Orientalist Biases Research Articles

Postcolonial Play in the Orient's Sandbox

AbstractIn this introduction to the special double issue, the guest editors outline their vision behind the work by giving a short overview of the orientalist bias in game studies, the postcolonialist turn in the field, and the need for South Asia‐centric scholarship to contribute to and invite South‐South discourse in games scholarship. This short introduction also introduces the various contributions to this double issue which range from academic articles to book reviews to comments.

Review: Genocide in Libya: Shar, A Hidden Colonial History, by Ali Abdullatif Ahmida

Review: <i>Genocide in Libya: Shar, A Hidden Colonial History</i>, by Ali Abdullatif Ahmida

Unburying the Orientalist Gaze of an African-American Soldier in Home

ABSTRACT Examining America’s racially-integrated army during the Korean War, Toni Morrison’s Home (2012) debunks 1950s orientalist biases and views of transnational supremacy. Further, it interrogates domestic nationalism and racism. Protagonist Frank Money’s social status along with his complacent gaze at race and gender changes according to the disparate geopolitical environments he encounters. His self-serving monologue confirms his identity as a “strong good Self” in both Korea and America. Therein, he metaphorically consumes two parallel and sexually victimized female characters: the Korean girl and Ycidra. His unconscious craving for self-vindication incurs a naïve, self-made redemption, exposing his home’s precarious foundation.

Mea Culpa: re-reading nineteenth-century colonial-era works on South East Asia as confessional texts

ABSTRACTThat nineteenth-century colonial-era writings have been rightly criticized for their Orientalist bias is no longer a new idea, thanks to the work done by scholars like Edward Said. But they leave us with the question of how they can and should be read by scholars today, what information can be derived from them, and how and why these works are still seen by some as being among the foundational texts of South East Asian studies. In this paper I argue that to dismiss colonial-era works (such as the writings of Raffles, Crawfurd, Roberts, Bickmore, etc.) as ‘half-truths’ or even ‘fake scholarship’ misses the point: these texts reveal more about the authors themselves and the states and institutions they served, and tell us much about Orientalist scholarship’s intimate entanglements with power and colonial-capitalism. They remind us that the earliest writings on South East Asia were produced for other ends apart from knowledge-gathering, and that such works were part and parcel of a more complicated process of empire-building. For South East Asian scholars today, a critical re-reading of these works offers an opportunity to critique Empire ‘from within’, and the opportunity for non-Western scholars to rethink and rewrite a critical history of the West as well, while prompting deeper questions about how South East Asian studies emerged in the first place.

