|
In June 2006 the Asian Studies Association of Australia held its 16th biennial conference in the port city of Wollongong, on the New South
Wales south coast. ASAA is the leading academic organisation in this country for scholars of Asian studies as well as interested teachers,
librarians, public servants and others. It has been holding conferences since 1976. The first ASAA I attended was at the University of Sydney in
1986 and having been to all since then this was my eleventh conference.
I have always enjoyed conferences held outside the state capitals. Those in smaller places tend to be friendlier. I recall ASAA in Armidale
many years ago during mid-winter, with everyone staying on campus in well-heated colleges and venturing out together into the cold for conference
sessions. Last year's Chinese Studies Association of Australia conference at the Chinese Museum in Bendigo, Victoria and the Japanese Studies
Association of Australia's conference in 1999 at the University of Central Queensland, Rockhampton were similarly friendly.
Despite its industrial image Wollongong has a beautiful setting between the mountains and the South Pacific. Although I had driven past it
several times, this was my first visit to the University of Wollongong. It is certainly one of the most attractive campuses in Australia, with a
peaceful bush atmosphere and wildlife, rather like Griffith University in Brisbane. Living in inland Canberra it is always a pleasure to stay by
the sea.
The Wollongong conference was entitled "Asia reconstructed : from critiques of development to postcolonial studies". As usual the actual
sessions did not necessarily have much to do with the theme. The conference was well run, attendance was reasonable and it was a pleasant change
to be on campus rather than in a hotel or convention centre, as has been the trend recently. I gained the impression that Asian studies are
prospering at the University of Wollongong.
I will make no attempt to cover the full range of the conference, but just mention a couple of panels of particular interest. "Rewriting
China" was probably the most controversial I attended. Frank Dikotter of the University of Hong Kong spoke on "China before closure : the golden
age between empire and communism." He challenged the view of China between 1911 and 1949 as being a time of warlordism and disintegration, seeing
it instead as a unique period of diversity and openness to people, goods and ideas. Kam Louie, now also at the University of Hong Kong, talked
about the idea of modern Chinese culture. He discussed the meanings of "modern", "Chinese" and "culture" He said "Chinese" needed to be defined
broadly to include ethnic minorities and the Chinese diaspora, while "Chinese culture" was not something essential and fixed, but had to go beyond
traditional notions of written culture to matters such as cinema, television, kungfu and sex.
Another unusual and interesting panel was on "Visions and apparitions in contemporary China." Ben Penny of ANU, who has carried out research
on Falun Gong at the National Library as a Harold White Fellow, spoke on visions of the children of Falun Gong. Falun Gong websites have recorded
what these children have described as seeing with their celestial or third eye. Jeremy Clarke of ANU talked about apparitions of the Virgin Mary
particularly during the time of the Boxers in 1900. Narratives of such episodes incorporate European and traditional Chinese accounts of miraculous
occurrences. Emily Dunn of the University of Melbourne discussed the role of apparitions in Eastern Lightning, a pseudo-Protestant religious
movement which emerged in Henan Province during the 1990s. The group's website played a major role in making known adherents' testimonies of their
apparitions and dreams.
There were two sessions on "Approaches to biography." Both concentrated on Indonesia but have wider implications. It was pointed out that
Australians have played a disproportionately large role in the writing of biographies about Indonesian political and cultural leaders. There was
lively discussion between the panelists and audience on objectivity and subjectivity in writing biography; whether individual scholars are drawn to
write about personalities similar to their own or become like the people they are studying; to what extent the biographer should delve into the
private life of the subject and whether biography is a "respectable" academic discipline.
Others have written in detail on the two library-related sessions, "Managing research materials in a digital environment" and "Building
research collections for the new Asian studies" so my comments will be brief. Both sessions were highly successful in attracting large and
interested audiences, although competing with several other good panels. Clearly they were topics of interest to scholars. The subtitle of the
first panel "One day your PDFs will be obsolete and you need to know what to do about it" was an inspired choice, as it certainly caught the
attention of many. Between them the two sessions included librarians and several prominent academic speakers. In my experience it is sensible to
include both scholarly and library panelists to draw in a crowd and stimulate useful discussion.
One disappointment was that compared with many previous ASAA conferences, the number of librarians attending was quite small. The National
Library and ANU Library were the only libraries represented, apart from some involvement by Wollongong University Library. Given the importance of
ASAA to Australian libraries with collections and services about Asia it is to be hoped that future conferences will include librarians from around
the country. Such events are a vital part of the interaction between librarians, their readers and potential users of libraries.
|