APSIG newsletter no. 59: November 2005

National Library Asia Research Forum: session report

The National Library of Australia held an Asia Research Forum on 24 October 2005. With 100 attendees, the one-day forum brought together librarians and academics studying Asia to discuss current trends in Asia-related research and how libraries can better meet the needs of the current and future generations of Asia scholars.

A full report of the forum is in preparation at the time of going to print. Here is a report of one of the academic panels discussing trends in research on Asia.

Professor Vera Mackie, ARC professorial fellow, department of history, University of Melbourne. From Orientalism to globalism: a brief history.

Professor Mackie described two historical paradigms in Australian research on Asia: the Orientalist view and the area studies view. The former dominated until the mid twentieth century, and focused on the 'deep history' of Asia, i.e. a study of its culture, literature, language, philosophy, recognizing the long history of civilization. The orientalist view was linked to the colonialist period, when Asia was something to be ruled and controlled - as expressed, for example, in the writings of Edwards Said.

The area studies view underpinned the post-colonial era of capitalism, communism and cold war politics. This was a time of the (illusory) 'helping hand' of American foreign policy, and research focused on the division between the East and the West, as developing and developed countries. It tended to focus on particular historical periods of the country e.g. modernisation issues. It was often financially supported by organisations like the Ford Foundation (although there were no such organisations in Australia).

Now, said Professor Mackie, new paradigms are emerging.

• 'Subaltern' studies: a general term drawn from Indian studies, researchers look at how people actually lived day-to-day on the grassroots level, not just as colonised peoples.
• Post-colonial theory.
• Critical Asian studies (as carried out in University of Washington).
• Anti-area studies: transcends the nation states and look at how people and societies are connected.
• 'Connected' studies: looks at how people are connected, e.g. why Japanese divers were employed in Australia.
• Globalisation studies.

Professor Mackie saw many new challenges in the newly emerging areas of research. Students are increasingly pursuing topics such as social movements, popular culture, sexuality, gender, internet, etc. However students without language skills are unable to use important vernacular materials in their research and undertake deep analysis of their topics. This is a problem: language skills need a long time and some effort to nurture.

Against this picture of the development of Asian studies in Australia, Dr Louise Edwards, convenor, Asia-Pacific futures research networks project, Australian National University took up the theme of the 'new' Asian studies in her paper From disciplines and methods to issues and problems.

Dr Edwards noted that over 1400 academics in Australia have identified themselves as primarily Asianists or Pacific scholars. The Asia-Pacific futures research network has a register of close to 300 PhD students, pointing to considerable strength in Asian studies.

She described a generational change in Asian studies in Australia, with a large cadre of talented post graduates are emerging. In her view the field had changed dramatically and for the better, benefiting from the solid foundation laid by earlier generations of scholars.

Interestingly Louise saw fewer issues with language skills, pointing to the number of native-speaking Asian scholars who can speak the language and know the culture first hand. She spoke of her postdoctoral students who had very good language skills, some starting from primary school level.

Dr Edwards agreed with Professor Mackie that research topics are no longer bound by a particular discipline, such as history or politics. Issues and problems drive the research instead, such as gender or HIV-AIDS. Interdisciplinary studies, she felt, was distinctly Australian, as opposed to the US where discipline studies were still strong. For Australia though it would be the direction to the future.

She nominated sub-national studies, minority studies (especially in China), provincial studies and inter-country studies (e.g. migration between China and India; management of bird flu in Asia) as especially prominent now. Comparative studies were now often between countries of Asia, not between East and the West. She felt that because of Australia's proximity to the region Australian scholars were more ready than US or UK scholars to respond to Asia in this way.

Finally, Dr Edwards noted that as research topics changed, so did the texts of those topics. Examples were:

• Resources for the study of popular material culture: match boxes, food, clothing, art, jewellery, gardens, etc.
• Public spaces (libraries, museums, etc.) as an object of study. Heritage issues regarding public memories such as Long March tourism are interesting topics for research.
• Electronic culture: study of online communities, e.g. women's organisations online. Also online computer games involving multiple players and virtual weapons that have real legal ramifications.

Dr Edwards urged libraries to consider their role as collectors of the new texts: to develop a role as virtual storehouses and to transform their traditional roles to match these new and exciting developments.

Wan Wong, Amelia McKenzie

Further reports from the Asia Research Forum will be published in the next issue of the APSIG newsletter.