Ibn Khaldūn: A Philosopher for Times of Crisis

Ibn Khaldūn:A Philosopher for Times of Crisis Tamara Albertini (bio) I am most grateful to Philosophy East and West for publishing a special issue on philosopher Ibn Khaldūn (732–808 a.h./a.d. 1332–1406). The time is particularly propitious since his ideas are currently permeating the political and cultural climate of his native North Africa. The team contributing to the present issue comprises six authors from four different continents. Ridha Chennoufi and Mehdi Saiden are philosophers from the University of Tunis (Tunisia), the city in which Ibn Khaldūn was born. M. Akif Kayapınar is a political scientist teaching at Istanbul Sehir University (Turkey), while Jeremy Kleidosty does research at the Centre of Excellence on Reason and Religious Recognition, University of Helsinki (Finland). Cynthia Scheopner is a Ph.D. recipient from the Department of Philosophy and a coordinator in the College of Social Sciences at the University of Hawai'i. Finally, Lenn E. Goodman is a philosopher from Vanderbilt University and an expert on Jewish and Islamic thought. The diversity among these scholars is in itself a testament to Ibn Khaldūn, whose philosophy has inspired scholars in different countries and of various academic backgrounds. In one of his most recent publications, Algerian writer Kamel Daoud includes a short text in which he imagines contemporary travelers from different Arab countries sharing how their revolutions began (or are still being halted). After all travelers finish making their profound statements about the massive failures of their respective governments, they notice that one among them had remained silent during the entire conversation. They press him hard until "The traveler cleared his voice and whispered: 'I am the unknown people. The wandering Arab. The continuation of history. Volume II of the scream and the mason of a future Granada. Some call me Ibn Khaldūn'" (my translation).1 How does Ibn Khaldūn, a philosopher born in Tunis more than six centuries ago, end up playing a role in the coming-to-terms with the "Arab Spring"? It has become fashionable to call Ibn Khaldūn a Muslim Machiavelli, Max Weber, Hegel, or a combination thereof. While these comparisons help the nonspecialist to get a quick sense of where some of his significant accomplishments lie—political philosophy, economy, sociology, and philosophy of history—one needs to be careful not to introduce an established [End Page 651] (Western) figure to give status to the unknown or less known (non-Western) author. The Orientalist bias in such an approach needs no further comment. Ibn Khaldūn was a celebrity and was both recognized and attacked in his world for the originality of his ideas long before the entrance onto the world stage of the Western figures whose counterpart he is alleged to be. What makes him significant is not that ideas similar to his have found acceptance or are deemed exceptional intellectual contributions in another or later tradition. As M. Akif Kayapınar proposes in the present issue of this publication, it may at any rate be best to focus on differences rather than on similarities and parallels. An important lesson of comparative philosophy, and of intercultural studies in general, is not to value those traits primarily in another philosophical tradition that carry weight in one's own. On the one hand it betrays an uncritical mindset vis-à-vis one's own tradition, taking it to be a universal standard of sorts, while on the other it adumbrates the appreciation for intellectual and scientific discoveries, theories, and observations for which there are no known equivalents or that are tackled differently from the way they are in one's home culture. However, to indicate, as Tunisian philosopher Ridha Chennoufi does in this issue, that both Machiavelli and Ibn Khaldūn "help us understand reality as it is and not as we would like it to be" is, culturally speaking, making a neutral statement. It only implies that the two authors are consulted in their respective traditions in times of crisis. In other words, they are relevant since each plays an essential role for the political analysis in his society of origin and neither one is great because the other has already...

Polsko-postkolonialne podobieństwa? Recepcja tłumaczonej literatury postkolonialnej w Polsce (1970–2010)

Many studies of postcolonial translation feature analyses of translational and publishing decisions and their potential influences on the relationships between the colonizers and the colonized (e.g. Batchelor, Jacquemond, Spivak, Tymoczko). This article proposes a different methodology, focusing instead on the presence of translated postcolonial literature in Poland through a systematic, discursive study of its reception. Based on the results of an unpublished doctoral study, which analysed nearly a thousand Polish reviews discussing African, Indian, Caribbean and Middle Eastern writing and published between 1970 and 2010, the article demonstrates that Polish reviewers increasingly often affirm Polish-postcolonial similarities, even if Orientalist othering discourses remain present in the reviews. This finding contributes to timely debates about Polish self-perceptions. Emphasising otherness or exoticism of postcolonial texts and contexts, the reviewers tend to write from the position of Europeans and identify with Orientalist biases. Yet, the emerging discourse comparing postcolonial experiences of migration, independence struggle and post-independence complexes with Poland’s own past and present offers an interesting counterbalance to a long-standing tradition of othering perceptions. Focusing on specific similarities, as opposed to abstract universalist discourses of shared humanity, some reviewers seem to think of Poland and themselves in postcolonial terms. Furthermore, the article contributes to scholarship on Polish postcolonialism. Numerous incisive studies examined the Partitions of Poland (1795-1918), Nazi occupation (1939-1945) and Soviet domination (1945-89) in terms of colonisation, at the same time employing postcolonial tools to revisit issues of Polish domination over Belarusians, Lithuanians and Ukrainians, as well as Polish attitudes to non-European colonised peoples (Bakula, Buchholtz, Cavanagh, Fiut, Gosk, Janion, Klobucka, Kolodziejczyk, Skorczewski, Thompson, Wojda and others). Notably, the themes of Poland’s status as a colonised and colonising country within the immediate region, on the one hand, and Polish perceptions of non-European postcolonial peoples, on the other, tend to be explored separately (cf. Wajda 2015). This article, however, suggests that a Polish postcolonial self-image might be emerging in response to an encounter with translated postcolonial writing and generally argues for bringing the two thematic strands together to explore further interdependencies between Poland’s postcolonialism and Polish attitudes to non-European postcolonials.

