Working on the Boundaries of Political Science and Ethnic Studies

Abstract

Convergence 2 A & Q A&Q Political Science and the Study of Global Asias It is certainly desirable for a social science to be rigorous, empirical and seek general rules of human behavior. But as Aristotle explained, it should not try to achieve a rigor that goes beyond what is possible given the limitations inherent in the subject matter. In fact, most of what is truly useful for policy is context-­ specific, culture-­ bound and non-­ generalizable. The typical article appearing today in a leading journal like the American Political Science Review contains a lot of complex-­looking math, whose sole function is often to formalize a behavioral rule that everyone with common sense understands must be true. What is missing is any deep knowledge about the subtleties and nuances of how foreign societies work, knowledge that would help us better predict the behavior of political actors, friendly and hostile, in the broader world. —­ Francis Fukuyama, “How Academia Failed the Nation: The Decline of Regional Studies” (2004) What does or should an “area studies political scientist” do? Within the past two decades, this question has at times led to heated debates. For some, area studies research is at best the source of footnotes that more analytically oriented political scientists may employ fruitfully and effectively. For others, “political science” embodies pompous pretense in its own name and, at its worst, profoundly misrepresents politics as real human beings ordinarily understand it, experience it, and believe it. These two caricatures could be readily dismissed if they were to have no impact on careers, appointments, funding decisions, or collegiality within universities. —­ Jorge I. Domínguez, “Don’t Stay Home: The Utility of Area Studies for Political Science Scholarship” (2009) Southeast Asian studies and political science are compatible. It will always be possible to define these two fields in exclusionary ways. At the extreme, they can be made to refute one another, methodologically and epistemologically. Yet there is no reason why one cannot study an area and do political science at A & Q 3 the same time—­ and satisfy criteria for quality research on both sides of that polemicized divide, depending on what those criteria are.­ —­ Donald K. Emmerson, “Southeast Asia in Political Science: Terms of Enlistment” (2008) 1. Do you perceive any conflicts or even incompatibilities between (1) the methods commonly used in political science and the study of specific Asian regions and/or (2) the methods commonly used in political science and the study of specific Asian diasporic populations ? If so, what might this suggest about the relationship between (1) disciplinary and area knowledges and/or (2) disciplinary and cultural knowledges? 2. Conversely, in what ways can distinctive epistemological and methodological approaches work together to create new models for both political science and the study of Asia and various Asian diasporas? 3. Certain institutional presuppositions and conditions of knowledge formation can enable or block, facilitate or discourage, productive interchanges between political science and area studies and/ or ethnic studies. In what ways have you had to negotiate field and subfield, discipline and area study, in your own research on specific Asian regions or specific Asian populations? Working on the Boundaries of Political Science and Ethnic Studies Fred Lee My claim is a rough parallel to a claim Donald Emmerson makes in the introduction to this A&Q: there is no reason why one cannot do both ethnic studies and political science well, depending on how one articulates the boundaries and relationships between them. Now, I do not want to overstate the case for differentiating them, but I do conceive of these fields as relatively distinctive, epistemologically and methodologically speaking . We might even find a polemicized divide between political science and ethnic studies, one analogous to the distinction Francis Fukuyama’s epigraph draws between political science and area studies. But we would have to look harder to find it, especially if we turn to the (once again 4 A & Q relative) distinction between Asian studies as an area studies and Asian American studies as an ethnic studies. Political science engages more with Asian studies than Asian American studies due to the interdisciplinary orientations of its subfields.1 Scholars of comparative politics and international relations who specialize in Asian countries or regions have...