The Presidential Address: A Case for Asian Studies

1973 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 391-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert E. Ward

There has always been a sizeable gap between public and national interests and needs and the capacities of a society's educational system to respond adequately thereto. Both teaching and scholarship are by their very nature conserving disciplines heavily involved with the preservation, elaboration, and passing on of a heritage of experience and knowledge acquired over great lengths of time. When one considers the degree to which our own national intellectual heritage is derived from the classical and Judaeo-Christian traditions, therefore, it is not at all surprising that our educational system should be profoundly Eurocentric in both form and content. But if it should persist in so confining a bias at a time when the central tendencies of the major technological, economic, and political developments of the past several centuries have been the compacting of global space, the convergence of cultures, and the emergence to positions of increasing salience and importance of an ever-expanding array of non-Western people, states, and interests, is this not cause for serious national concern?

1992 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 757-769 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Feuerwerker

I am greatly honored to have had the opportunity to serve as president of the Association for Asian Studies during the past year, and I am cognizant of the distinction of this afternoon's occasion. This being Washington, where everything is “political”—even more so perhaps than in Beijing—my original thought was to deliver a political sermon on a theme something like “Bush in China.” In fact, I found a possible text for my homily: a book published in Philadelphia in 1865 by a Presbyterian minister, Charles P. Bush, entitledFive Years in China; or, The Factory Boy Made a Missionary: The Life and Observations of Rev. W. Aitchison. But the Reverend Mr. Bush's hagiographical account of the life of William Aitchison, once a missionary to heathen China, was of little help; and I quickly decided that my talents as a fabulist of this variety were exceedingly limited. Hence the quite different fables to which I shall expose you today.


1983 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-19
Author(s):  
Ainslie T. Embree

During the past year I have traveled to the regional associations, from Santa Cruz to Denton, to Albany, and to points in between, such as Ann Arbor, Boulder, and Boone. I have been impressed by the generosity and good will of our members, but above all, I have been impressed by the sense that we have special relationships through sharing in a common cause. For that reason I have chosen an elliptical and somewhat odd title for this address, which is one of the otherwise not very onerous duties required of the president. The title is “The Tradition of Mission—Asian Studies in the United States, 1783 and 1983.”


2014 ◽  
Vol 2013 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kalerante Evagelia

AbstractThe present paper is involved with the Pedagogical faculties’ students’ critique on the current educational system as it has been altered after 1981. The research was carried out utilizing both quantitative and qualitative tools. Students-voters participated in the interviews whereas active voters were difficult to be located to meet the research requirements. The dynamics of the specific political party is based on a popular profile in terms of standpoints related to economic, social and political issues. The research findings depict the students’ strong wish for a change of the curricula and a turn towards History and Religion as well as an elevation of the Greek historic events, as the History books that have been written and taught at schools over the past years contributed to the downgrading of the Greek national and cultural identity. There is also a students’ strong belief that globalization and the immigrants’ presence in Greece have functioned in a negative way against the Greek ideal. Therefore, an overall change of the educational content could open the path towards the reconstruction of the moral values and the Greek national identity.


2012 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 183-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
James To

The overseas Chinese (OC) form a vast network of powerful interest groups and important political actors capable of shaping the future of China from abroad by transmitting values back to their ancestral homeland (Tu 1991). While the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) welcomes and actively seeks to foster relations with the OC in order to advance China's national interests, some cohorts may be hostile to the regime. In accordance with their distinct demographic and ethnic profiles, the CCP's qiaowu ([Formula: see text], OC affairs) infrastructure serves to entice, co-opt, or isolate various OC groupings. This article summarises the policies for managing different subsets of OC over the past three decades, and argues that through qiaowu, the CCP has successfully unified cooperative groups for China's benefit, while preventing discordant ones from eroding its grip on power.