Hitmazrehutor Becoming of the East: Re-Orienting Israeli Social Mapping

Through developing of the concept of hitmazrehut, the article highlights avenues for decolonializing and de-orientalizing sociopolitical theory and practice in Israel/Palestine. Hitmazrehut (literally ‘becoming of the East’) is understood as the transformation of relations between space, identity, and narrative through an intersectionality framework of social movement activism and intellectual counter-discourse. Exposing the intersections among sites of marginality as well as cultivating localized interpretations of identity (delinked from the orientalist positing of Israel in the ‘West’) would contribute to the possibility of the formation of transformative coalition building across national boundaries. Hitmazrehut is both an outcome and a necessary process for enabling geopolitical reframing. The article begins with the ahistorical and orientalist biases of sociological inquiry into the region. It continues with an analysis of efforts to localize and re-orient Jewish identity as well as the Mizrahi discursive critique of epistemological violence guiding sociological scholarship, double consciousness and patterns of ethnic passing.

Doing sociology in South East Asia

Orientalism continues to manifest itself in the humanities and social sciences today in a way that is different from the 19th and early 20th century. This presents challenges of doing social theory. Orientalism defines the content of education in the schools and universities of the world in such a way that the origins of ideas and concepts and the question of alternative perspectives are not thematized. It is this lack of thematization that explains the neglect of non-European thinkers and ideas. They are rarely given the same attention as European and American social theorists such as Marx, Weber and Durkheim. Furthermore, it should be stressed that Orientalism is a thought-style that is not restricted to Europeans or Americans. The social sciences are taught in the Third World too in a Eurocentric manner, contributing to the alienation of social scientists there from local and regional scholarly traditions. At the same time, university education in these countries generally does not attempt to correct the Orientalist bias by introducing non-Western thinkers. It is as if no significant ideas emerged from outside of the Western areas during the formative period of the social sciences beginning in the 19th century. There is a need to universalize the canon. This is the topic of this article.

“Where is the time to sleep?” Orientalism and citizenship in Mahasweta Devi’s writing

This article discusses the close relationship between Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi’s literary work and her activism in support of indigenous people in India, and considers the two activities as interventions in the field of law. Devi’s emphasis on the continuity between colonial and postcolonial legal frameworks invites us to look at law as a governing discourse that stigmatized Adivasis. The criminalization of indigenous people via the Criminal Tribes Act (1871) and the presumption that they belonged to a “state of nature” form part of an orientalist bias against the tribals that was legally sustained during colonialism and also through Nehru’s discourses on the modern nation. Through analysis of the short story “Operation? – Bashai Tudu”, where law appears as a non-democratic instrument for governing the poor, and using extracts from a hitherto unpublished conversation between the author and Devi, it argues that Devi’s work can be considered as a crucial analytical tool with which to explore the genealogy of Adivasi marginalization.

