Decentering the West: Reflections on Asia as a method

Abstract (English)

The critical theorist Kuan-Hsing Chen (2010) in his monograph "Asia as Method" has emphatically highlighted the importance of an analytical framework that engages with the Asian experience as an intellectual as well as a physical locale. This is an important project for anthropology not only because it enables researchers to recast their ethnographic practices and research paradigms through an Asia-focused lens but also provides the discipline with the tools to come to terms with its own colonial sins as it engages with decolonization in the post-colonial and settler colonial states. Based on this critical research methodology put forth by Chen (2010), anthropologists Nayantara Appleton and Caroline Bennett have invited scholars of and in Asia to develop intellectual projects that are ‘not in opposition to the perceived “West”, but rather one grounded in multiple ways and from multiple locales within Asia’ (Appleton & Bennett, 2021, p. xix). As a young queer female doctoral researcher being trained at Aotearoa New Zealand and studying the social, political and scientific aspects of rice fortification in contemporary post-colonial India from a social anthropological lens, I find this Asia-focused methodological approach to be hugely beneficial to think through epistemological and ontological questions related to the legacy and the future of the discipline. By exploring this methodological approach where Asia is not just highlighted as a physical locale but also as a vivacious intellectual space, I hope to enliven the diverse historical and empirical experiences of Asia. This will allow us to make space for alternative methodological imaginations which will in turn assist us in decolonizing our knowledge production practises and decentring the West. However in doing so, my intention is not to deny the Western scholars because to ignore their academic and intellectual musings would be to deny their immense efforts that have helped shape scholarly debates in the field of anthropology. Instead, following the footsteps of the Pacific Studies scholar Teresia Teaiwa’s (2014, pp. 52–53) evocative articulation, I call for ‘engaging broadly with theory and theorists of all kinds’ who ‘are part of our genealogies of thinking’ but emphatically through a grounding on and within Asia – all whilst being informed and learning from Indigenous scholars who make space for inclusive research practises, diverse cultural perspectives, and non-Western epistemologies.