In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson argues that the nation is a new, modern phenomenon. The 17th and 18th century witnessed the demise of previous forms political bodies that were shaped by a sacred language, sacred cosmology and dynastic power, and sense of historical temporality shaped by cosmology. Material conditions and rationalist perception of ‘homogenous empty time’ created the structures where individuals could conceptualize themselves as part of an ‘imagined community.’ The imagined community is one in which members will not know most of their fellow members, is finite with limited boundaries, sovereign power, and a community of fraternal, horizontal comradeship. It is through the emergence of print-capitalism—the technological, mass production of newspapers and the novel and the spread of vernacular print languages—that individuals could think of themselves and relate to others in different ways. This possibility to envision parallel and plural realities connected individuals to other individuals to form a concept of an ‘imagined community.’
Edward Said, Orientalism, and Caste: The Development of a Discourse and Field of Study
Below is a working paper I wrote for Professor Janaki Bakhle’s class on Caste, Culture, Religion–The Anthro-History of South Asia. I review and examine Edward Said’s seminal work Orientalism and the development of studies on caste in South Asia.
Since its publication in 1978, Edward Said’s Orientalism has developed to be the leading canonical text for cultural studies, critical post-modern and post-colonial studies, and studies of the Middle East and Islam.[1] In Orientalism, Edward Said develops a two-part argument: Since the late sixteenth century European writers, scholars, and scientists produced an idea and ‘imaginative geography’ of the ‘Orient’ (the East) as strange, exotic, dangerous and putatively opposite to the civilizational superiority of the ‘Occident’ (the West). Over time, this discourse of the ‘orient’ manifested in institutions, imagery, scholarship, and colonial styles into the formal academic discipline of Orientalism with a set of epistemologies, rational justifications, and scientific explanations that perpetuate a binary between the West and the East. Said argues that since the late eighteenth century, there has been a steady interchange between the imaginative meanings of the Orient and the academic tradition of ‘orientalism’. Examining orientalism as a discourse, Said demonstrates how Europeans have managed, produced, and invented the Orient and the Occident.
This essay examines the historiography of Indian caste through the two-part argument in Said’s Orientalism. Examining scholarship on caste from early Portuguese missionary reports to studies of colonialism and caste, I will consider both how European scholars represent, imagine, and understand Indian caste and also how this body of Oriental knowledge informed colonial understandings of caste. This essay is divided into three parts. The first part examines Edward Said’s Orientalism, the core arguments and methods, and the lasting effects on post-colonial and cultural studies. The second and main part of this essay analyzes the historiographical trends in studies of caste in the early writing of Abbé Dubois, Louis Dumont, Émile Durkheim, and Max Weber. The concluding part considers the more contemporary writing on caste and colonialism by Bernard Cohn and Nicholas Dirks. I focus on the historiographical shift in studies of India marked by Nicholas Dirks’ Castes of Mind, which called into question the implications of British colonial epistemologies on scholarship of Indian caste. Through this historiography I seek to trace the contours, continuities, and ruptures within the discourse on Indian caste.
Data and the Humanities: Digital Humanities and Disrupting Disciplinary Boundaries
Below is a working paper I wrote for my graduate course on the History of Data Science led by Professor Cathryn Carson Spring 2015 at UC Berkeley. You can see the bibliography of readings from our class on my Zotero library.
What does data mean to a humanist? What would it mean to datify humanistic inquiry? This paper examines the recent literature on data within the humanities and critical debates about ‘digital humanities’. As I demonstrate in this paper, the debates around data within the humanities fits within three interlocking frameworks: first, the tensions between relevancy and distinction within the humanities in relation to the sciences; second, the boundary work of defining and distinguishing ‘digital humanities’; and third, the shifts in methods occurring across all disciplines around data, data intensive sciences, mixed methods, and scholarly communication.
I recognize that debates around disciplinary identities and methods can transform into polemical battles around academic territory. I seek to immerse myself in these debates to understand the contours and ridges and to understand the boundary making processes currently manifesting within the humanities. Observing historical patterns within these debates, I conclude that a historiography of data science, data intensive humanities, and digital humanities is inevitably a narrative about disruption of existing disciplinary boundaries.
Q. How Confucian is/was Vietnam? Woodside, Kelley, and Cooke
Woodside, Alexander. 1971. Vietnam and the Chinese Model: A Comparative Study of Vietnamese and Chinese Government in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Alexander Woodside examines how Confucian institutions were adopted and adapted by 19th century Nguyen Vietnam. Woodside then catalogs and compares the institutions in Vietnam and China and documents the reasons why Vietnam does not exactly replicate Chinese and Confucian characteristics. The five chapters examine themes of acculturation, civil administration, court bureaucrats and provincial administration, and education and exams. Among the tremendous details of bureaucratic, administrative, and educational comparisons between Vietnam and China, Woodside demonstrates how the local variants of Confucian systems in Vietnam. He concludes that these differences were due to the problem of scale and relative size of Vietnam to China (too many administrative units for too small a space), the cultural diversity and distance between bureaucrats and peasants, and the simplification and translation of Confucian bureaucracy as a coherent system. ( “VN regional differentiation 1)variety of environments, agriculture, and settlement 2)little cultural standardization at village level, varied village traditions 3) 16th-19th century N v. C S different political units 4) movement south and diff backgrounds” )Woodside characterizes these aspects into the abstract themes of 1) pattern saturation, 2) cultural parallelisms (such as dual monarchy of hoang de and vua), 3) environmental-institutional tensions, and 4) divergences in social structure and resources.
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Questions & Debates in the History of Statistics, Counting, and Quantification
A few questions on the history of statistics and quantification from my Qualifying Exams list on History of Knowledge Systems.
Examiner: Cathryn Carson
Second Field: History of Knowledge Systems
- History of Information, Enlightenment Institutions, ‘Information Ages’
- History of Information, Documentation, Catalogs, Libraries/Archives
- History of Statistics, Quantification, and Counting
- History of Data Science
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Book Review: J.S. Furnivall’s Colonial Policy and Practice
Furnivall argues that British Burma was ruled by direct rule and Dutch East Indies was ruled by indirect rule. Direct rule generally consists of the removal of the local monarchy and legal court and replacement by foreign legal system. Indirect rule is characterized by the retention of local governing bodies and leaders while the top level administration and economic affairs are directed by foreign colonial officials. Although in reality these demarcations are more nuanced, Furnivall makes this distinction to support his overarching argument about the negative impact of colonial capitalism upon colonies’ economic and social welfare. In the case of British Burma, the undermining of local forms of governance such as the monarchy, the village, and Buddhist Sangha and unchecked Liberal capitalism resulted in the disintegration of society into a plural society. In other words, the British colonial government failed to preserve the social and village life of Burma in light of economic forces of capitalism more so than in the Dutch East Indies.
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Annotated bibliography and the State of Southeast Asian Studies
Below is my annotated bibliography and key questions/themes for Part I of my list with Penelope Edwards on Southeast Asia. This part covered the state of the field of Southeast Asian studies.
- State of the field of Southeast Asian Studies
- Southeast Asia Colonialism and Modernity
- Southeast Asia Print Culture & History of the Book
- Southeast Asia Institutions: Museums & Libraries
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Cindy A. Nguyen 