A METHODOLOGICAL OPPORTUNITY: CHRISTIANS IN THE UNITED STATES INTERPRETING THE QUR’AN

The Qur’ān is Islam’s Holy Book and has been available to non-Muslim interpreters since the 8th century. Three negative interpretative paradigms derived from John of Damascus (676- 749), Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) and Martin Luther (1483-1546) continue to inform many Christians about the Qur’ān and shape many Western views of Islam and attitudes toward Muslims. Other Christians have offered some basic insights about the Qur’ān through too brief comments prefacing translations of the Qur’ān or explicating Qur’anic themes. Others have written about the Qur’ān yet introduced questionable judgments about it and Islam generally. Today, it is essential for Christians to interpret the Qur’ān to non-Muslims without Orientalist biases. Efforts such as those by Miroslav Volf (Allah: A Christian Response, 2011) and my Opening the Qur’an (2008) point toward developing a comprehensive hermeneutical perspective. In the paper I propose a methodological approach derived from my teaching experience with largely Christian and secularized undergraduate and graduate school students in the United States of America. Part One sets the interpretative contexts in the United States. A proposed methodology in four steps constitutes Part Two. I adapt insights from Muslim scholars such as Farid Esack, Fazlur Rahman, Ingrid Mattson, and Mahmoud Ayub. Part III proposes that Muslim and non- Muslim scholars may employ cyberspace technology to continue fruitful discussions about our respective scriptures.

Imperial Boundaries: Cossack Communities and Empire-Building in the Age of Peter the Great , and: Donskoe kazachestvo v period ot vziatiia Azova do vystupleniia S. Razina, 1637-1667 (The Don Cossacks from the Taking of Azov to the Razin Uprising, 1637-67), and: Russkaia tserkov´ i kazachestvo v epokhu Petra I (The Russian Church and the Cossacks in the Age of Peter

Reviewed by: Imperial Boundaries: Cossack Communities and Empire-Building in the Age of Peter the Great, and: Donskoe kazachestvo v period ot vziatiia Azova do vystupleniia S. Razina, 1637-1667 (The Don Cossacks from the Taking of Azov to the Razin Uprising, 1637-67), and: Russkaia tserkov´ i kazachestvo v epokhu Petra I (The Russian Church and the Cossacks in the Age of Peter I) Brian Davies Brian J. Boeck , Imperial Boundaries: Cossack Communities and Empire-Building in the Age of Peter the Great. xii + 255 pp., maps. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. ISBN-13 978-0521514637. $102.00. Oleg Iur´evich Kuts , Donskoe kazachestvo v period ot vziatiia Azova do vystupleniia S. Razina, 1637-1667 (The Don Cossacks from the Taking of Azov to the Razin Uprising, 1637-67). 456 pp., maps. St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2009. ISBN-13 978-5860076136. Aleksei Gennad´evich Shkvarov , Russkaia tserkov´ i kazachestvo v epokhu Petra I (The Russian Church and the Cossacks in the Age of Peter I). 112 pp. St. Petersburg: Aleteiia, 2009. ISBN-13 978-5914192676. The subject of the Don Cossack Host and its relations with Muscovy and the Crimean Tatars, Nogais, and Kalmyks has always interested readers of Russian history. Some of what has been published on the subject has been distorted by nationalist and Orientalist biases and by resentments born of the Civil War and White Emigration. But serious scholarly study of Don Cossack history has also been reinvigorated in recent years by the publication in 1998 of N. A. Mininkov's Donskoe kazachestvo v epokhu pozdnego srednevekov´ia (do 1671 g.), which showed that very thorough archival research could reveal a mass of new and more accurate information on the subject.1 Oleg Kuts's 2009 monograph Donskoe kazachestvo will likely be recognized as one of the more valuable studies on the Don Cossack Host in the 17th century. It is grounded in extensive research in the archives of the Ambassadors' Chancellery (Posol´skii prikaz) and Military Chancellery (Razriadnyi prikaz), and Kuts uses archival materials to relate many illustrative incidents and to recover the "voices" of Don Cossacks; this is a book made more concrete and vivid by having many people and incidents in it. Kuts is familiar with the published literature on the subject, so his opening [End Page 983] chapter on historiography and sources is comprehensive and an indispensable introduction to the subject and its main controversies. He writes clearly and engagingly, and his three maps are detailed but easy to follow. The history of the Don Cossacks is an enormous and complex subject.2 To treat it in any but the broadest and most cursory manner requires focusing on particular problems or on a particular period. Kuts notes that past studies on the Don Cossacks, especially those published in the Soviet period, tended to focus on the "military and political history of the Don, often examining Cossackdom through the prism of revolt and antigovernment uprising, in which it was a kind of 'vanguard' of the popular masses" (3). But this approach tended to limit study to a few episodes in Cossack history and to ignore the long periods of peaceful relations between Cossackdom and Muscovy. Kuts therefore chooses to focus on the state of the Don Host over the 1637-67 period—from the Don Cossacks' capture of Azov to the outbreak of the great rebellion led by Stepan Razin. This period saw the establishment of close relations between the Don Host and Moscow, with the state acknowledging particular privileges for the Don Host and taking great interest in Don affairs. For the Don Cossacks themselves this was a period of heightened commercial and military power and offered the opportunity to articulate their political and cultural identity vis-à-vis Muscovy. Focusing on this period allows Kuts to examine Cossack society "not only in its moments of extremity but in its ordinary life" (3-4). The great upheavals framing this period—the Azov crisis and the Razin rebellion—are not covered in any detail in this volume. They have already received much attention from other scholars (Kuts himself has published before on the Azov occupation), and including these subjects would have greatly expanded the...

