Diversity Reading List

Publisher’s Note:

Centering his analysis in the dynamic forces of modern East Asian history, Kuan-Hsing Chen recasts cultural studies as a politically urgent global endeavor. He argues that the intellectual and subjective work of decolonization begun across East Asia after the Second World War was stalled by the cold war. At the same time, the work of deimperialization became impossible to imagine in imperial centers such as Japan and the United States. Chen contends that it is now necessary to resume those tasks, and that decolonization, deimperialization, and an intellectual undoing of the cold war must proceed simultaneously. Combining postcolonial studies, globalization studies, and the emerging field of “Asian studies in Asia,” he insists that those on both sides of the imperial divide must assess the conduct, motives, and consequences of imperial histories.

Chen is one of the most important intellectuals working in East Asia today; his writing has been influential in Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and mainland China for the past fifteen years. As a founding member of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society and its journal, he has helped to initiate change in the dynamics and intellectual orientation of the region, building a network that has facilitated inter-Asian connections. Asia as Method encapsulates Chen’s vision and activities within the increasingly “inter-referencing” East Asian intellectual community and charts necessary new directions for cultural studies.

Abstract: I argue that the phenomenon of “othering”—the stratification of identities into in-group and out-group by the norm and the consequent marginalization of the out-group—has created another problem which can be referred to as “re-othering,” that is, when the victim of othering responds with disidentification strategy to counter identity constructed for them by the norm. I use the context of the residents—the legitimate people in the city of Calabar, Nigeria and the Issakaba—the marginalized other, to show how negative identity construction has been used to discriminate against the homeless poor in the city of Calabar. I explore the conditions that compelled the homeless poor to reconstruct their imposed identity Issakaba to Skolombo and contend that it was a fightback strategy. I then employ a new concept, de-othering, as a conversational strategy that might be able to address the mutually opposing negative identification and disidentification constructions in Calabar specifically and in other places where similar problem emerges.

Abstract:
African Philosophy and Environmental Conservation is about the unconcern for, and marginalisation of, the environment in African philosophy. The issue of the environment is still very much neglected by governments, corporate bodies, academics and specifically, philosophers in the sub-Saharan Africa. The entrenched traditional world-views which give a place of privilege to　one thing over the other, as for example men over women, is the same attitude that privileges humans over the environment. This culturally embedded orientation makes it difficult for stake holders in Africa to identify and confront the modern day challenges posed by the neglect of the environment. In a continent where deep-rooted cultural and religious practices, as well as widespread ignorance, determine human conduct towards the environment, it becomes difficult to curtail much less overcome the threats to our environment. It shows that to a large extent, the African cultural privileging of men over women and of humans over the environment somewhat exacerbates and makes the environmental crisis on the continent intractable. For example, it raises the challenging puzzle as to why women in Africa are the ones to plant the trees and men are the ones to fell them.

Summary: Argues that Morimura's portraits achieve something that depictions of the female body rarely can. Morimura invites the violent male gaze with his exposed body and then, in the next moment, snubs and nullifies it. With references to Andy Warhol's portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Cindy Sherman's work.

Abstract: The term zhen in the Zhuangzi is commonly associated with the zhen ren or the "true person," who is described, for example, as capable of going through fire and water unharmed. Some scholars take this as typifying a mystical element in the Zhuangzi. This essay investigates the various meanings and uses of zhen in the Zhuangzi and reaches a broader understanding of the zhen ren in various contexts.

Abstract: In this paper, I argue that intimacy confining constraints—or a categorical restriction on having additional intimate relationships—is morally impermissible. Though some scholars believe that this problem attaches exclusively to monogamous relationshipps, I argue that it also applies to non-monogamous relationships—such as polyfidelitous relationships—as well. As this point requires a deconstruction of the juxtaposition that erroneously places monogamy and non-monogamy as binary opposites, this paper reveals a variegated and interpenetrating field of intimate non-monogamous relationships, the existence of which gets us closer to realizing the transformative power contained within non-monogamous relationships.

Abstract: This paper shows how amatonormativity and its attendant social pressures converge at the intersections of race, gender, romantic relationality, and sexuality to generate peculiar challenges to polyamorous African American men in American society. Contrary to the view maintained in the “slut-vs-stud” phenomenon, I maintain that the label ‘player’ when applied to polyamorous African American men functions as a pernicious stereotype and has denigrating effects. Specifically, I argue that stereotyping polyamorous African American men as players estranges them from themselves and it constrains their agency by preemptively foreclosing the set of possibilities of what one’s sexual or romantic relational identities can be.

Abstract: This chapter presents a portrait of American children as situationally vulnerable and introduces the public emotion of civic tenderness as a response to the indifference that is routinely directed toward this vulnerability. Discussions of pro-social empathic emotions typically prioritize emotions like sympathy and compassion. While they are important in their own right, these pro-social emotions are responses to situations of current need. Civic tenderness is a response to situations of vulnerability. Insofar as a person or group is now in a situation of need, they had to have first been vulnerable to experiencing that need. Since vulnerability is conceptually prior to need, civic tenderness is prior to these other pro-social emotions. Through the process that I call tenderization, I explain how tenderness for poor and impoverished children’s vulnerability can be expanded to a society’s members, institutions, and systems.

Abstract:
Forty years have passed since the Midcontinent American Studies Journal published its landmark special issue, "The Indian Today."  Since that publication, the landscape of Indian country has changed dramatically. This change has come primarily from an amazing cultural resurgence among Native Peoples in the United States — a resurgence that has manifested itself in everything from the Red Power movement to the birth of American Indian studies in the academy; to the renaissance of contemporary Native art, literature, and film; to the creation of tribal colleges, museums, and cultural centers; to the unprecedented rise in economic development; to notable gains in power in political and legal arenas.

Abstract:
Empiricism in the form of quantitative methods has sometimes been used by researchers to thwart human welfare and social justice. Some of the ugliest moments in the history of psychology were a result of researchers using quantitative methods to legitimize and codify the prejudices of the day. This has resulted in the view that quantitative methods are antithetical to the pursuit of social justice for oppressed and marginalized groups. While the ambivalence toward quantitative methods by some is understandable given their misuse by some researchers, we argue that quantitative methods are not inherently oppressive. Quantitative methods can be liberating if used by multiculturally competent researchers and scholar-activists committed to social justice. Examples of best practices in social justice oriented quantitative research are reviewed.