Berkeley

Abstract

CCAS now has a membership of about 65 here at Berkeley. We struggle on meeting in between National Guard search and destroy operations. Franz Schurmann and David Marr went to Stockholm to talk to the NLF and the DRV people. A press conference for them was just beginning when the helicopter swept over Sproul Plaza spraying CN gas. Several nights later they held forth at a large CCAS gathering to discuss their trip and what we as “Asian Scholars” might do about a war which obviously has not ended.     

Cornell

Abstract

In the period since the CCAS National Conference we have put on the following: 1. sponsored an anti-Vietnam war teach-in in collaboration with SDS. George Kahin spoke at a meeting attended by about 750 students;

2. presented three separate panels of CCAS speakers on Vietnam during the teach-in — one was given at Cornell and two at the long-neglected Ithaca College;

3. presented a lecture by Don Luce (former Director of IVS in Vietnam) attended by around 200 people on the Cornell campus;

4. Gary Porter and another CCAS member, Jack Fitzpatrick, took the Cornell Vietnam statement and the many signatures collected at the Conference to Washington on April 21. They lobbied extensively, saw Senator Fulbright for 40 minutes, and left, of course, with the conviction that far more needed to be done.

     

On funding of Asian studies and comtemporary China studies,passed at CCAS retreat,Crystal Lake,Illinois, August 28–September 1, 1972

Abstract

Since 1969, CCAS has been investigating the influence of the Ford Foundation on the Asian Studies field. Our present findings (see the Summer/Fall 1971 issue of the CCAS Bulletin) show that Ford used its financial and political power to create and shape the field to serve the ends of policy and intelligence agencies. The means by which this centralized control is exerted is the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). To date, the evidence for these conclusions has been overwhelming. The burden of disproof rests on the SSRC and ACLS, which have consistently denied reasonable requests for further research in their files.     

The Structure and Direction of Contemporary China Studies

Abstract

Since fall 1969, a subcommittee of the Columbia University CCAS has been researching the institutional structure of the Asian studies field, with special reference to the development of Chinese studies in the U.S. since 1959. Our first findings, under the title Report on an Investigation of the American Asian Studies Establishment, were presented at the 1970 CCAS National Convention. Research continued the following year and led to an invitation to participate in the 1971 AAS Presidential Panel Impact of American Organizations on Asian Studies. For that occasion some 400 copies of a revised Report were distributed. Although the Report was intended to be a file of “preliminary working papers”, since it is the subject of Professor Fairbank's Comment, we have asked the Editor to reprint it here for the convenience of the reader.     

Politics and knowledge: An unorthodox history of modern China studies

Abstract

In the investigation of social phenomena — and the social organization of intellect is no exception — consideration of context is the crucial starting point for analysis. Professor Fairbank's comment on the CCAS Report, which he has duplicated for private circulation, and which is reprinted at his request in this journal, is not merely the expression of an intellectual position, but a political act.     

A tribute to Leo Cawley, 1944–1991

Abstract

In the late sixties, after his tour of active duty as a marine in Vietnam from 1965 to 66, Leo Cawley returned to the United States and became an economics major at Columbia University. There he joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the Columbia University chapter of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS), whose national organization founded the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars. In March and April of 1972 he traveled to the People's Republic of China with the second CCAS delegation. Leo reviewed Waldemar A. Nielson's The Big Foundations in volume 6, number 3 of BCAS in 1974, and from 1985 to 1987 he was book review editor for BCAS. Leo also contributed money to BCAS even in the last year of his life when his medical expenses were skyrocketing. Above all, however, Leo stood for everything BCAS has stood for over the years, and he was a close friend and inspiration to some of BCAS's staunchest supporters.     

Harvard

Abstract

The following position paper was presented by a five-man delegation from the Harvard CCAS chapter to the embassy of the People's Republic of China in Paris on February 20, 1969. The group included Thomas Engelhardt, Cheryl Goodman, and Jon Livingston, all graduate students at Harvard, Neale Hunter, an Australian who spent 1965–67 teaching English in Shanghai, and Jonathan Mirsky, Director of Dartmouth's East Asia Center, who was unable to go to Paris but helped compose the statement.     