Sociology of Africa: A Non-Orientalist Approach to African, Africana, and Black Studies

Whichever nomenclature is used to describe the study of black peoples and the African Diaspora – whether Africana, Black or African Studies – the approach that is taken is critically important to academia in terms of its potential to provide a direct response and challenge to the intrinsic Eurocentric and Orientalist bias of the US educational system. Unlike other area and ethnic studies disciplines, this field was established as a link between the community and academia. However, in recent history, approaches have become polarized and the field has lost momentum as a consequence of arbitrary boundaries and politicized knowledge. In this article, the Orientalist perspective and Afro-centric knowledge in Black Studies are examined in their historical and political context. This analysis culminates in a proposed approach to use the Sociology of Africa as a new model for Afro-centric knowledge and teaching in this field.

What do the flyers say? Embedded ‘Orientalist’ constructions in social work study abroad programs in the United States

We conducted qualitative content analysis, using the theoretical lens of Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism, of nine study abroad flyers to India and Egypt sponsored by social work schools in the United States. We show that the promotional content of these flyers cater to Orientalist biases; we recommend measures to amend it.

Establishing roots at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport Garden: Landscapes of national identity

With the understanding that the planning of public space is a discursive practice, this article examines the cultural meanings encoded in the design of the grounds around Israel's main airport, Ben Gurion International. Using the example of Terminal 3, the article discusses how the State of Israel leverages landscaped space as an ideological tool in the struggle for control over symbolic expressions of national identity. The design decisions here are framed in the context of the all important Zionist trope of ‘redemption’, or land reclamation in the image of Zion. The airport's ‘Seven Species Garden’ is explained as part of a widespread mythology of an autochthonous people/land bond, deeply rooted in Jewish-Israeli consciousness, which draws upon the Bible for territorial legitimacy and national identity. Finally, the Orientalist bias betrayed in the airport grounds effectively bars entry of the county's largest minority to the ‘gateway’ of Israeli national space because such references are based on ethnicity.

