ASIAN STUDIES CONFERENCE JAPAN1997 INAUGURAL MEETING
The inaugural meeting of the Asian Studies Conference Japan was held in October
1997 at Sophia University, Ichigaya Campus. The meeting was opened by Professor
Linda Grove, Faculty of Comparative Culture, Sophia University. Below are panel
abstracts and the titles of papers presented at the conference. A short businessmeeting followed the academic presentations.
PANEL ABSTRACTS
I. Cultures of Capitalist Institutions in Contemporary Asian Economies For
well over a decade capitalist economies in Asia have been the fastest growing in theglobal system. Standard cultural accounts attribute their operation to a priori
assumptions concerning the cultural heritage of Asian societies such as
Confucianism and Asian values that are said to ensure discipline and cooperation.
The papers on this panel eschew the Orientalist assumption inherent in suchaccounts. Instead they draw on ethnographic fieldwork to examine how suchcapitalist institutions as legitimacy, labor, and entrepreneurship are (re)produced
through historically contingent interactions of states, social practices, anddiscourses in specific economies.
Cultures of Capitalist Institutions in Contemporary Asian Economies•••The State and Legitimation of Commerce in Vietnam, Shaun Malarney,
International Christian University
Discursive Shifts and the Contradictions of Capitalist Practice: Meritocracyand Individualism in Japanese High Schools, David Slater, Sophia
University
From Pre-Communist Bourgeoisie to Post-Communist Entrepreneurship:
The Social Reproduction of Chinese Business Families, David Wank,Sophia University

Discussant, Maruyama Makoto, Tokyo University
II. States and Empires: Reconstructions of Asian History in the TwentiethCentury This panel seeks to locate historiography in history. It looks at the ways inwhich the enterprises of nation-building and empire-building have influenced thewriting of history in twentieth-century Asia. Focusing on the experience of thecolonizers, the colonized, and those who experienced colonialism only indirectly,
the papers suggest ways in which national histories and traditions have been
constructed and re-constructed to serve contemporary needs and interests. The

panel highlights these shifting constructions of history and explores the political
implications of current attempts to write post-Orientalist histories of Asia.
Nations and Empires: Reconstructions of Asian History in the Twentieth Century••Time, Timelessness, and Space in Asian National Histories, Prasenjit
Duara, University of Chicago
The King' Manpower: Politics and the Construction of History in Early 20thCentury Siam, Koizumi Junko, TokyoUniversity of Foreign Studies•The Politics of Memory: Plastic Confucianism and the Reinvention ofPatriarchy in Singapore, John Clammer, Sophia University

Discussant, Dru Gladney, University of Hawaii
Asian Studies Conference Japan (ASCJ), c/o Institute of Asian
Cultural Studies
International Christian University Email: ASCJ Fax: 0422-33-3633
ASCJ Homepage

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