Yale

Abstract

During the summer, Yale CCAS will sponsor a series of 5 public lectures on Asian studies as well as a number of informal open seminars on the nature of Asian studies in the U.S., American foreign policy in Asia, comparative study of China and Vietnam, and other topics to be decided by planners and participants. All suggestions are welcomed. Plans are being made to show several films, including “Remember Vietnam” and “In the Year of the Pig.”     

Introductory essay to symposium on modes of production and social formations in Asian Societies

Abstract

The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars and the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars have always attempted to provide alternatives to “established” scholarship in the Asian studies field. When CCAS came into existence in the mid-1960s, the main task was to formulate a critique of the cold war inspired scholarship of the 1950s, and to attempt to counteract the prevailing views concerning the communist countries and national liberation movements of Asia. This in turn led to an analysis of the structure of academic inquiry and academic funding in the United States, and to a realization of the political character of the “apolitical” stance of the Asian studies academic establishment.     

Stanford chapter

Abstract

The Concerned Asian Scholars at Stanford was organized in March of this years around a nucleus of about fifteen graduate students. Membership has reached about 25 with two or three professors and some undergraduates. Among the activities to be carried on are the following: establishment of new local chapters at those campuses on the West coast which have yet to be organized and plans for the National Conference (both to be done in conjunction with Berkeley); efforts to establish good channels of mass communication in this area and study projects on the ABM and Asia, the history of Asian Studies in America, institutionalized racism in Asian studies and textbooks and teaching materials on Asia in California public schools. Also under consideration are proposals for a photo exhibit on the people of Vietnam with a documentary film. One of the first actions of our CCAS group was to come out publicly in support of the April Third Coalition and its sit-in at the Stanford Applied Electronics Laboratory which seeks to stop all CBW research, counterinsurgency work, war-related scholarship and all classified research on this campus and at the Stanford Research Institute. Many members of the group were active participants in the nine day liberation of the AEL.     

The green revolution in South India and North Vietnam

Abstract

In late 1976 I spent ten months in Thanjavur District of southeast India, re-studying two villages after an absence of twenty-five years. I had gone back to find out what had happened to the village people, especially with respect to their standard of living, their relations of production and their integration into the world economy. I was particularly interested in the effects of land reforms passed between 1952 and 1974, and of the introduction of “green revolution” technology since 1965.     

Political prisoners in the Philippines' new society

Abstract

They came in blue Toyotas, their red lights flashing. But they did not use a siren. Perhaps they did not want to wake the neighbors, for it was after midnight and already September 23, 1972. The Metrocom officers who came for me were nice enough. They let me get a book, my toothbrush, and a change of underwear. I was able to talk privately with my parents. On the way to Camp Crame they stopped long enough at a roadside stand to allow me to buy cough drops. When we reached the hastily barricaded Camp Crame gymnasium, I discovered that others had not been as lucky.     

Feminist Reading(s) and reading into feminist theory

Abstract

Let me confess in the beginning that I am a latecomer to the field of feminist literary criticism. Having left academia (or, more accurately, never really becoming part of it-the position I got two years after receiving my Ph.D. was one of raising two children), I was introduced to feminist criticism in the mid-1980s, a few years after I wrote the introduction to This Kind of Woman on which the review “Reading Women's Texts” concentrates. I have found feminist literary criticism intellectually stimulating and emotionally satisfying. I found the intellectual stimulation similar to what I had experienced after being introduced to the theories of Freud and Erikson. Indeed, my basic framework for understanding human behavior is colored by those theories I have learned earlier. I am quite willing, however, to apply new theories that would work against the old ones as long as such applications open up new terrain in literary interpretation. On the other hand, it is not a good practice with literary criticism to place a theory ahead of works and to try to force a theoretical position on them. In this response to the review I will therefore try to defend my position without rejecting the notion that there are new worthwhile readings of the stories, that is, that some corrections and modifications of the original reading may be possible and desirable.     

