Abstract
Representatives from the social sciences and cultural studies continue to exhibit mutual reservations and sensitivities when they encounter each other in the field of Area Studies. This is particularly so with regard to research on Asia, where interdisciplinarity is often simply paid lip service rather than utilized as a serious opportunity for collaboration. Given this background, this chapter discusses various approaches to describing the sub-regions of East and Southeast Asia. It argues that the communicative construction of areas is a process subject to dialectical movements of de- and reterritorialization, which should be examined as issues of equal empirical rank. Using the term “reflexive essentialism”, the chapter aims to encourage a more systematic reflection on simultaneous entrenchments and essentialist self-assurances from an interdisciplinary perspective.
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Holbig, H. (2017). Reflecting the Moving Target of Asia. In: Mielke, K., Hornidge, AK. (eds) Area Studies at the Crossroads. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59834-9_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59834-9_17
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