The Newsletter 72 Autumn 2015

New scholarship from Asia

Tak-Wing Ngo

Theories in the social sciences are almost without exception developed in the West and based largely on the historical experiences of Western societies. For a long time, Asia and the non-West have been at best laboratories to validate universalized Western-based theories. In recent years, however, there has been increasing criticism against the hegemony of Euro-American scholarship. Advocates of alternative scholarship have urged for the provincialization of Western perspectives, the invigoration of autonomous social sciences outside the Western tradition, and the development of ‘reverse discourses’ in order for non-Western scholarship to theorize back at the West.