Description
Book SynopsisExamines the institutions and productions of area studies and explores what it takes to "learn a place."
Trade Review“Area studies is in crisis, seemingly rendered marginal and anachronistic in a globalizing world. Yet, paradoxically, knowledge of histories, geographies, cultures, ecologies, and geopolitical tensions has become crucial if the public is to understand the dangers as well as the promises of globalization. Miyoshi and Harootunian here assemble a talented group of scholars to probe deeply into this contradiction. They convincingly argue that area studies needs to be completely revamped if not dissolved into new knowledge structures within the academy if it is to fulfill its mission. This challenges all of us to rethink disciplinary allegiances and past ways of knowing in critical as well as constructive ways.”—David Harvey, author of
Spaces of Hope and Spaces of Capital“Bringing together an unusually wide range of concerns,
Learning Places offers a theoretical account of Asian area studies and a moral and political critique of past and recurrent practices of epistemic violence. The political urgency of this type of work makes this a timely collection. This important book opens up a series of debates that must be had between the new humanities, area studies, and the disciplines.”—Michael Dutton, editor of
Streetlife ChinaTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: The “Afterlife” of Area Studies
Ivory Tower in Escrow / Masao Miyoshi
Ando Shoeki - “The Forgotten Thinker” in Japanese History / Tetsuo Najita
Objectivism and the Eradication of Critique in Japanese History / Stefan Tanaka
Theory, Area Studies, Cultural Studies: Issues of Pedagogy in Multiculturalism / Rey Chow
Signs of Our Times: A Discussion of Homi Bhabha’s
The Location of Culture / Benita Parry
Postcoloniality’s Unconscious / Area Studies’ Desire / H. D. Harootunian
Asian Exclusion Acts / Sylvia Yanagisako
Areas, Disciplines, and Ethnicity / Richard H. Okada
Can American Studies Be Area Studies? / Paul A. Bové
Imagining “Asia-Pacific” Today: Forgetting Colonialism in the Magical Free Markets of the American Pacific / Rob Wilson
Boundary Displacement: The State, the Foundations, and Area Studies during and after the Cold War / Bruce Cumings
The Disappearance of Modern Japan: Japan and Social Science / Bernard S. Silberman
Bad Karma in Asia / Moss Roberts
From Politics to Culture: Modern Japanese Literary Studies in the Age of Cultural Studies / James A. Fujii
Questions of Japanese Cinema: Disciplinary Boundaries and the Invention of the Scholarly Object / Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto
Contributors
Index