Rejoinder

Abstract

Many of Mr. van Walt's criticisms are based solely on fabrications of his own making. For example, I am accused, twice, of referring to myself as a “scholar” and to my article as “scholarly.” I could find no trace of either. I am further accused of considering all Tibetan refugee accounts as “unreliable.” To be sure, I believe that one cannot base the study of historical events solely on refugee accounts, but that does not make all of these stories “unreliable.” After all, Dawa Norbu, a refugee himself, wrote in Red Star Over Tibet, “I never saw or heard of any case of misconduct by a Red soldier.” I would never argue that this statement was unreliable. We are further told that I refer to Tibetans as Chinese when in the second paragraph of my review I wrote, “… Tibetans [are] only one of 56 minority nationalities.” Chinese citizens yes, ethnic Hans no. A final example, although there are many more, is Mr. van Walt's attempt to attribute to me the opinion that

… the only importance to the Western academic world is that the situation in Tibet can teach us how to eliminate a “mystical religion” and that “it gives clues as to how Peking will integrate a capitalist Taiwan into a Communist China in the future”. (emphasis added)     

Extension des privilèges constitutionnels de la Douma russe dans les ‘interstices de la procédure’ 1906–1917

Summary

The nobility and the Netherlands Senate 1815–1830

From 1815 to 1830 the northern and southern Netherlands formed a single kingdom under Guillaume I. In this kingdom the nobility was the only social order to enjoy special political rights. The political influence the nobility could exercise as an order was primarily at the provincial level. The Corps Equestres had a role as a sort of electoral college for the Provincial Estates of the separate provinces. In 1815, after the States General had been divided into two chambers, the influence of the provinces made itself felt particularly through the elections for the Second Chamber, the members of the First Chamber, the Senate, being appointed by the king. Despite the fact that over ninety percent of them belonged to the nobility, the nobility as an order never became a political group exercising power at the national level.     

Ameyuki-San No Uta: Yamada Waka No Satsuki Naru Shōgai

Abstract

Yamada Waka was a leader in Japan's feminist movement during the 1920s and 1930s. The wife of a well-known professor, she had access to the most progressive social and intellectual circles in Tokyo at the time . While Japan moved through the post–World War I decades with an upsurge of democratic thought and then a slow march toward the militarism that was to result in World War II, Yamada labored to raise the consciousness of Japanese women about their potential to contribute to the building of a better world and about the narrow roles society had decreed for them. She published a number of books, lectured widely in Japan and the United States, and opened a half-way house for the rehabilitation of prostitutes.     

An open letter/response

Abstract

I would offer a comment or two on your review of my book because I think that you did not interpret the book in the way in which I wrote it. I am writing in the hope of clearing up some things; of clarifying our areas of disagreement as opposed to misunderstanding.     

Book reviews

Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus 1954–1959 by Robert Holland. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Pp. xi + 347, bibliography, index, illustrations. £48.00 (cloth).

The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times. Volume I: The Dynastic Periods: From Antiquity to the Fourteenth Century, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997. Pp. xii + 372, bibliography for volumes I and II, notes on the contributors, index. $49.95 (cloth).

The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times. Volume II: Foreign Domination to Statehood: The Fifteenth Century to the Twentieth Century, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997. Pp. xii + 493, bibliography for volumes I and II, notes on the contributors, index. $49.95 (cloth).

A History of Middle East Economies in the Twentieth Century by Roger Owen and Sevket Pamuk. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1998. Pp. xviii + 310, bibliography, index. £35.00 (cloth); £12.95 (paper).

Managing the Oil Wealth: OPEC's Windfalls and Pitfalls by Jahangir Amuzegar. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1999. Pp.282, bibliography, index. £35.00 (cloth).

Curzon and British Imperialism in the Middle East 1916–19 by John Fisher. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1999. Pp.xvi + 342, bibliography, index. £42.50/$59.50 (cloth); £18.50/$26.50 (paper).

Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah: From Qajar Collapse to Pahlavi Power by Cyrus Ghani. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1998. Pp. xiv + 434. £29.50.

Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq by Kanan Makiya. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989 (updated edition 1998). Pp. xxxxv + 323, a new introduction, tables, index, chronology. £14.95 (paper).

Najib Mahfuz – The Novelist‐Philosopher of Cairo by Menahem Milson. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1998. Pp. 304.     

The Gouffre à Bataillons — A French artillery officer at Dienbienphu, 1954

Abstract

If I wake up in the morning with an ache in my left ball I send a couple of rounds through the post just to let them know I'm off for breakfast.