Representation, Distribution, and Formation of Sexuality in the Photography of Araki Nobuyoshi

The aim of this essay is to suggest a way to see and discuss a body of Araki Nobuyoshi's later photographic work that centers on images of bound and naked women. Araki has prolifically exhibited and published provocative photographs for over thirty years in Japan and for some years in the West. While it seems difficult to differentiate his images from crude exploitation and general degradation of women, his photographs attract many female fans. I argue that we are invited and directed to see his photographs in ways that “engender” the viewer. I focus on the “Araki industry,” which has made orchestrated efforts to produce hundreds of publications and a self-promoting discourse. I also examine how a personal cult is promoted through the sale of these images, and the indispensable role this self-promoting discourse plays in sustaining this industry, while more challenging and serious critiques are downplayed and sometimes do not make their way into print. Araki's recent exhibitions were enthusiastically received in the West. A series of photographs of bound naked women in kimonos dazzles Western eyes. I proceed to analyze orientalist contradictions based on the Western reviewers' double standard. To discuss sexual images such as Araki's work in a dualist perspective, Japan versus the West, only leads to exoticization of the cultural other. But their orientalist bias does not interrupt the photographer's project. Instead, any kind of Western attention is welcomed as proof of the photographer's success in the West. Araki's work has been reviewed not only as sexually excessive but also as desolately asexual. Araki's photographs are open to both readings, while other readings are not encouraged. In fact sexual excess and sexual desolation, as defined from a male point of view and supported by big sale, are not very different from each other for women. There is a magnetic field around Araki's work, where smooth and profitable distribution on the art market is powerfully promoted. Any interference with this process is driven back, and any supportive element, including orientalist fantasy, is appropriated. The photographs for exhibition and publication are carefully selected. If our sexuality is formulated through exposure to sexual images, analyzing photographic work such as Araki's requires that we focus on the whole process from production to distribution and consumption.

The Making of a Poem: Rainer Maria Rilke, Stephen Spender, and Yang Mu

One of formidable challenges for comparatists today is reconfiguration of Goethe's term Weltliteratur (1827) in age of globalization. In analyzing making of poetry, Stephen Owen raised point about negative effects of Western influence on modern Chinese poetry in his essay The of Global Influence: Is World Poetry? (1990). He suspected that Bei Dao had been selling the state's brutality and the suffering of oppression in China to West in highly translatable language (Owen, Anxiety 29). In so doing, poet sacrificed poetry to his own self-interest. Owen's views about loss of and decline in contemporary poetry from mainland China aroused heated debates and were harshly criticized, most notably by Michelle Yeh and Rey Chow, as symptomatic of Orientalist bias (Yeh, Chayi 94-96; Chow, Writing 1-26). Yeh found Owen's accusations self-contradictory, as result of his desire for difference. In insisting on cultural difference derived from his expertise in classical Chinese poetry, Owen in fact gave rise to suppression of internal differences within Chinese lyric tradition (Yeh 95). She saw in Owen's criticism his worries about disappearance of difference that clearly marks out contemporary poetry in China from that produced in rest of (Yeh 96). Rey Chow followed up on this point and argued that Owen actually suffers from anxiety over his own intellectual position as Sinologist (Chow, Writing 3). From these critics' points of view, Owen's essentialist notion of Chineseness in poetry is common in Westerners' Orientalist biases, which imprison the other in static past. In retrospect, although Owen's reading of high translatability of some modern poems as sign of deculturation is problematic, he did nonetheless remind readers of cultural hegemony of West. Instead of celebrating an innocent synthesis of all literatures in world, he warned them of pitfalls of taking for granted local (Anglo-European) tradition as universal literary model for developing poetry (Owen, Anxiety 28). Bearing in mind controversy caused by Owen's provocative question, David Damrosch put forward possible answer to question What is literature? based on study of circulation of literary texts via translation. According to Damrosch, all works begin in their original language, but a work only has an effective life as literature whenever, and wherever, it is actively present within literary system beyond that of its original culture (Damrosch 4). He indirectly endorses Susan Bassnett's suggestion that translation is a major shaping force for change in history of culture because it enhances mobility of text (Bassnett 10). To approach an understanding of world literature, questions contemporary discourse needs to address are not only about longevity of work, but also about its evolution across cultures. Doubtless, our rapidly globalizing of twenty-first century facilitates speedy travel of literary theory and practice. In Traveling (1982), Edward Said explicates ways theories are applied in any mature writing and iterates importance of critical recognition (Said, World 226-247). He sees this in Raymond Williams's way of using theory consciously to qualify, shape and refine his borrowings from Lukacs and (Said, World 241). In manner of influence studies, Said traces how Lukacs's Theory of Novel (1920) and History and Class Consciousness (1923) affected his European students and readers, more prominent among them Lucien Goldmann in Paris and Raymond Williams in Cambridge. Adopted in another place and at different time, theory appeared to Said to have lost its original revolutionary vigor and sedimented into kind of dogmatic orthodoxy. Years later, Said admitted bias in his early formulation and revised his arguments in his 1994 essay Traveling Theory Reconsidered (Said, Reflections 436-452). …