1951 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
James K. Pollock

In presenting my valedictory to this distinguished Association which has honored me by selecting me as its President, I should like to point out by way of introduction what has happened to this office, and therefore to me, during the past year. I have heard of one of my distinguished predecessors some twenty-five years ago who had little else to do as President of this Association than work all year on his presidential address. This was important work and I have no word of criticism of it. But the Association has changed, and today it leaves to the harried wearer of its presidential toga little time to reflect about the status of political science and his own impact, if any, upon it. An active Association life, now happily centered in our new Washington office, is enough to occupy the full time of your President, and universities as well as this Association might well take note. Therefore, in presenting my own reflections to you this evening in accordance with the custom of our Association, I do so without the benefit of the generous time and scholarly leisure which were the privileges of some of my distinguished predecessors.Nevertheless I do base my presidential address today upon my own active participation in the problems of government, as well as upon my scholarly experience. I have extracted it in part from the dynamics of pulsating political life. It has whatever authority I may possess after having been exposed these twenty-five years to the cross-fire of politics, domestic and foreign, as well as to the benign and corrective influences of eager students and charitable colleagues.


2012 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 975-990 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Leow

Gail Hershatter's presidential addressat the March 2012 Annual Conference of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) encouraged historians to regard gender as a tool with which one navigates a messy, fragmented historical terrain, rather than an enclosed house in which one can “sit back and enjoy the view from a single well-appointed location.” The paper that follows can be regarded as an enthusiastic endorsement. Gender history has made enormous inroads into mainstream academia; “gender is everywhere in the scholarship.” But, as Hershatter observes, “it is not the self-same thing wherever it is to be found.” Each of the stories she told illustrated a complex landscape of political change that was only partially visible or legible from inside the “house of gender,” hard-won though it has been. “Perhaps,” she commented wryly, “we need to get out of the house.” For Chinese historians, “disquiet in the house of gender” promises to be immensely productive, offering fresh views of the junctures in Chinese history in which large political projects affect changes in the smaller projects of everyday life, to arrive at an expanded notion of political change and a more complex understanding of what the revolution meant for Chinese women.


1997 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seoghun Woo

This paper argues that the future direction for the development of Korean industrial relations will evolve through direct interaction between employers and trade unions (either conflictual or cooperative). The government is likely to play a less interventionist role in industrial relations, compared with the past, and to adopt the role of mediator between unions and employers. Characteristics of Korean industrial relations during the pre- 1987 period is firstly examined; four major factors are used to explain the industrial relations practice during this time. Changes after 1987 are also considered. Special consideration is given to interaction between the environment and the three major industrial relations participants, and the interactions between them. Both macro and micro aspects of industrial relations are examined. The special Presidential Address (26/04/1996), known as New Conception of Industrial Relations, is also analysed in terms of its implications for future industrial relations issues in Korea.


1975 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 303-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Basil Hall

Think nowHistory has many cunning passages, contrived corridorsAnd issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,Guides us by vanities. Think nowShe gives when our attention is distractedAnd what she gives, gives with such supple confusionsThat the giving famishes the craving. Gives too lateWhat’s not believed in, or if still believed,In memory only, reconsidered passion.Historians no doubt have problems enough without setting before themselves that ‘memento mori’ from Eliot, who, though he was describing an old man seeking to understand his own past, leaves nevertheless an echo in the mind disturbing to those who practise the historian’s craft. We assume a confidence which in our heart of hearts we do not always, or should not always, possess. Eliot’s words not only demonstrate the difficulty of one man understanding his own past, but also the historian’s difficulty in understanding those whom they select for questioning from among the vast multitudes of the silent dead, whose deeds, artifacts, ideas, passions, hopes and memories have died with them. We dig into the past, obtain data from archives, brush off the objects found, collect statistics, annotate, arrange, describe, establish a chronology – but do we effectively understand the dead, especially since we are affected by our own beliefs, customs and ideologies? We are, of course, all aware of this: we silently scorn the lecturer who raises these diffident hesitations. For we know our duty: we examine all that we can, we describe our findings, we annotate them, we draw conclusions, or leave our demonstrations to speak for themselves. There are reasons, as I shall hope to show, that these considerations – Eliot’s ominous words and our determination not to be disquieted by them – bear upon the subject of this paper, the almost forgotten Alessandro Gavazzi.


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