Asian Studies
Wayne Winter J. Uyseco, B.A.
Asian Studies is an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary school of thought that sprouted due to a post-modern way of thinking. Post-modernism refers to the non-structured way of thinking, and the unification of things due to the blurring of ideas using a synthesis type of logic. Modernism, unlike post-modernism, is structured, and separates things with a clear demarcation of boundaries which uses dualistic or binary logic.
The social sciences such as political science, sociology, economics, among others, then became subject to criticism. It was during this time that writings such as the post-modernist Structure of Scientific Revolutions of Thomas Samuel Kühn became popular. Kühn was mainly influenced by Jacques Derrida’s concept of deconstruction and Michel Foucault’s concept of power which is why Kühn explained that the social sciences were said to become and patterned like the natural sciences, aptly referred to as a paradigm shift, using a developmental and linear motion. Methodological problems of the social sciences were also introduced by Kühn, namely, the forms of controlled inquiry (laboratory experiment, field experiment, and natural experiment); cultural relativity and social laws; knowledge of social phenomena as a social variable; subjective nature of social subject matter; and value-oriented bias of social inquiry.
Hans Georg Gadamer’s modernist hermeneutic phenomenology, on the other hand, emphasizes that knowledge is by way of language and that it interprets phenomenon to have a certain perspective. It is through him that Asian Studies can be referred to as an interdisciplinary course since a phenomenon should be viewed from different perspectives and views in order to see a broader and wider picture and perspective.
Asian Studies is a product of post-modernism because it is an offshoot of geography and of political science. As an offshoot of geography, Asian Studies came from the discipline area studies while comparative and local politics from the field of international relations is an offshoot of political science.
According to Josefa Saniel, Asian Studies began as a discipline during the nineteenth century when Harvard University established the Yenching Institute in 1928, the University of Washington’s Department of Oriental Studies in 1909, and the Center for Far Eastern Studies (known since 1988 as the Center for East Asian Studies) to name a few. Asian Studies, also according to Saniel, had their beginnings in the studies of Asian languages and cultures during the Second World War. Asian Studies, according to John W. Hall, became popular due to “a systematic attempt to find out about the peoples and cultures” of Asian societies.
As an interdisciplinary and modern course, Asian Studies uses concepts and theories from other disciplines by “crossing borders” in order to produce a pluralistic field of study. As a multidisciplinary and post-modern course, Asian Studies mixes the concepts and theories of different disciplines in order to have an androgynous field of study.
Asian Studies therefore, in general, uses or borrows concepts and theories from political science, philosophy, history, literature, sociology, economics, development studies, geography, and cultural studies among others.
***this is taken from class discussions***