Zionism, Orientalism, and the Palestinians

The self-critical approach applied by Israel's "New Historians" tothe 1948 war needs to be extended to the study of Palestinian history as a whole. Harking back to earlier periods and other sources, theauthor exposes the Orientalist bias of the traditional Israeli historiography of Palestine by focusing on three of its common contentions: that there was no distinct Palestinian nationalism, that Palestiniansociety was primitive and backward, and that the speed of the Palestinian collapse in 1948 was a function of inherent flaws in the society.

The X-Files: Past and Present Portrayals of China's Alien 'Legal System'

In the last twenty years, China has embarked on unprecedented legal reforms. China's entrance into the WTO, its emergence as a major economic and political power, and its ongoing human rights abuses have all focused further attention on its legal system. Given the explosion of information about the legal system and the pace of change, Chinese legal scholars face a daunting challenge simply to obtain and present an accurate view of the system. But we face an even more daunting challenge in trying to analyze and conceptualize such changes. Reforms have undermined traditional understandings of China's legal system. Many old conceptual frameworks are obsolete or require major overhaul, and new categories and theories are desperately needed. In Part I of this Article, I examine the recent attempt of the prominent comparative law scholar Ugo Mattei to develop a new taxonomy that takes into consideration developments in the legal systems of China and other Asian countries in an effort to bring them into the mainstream of comparative law. While I applaud his motives and share his concerns about the need to bring Chinese legal studies into the mainstream of comparative law, I question his results. Mattei wishes to correct the Orientalist biases of prior taxonomies, but ends up imposing his own Orientalist views on Asian legal systems. In Part II of this Article, I discuss what seems to be a tendency in much foreign scholarship to portray China's legal system in excessively negative terms and to unduly dismiss developments and trends suggesting that China is moving toward some form of rule of law. I suggest that what is needed is a more balanced approach, informed by a broader historical and comparative perspective. Part III concludes with some observations about teaching and researching Chinese law.

Women in developing countries: Methodological and theoretical considerations

This study explores some of the theoretical and methodological problems encountered by researchers studying women in developing countries. Based on research in the field in Iran the paper opens with a brief review of the literature describing criticism of quantitative and qualitative methods and of the feminist perspective that led to the questioning that revealed the gender bias in research. The main portion of the paper begins with a look at the limitations of quantitative data in the form of census data that fails to identify a large proportion of womens work in Iran and other developing countries especially since many women view their work as unproductive and in the form of structured interviews which in Iran must take place in womens residences in the presence of their husbands. Structured interviews fail to acknowledge the complexity and diversity of womens lives in Iran. This methodology also ignores differences from Western models of such basic activities as marriage mothering and labor market participation. Concepts presented in the literature which emphasize the centrality of Islam in womens lives but not its diversity and which present an orientalist bias and react to the impact of colonization are also inadequate for use in grasping the complexity of womens lives in Iran. An alternative approach was used therefore that combined various methods (participant observation informal guided interviews case studies focus group discussions and visual methods) to illuminate womens lives. The paper concludes by describing how each aspect of this alternate approach to data collection exposes the complexities of womens experiences.