

issues to be researched or taught. It would also often involve collaboration between

several scholars studying, and based in, different places. But it would differ from

c on ven tio nal ar ea s tu die s in t he s en se t ha t it n eit h er p u ll s t og et h er a r an ge o f

disciplines into the study of a single social `whole, nor combines a variety of area

specialisms into a single discipline. Instead, it uses knowledge of a variety of places

and a variety of disciplinary approaches in order to elucidate problems which crossboundaries. In doing this, it accepts the need to draw its own maps.

Rather than promoting Àsia literacy, I would suggest, ànti-area studies might

a im t o p ro m o te conversation : a n e xc ha ng e o f vi ew s b et we en g ro up s o f p eo ple in

Australia, certain parts of Asia and other parts of the world, about issues of deep

c om m o n c on ce rn . T h e o bje ct o f t he e xe rc is e, in o th er w ord s, w o uld n ot b e t o

ùnderstand Asianor even to understand p articular societies within Asiabut to

gai n a better understanding of an unintell igi ble worl d by vi ewi ng som e of i ts key

features from widely separated points of the globe. The multiple maps used for this

purpose would link geographically dispersed places in terms of their relevance to a

common theme, and would include places in the scholars home base itself: in my

case, Canberra. In this process Àustralia might cease to be seen as a convenient

universalist salient point from which to `read Asia. Instead, people and places in

Australi a would becom e part of the problem to be understood and ` readi n an

interconnected series of points upon the earth, not only reecting but becoming

objects of reection.

Australian National University

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anti area studies

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