The Near and The Related: Positioning and Bounding Knowledge Spheres

Abstract

In his keynote lecture for the inaugural event of SFU's Institute for Transpacific Cultural Research, Chua Beng Huat spoke of the difficulty of using Western benchmarks to demarcate a new area of Asian studies. A concept like transnational comes with questions already attached regarding the flow of resources or capital between nations. But which nations? From or towards the Global North or the Global South? Westwards towards the US? Or further East towards China? For Huat and the founders of the Institute, if they were to open up new areas of research and discussion, it would be necessary to create a new term, inter-Asian, as well as a new methodology, Asia as Method.