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Volume XIV (2003)
Book Review:
Learning Places:
The Afterlives
of Area Studies
David T. Jervis, Department of
Political Science, University of Nebraska at Kearney, Kearney, NE 68849
Miyoshi, Masao and Harootunian, H.D.,
eds. Learning Places: The Afterlives of Area Studies. Durham,
N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002. 408 pp. $22.95 (paper).
This
text examines the changes in area studies programs in the post-Cold War
era. The editors, Masao Miyoshi and H.D. Harootunian, are, respectively,
the Hajime Mori Professor of Japanese, English, and Comparative
Literature at the University of California at San Diego and Chair of the
East Asian Studies Department at New York University. They, along with
Rey Chow, also a contributor to this volume, are editors of the
Asia-Pacific Series at Duke University Press. Not surprisingly, then,
the text focuses solely on East Asia and within East Asia, there is an
emphasis on Japan as five contributions consider that country alone.
This is ironic and unfortunate in a text arguing the need to develop new
perspectives for thinking about the generation and dissemination of
knowledge of the world’s regions.
Area
studies began in the United States in the mid-1940s. The primary cause
was the onset of the Cold War and government’s need for information
about regions newly-important for American security. As Bruce Cummings
notes “…the American state and especially the intelligence elements in
it shaped the entire field of postwar area studies, with the clearest
and most direct impact on those regions of the world where communism was
strongest: Russia, Central and Eastern Europe, and East Asia” (261). He
argues that there were “astonishing levels of collaboration” between
universities, foundations, and American intelligence agencies,
especially in the early years of the Cold War (262). To make his case,
Cummings examines the Russian Studies programs at Harvard and Columbia
and the influence of the FBI and CIA on tenure decisions at the
University of Washington. The intelligence emphasis continues into the
contemporary era and is much more explicit. It takes the form of the
National Security Education Act, which requires that recipients of
fellowships under its auspices serve a period of time in national
security agencies.
Over
time there was a change in the identity and purpose of donors to area
studies programs. If it was the U.S. government that was largely
responsible for funding area studies programs in their early years,
foreign governments—especially Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan—provided
funds in later years. These were not America’s military enemies but its
economic competitors. Moreover, the purpose of such funding was often
different, seeking not only to interest Americans in these societies and
cultures but also to establish the primacy of native authority. This
funding, too, has slowed down in recent years.
The
erosion of traditional funding sources is one reason for the
contemporary crisis in area studies. A second significant cause is
pedagogical. This is related to funding, of course, because “the
obsessive search for cash has resulted in suppressing any genuine
concern with thinking through new ways to organize and disseminate
knowledge about Asia or the Middle East” (6). In today’s world,
traditional techniques of studying regions outside Euro-America, e.g.,
through the lenses of traditional disciplines and the nation-state, are
no longer valid. Disciplinary boundaries are breaking down, the cold war
and colonial eras are over, and globalization is on the march. In
addition, a number of contemporary theories, e.g., rational choice
theory—the target of several contributors to the text, are dedicated to
the obliteration of differences between regions and cultures.
As a
result of these changes, “area studies” has entered its “afterlife,”
i.e., one in which old truths, perspectives, and institutions can be
called into question. Illustrating challenges to existing ways of
thinking and new perspectives is the purpose of this text. There are a
number of interesting ideas in this regard. Rob Wilson asks what “Asia
Pacific” means, examining both literary depictions and those of the Asia
Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum. The latter formulation, with its
emphasis on open borders and the movement of people and goods, is
“culturally and politically naive, ignoring, bypassing, or suppressing
the cultural complexity, historical issues, and symbolic profusion of
the region in order to form this regional identity” (246). Paul Bove
asks if American studies can be area studies and concludes that it
cannot, because the prime purpose of area studies has been the
production of knowledge for the state whereas the prime purpose of
American studies for the state is to promote its hegemony and culture.
Moss Roberts makes the valid but often forgotten point that through the
study of the other we learn more about ourselves, arguing that the way
to understand America’s wrongs in Asia is to focus on the victims and
the perspectives of Asians.
Yet
not every historical approach or intellectual dissident is necessarily
relevant for contemporary re-thinking. Several articles examine
forgotten or disgraced thinkers from earlier periods in Japanese
history, e.g., Tetsuo Najita has contributed an article on Ando Shoeki,
a “forgotten thinker” in Japanese history, and Stefan Tanaka examines
Japanese historians of the 1950s. However, these articles establish
little connection between their subject and contemporary reassessments.
The relevance seems to be merely that their subjects challenged
conventional wisdom in an earlier era. Masao Miyoshi’s article on the
“ivory tower in escrow” has even less relevance for the text’s theme,
consisting largely of attacks on contemporary universities, ranging from
university-corporate linkages, to course enrollments, the widespread use
of adjuncts, and the changing priorities of university presses.
The
failure to adhere to a single theme is a problem common to many
anthologies. Another is a lack of consistency in format. In Learning
Places there are notes following each article, but Chow’s article on
issues of pedagogy in area studies includes references as well as notes.
A list of Ph.D. dissertations in American Studies written at Yale
University between 1988 and 1995 follows Bove’s article; no other
contribution includes an appendix. For a text published in 2002, the
identification of dissertations completed between 1988 and 1995 might
seem a bit dated, but they were current at the time this article was
first published in 1997. Other contributions are also dated. Benita
Parry’s examination of Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture
begins with a “prefatory note” written in September 1999, perhaps
because the article was first published in 1994.
As
these comments suggest, Learning Places does a much better job
depicting the crisis in contemporary area studies than it does
suggesting new approaches and perspectives. It serves as the beginning
of this discussion rather than the definitive word. Future assessments,
moreover, would be strengthened by the perspectives of observers of
Africa, the Middle East, and other regions outside of Europe and
America.
Volume XIV |
