T. King, Victor
(2013)
Scholarly Viewpoints, featuring.
International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies (IJAPS), 9 (1).
pp. 163-180.
ISSN ISSN: 1823-6243
Abstract
What intrigues me about the ways in which the questions are posed is that they
assume that we all work in disciplines. Since I have been given the welcome
opportunity to present a "scholarly viewpoint" on Asia Pacific I would like to
take a rather different tack. I want to make reference to certain recent
developments in and contributions to what has come to be referred to as the
multidisciplinary field of "area studies," which was promoted vigorously in
the United States during the Cold War period and became increasingly
important in institutional academic development in Western Europe, Australia,
Japan and in Southeast Asia from the 1950s and 1960s. Since the 1970s,
however, the popularity of this field of studies has tended to wane in the West,
following the American departure from Indochina and then the end of the
Cold War, and the questioning of the value and validity of teaching and
research in regional studies by representatives of Western governments and
the sponsors of scholarly activity. With the apparent undermining of the
rationale for area studies, doubts were expressed about its theoretical and
methodological rigour and whether or not area studies practitioners possessed
the willingness and the academic capacity and expertise to respond to the
major challenges posed by a fast-moving and globalising world. In short,
opinions in the West began to turn against regional studies and it came to be
seen as old-fashioned, conservative, parochial and poorly equipped to address
and understand the social, cultural, economic and political issues and
problems of a post-modern world. Paranoia, anxiety and a feeling of crisis set
in among the area studies community, which resulted in an outpouring of
publications in the 1970s and 1980s defending regions and those who studied
them.
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