Editor's Introduction

Volume 17, No. 1 (2021)

By Melissa S. Dale, Executive Director and Associate Professor, USF Center for Asia Pacific Studies

We are pleased to announce the publication of the latest issue of Asia Pacific Perspectives (vol. 17, no. 1). This issue showcases the resilience and creativity of scholars doing research and writing about the Asia Pacific during the COVID-19 pandemic. These scholars, like others in the humanities and social sciences, have not only found ways to continue their scholarship during these trying times but to even re-image how to go about doing research moving forward.

This issue was intended to be one entirely focused on the inventive ways that scholars in the social sciences and humanities are exploring issues related to transnational health in East Asia both historically and today. Ironically, it was in large part due to a transnational health issue, namely the pandemic, that we decided to change our focus midway through the publication process. With the pandemic raging, we decided to pivot and add a series of think pieces focused on how scholars were re-envisioning research during these challenging times.

In our feature article for this issue, Sarah Xia Yu (University of Pennsylvania) provides a fascinating account of how public health initiatives aimed to combat disease from the kitchen during the 20th century. In From Sanitation to Soybeans: Kitchen Hygiene and Nutritional Nationalism in Republican China, 1911-1945, Yu examines how the Chinese kitchen underwent hygienic reform in an effort to reduce the transmission of diseases such as tuberculosis, beriberi, and cholera. Yu reveals how China became an active participant in the transnational dietary science movement and encouraged its citizens to take on the responsibility of improving sanitation and their individual health. Yu’s work sheds light on important themes such as the intersection of healthcare campaigns with modernity, state-building, and citizenship.

Our two book reviews in this issue continue the theme of transnational health. Carles Brasó Broggi (​​Universitat Oberta De Catalunya) reads Wayne Soon’s Global Medicine in China: A Diasporic History and argues that modern Chinese medicine cannot be understood without studying the contributions of Overseas Chinese medical personnel. In our second book review, Kristin Roebuck (Cornell University) reviews Kingdom of the Sick: A History of Leprosy and Japan, by Susan Burns, and finds it to be a must read for scholars of transnational history of medicine, public hygiene, disability, and discrimination, and historians of Japan.

This issue also presents three think pieces by scholars in the social sciences and humanities who are reimagining the practice of research on the Asia Pacific during a time of global pandemic which involves social distancing, archive closures, and travel restrictions. Under these circumstances, scholars have had to rethink how they do research and consider questions such as: (1) How can we do fieldwork at a distance? (2) How can we engage in remote research such as surveys, ethnography, archival work, oral histories, etc? (3) Moveover, what’s at stake in terms of the implications for IRBs and human research? As these pieces show, remote/online research is more than just a temporary necessity but a valuable mode of research.

In The Digital, The Local and The Mundane: Three Areas of Potential Change for Research on Asia, Radu Leca (Heidelberg University) considers how our “dependence on online access” and digital technology has changed how we do research. Leca offers suggestions on how scholars might “update” the “where,” the “what” and the “how” of research on the Asia Pacific region.

While for many, the practice of remote research is a new pandemic-related consequence, for scholars like Kaitlyn Ugoretz (University Of California, Santa Barbara), it has and continues to be her primary research modality. Ugoretz’s experiences as a digital anthropologist studying transnational online Shinto communities reveal the misconceptions and anxieties that accompany online research as well as the rewards. 

For anthropologists who rely on the collection of first hand data to research indigenous perspectives, COVID-19 related travel restrictions have prompted the need to reconceptualize the tools scholars use to study China in the Pacific. Adopting a decolonial methodology, Rodolfo Maggio (University of Turin) seeks to incorporate a plurality of Pacific voices in his research, ultimately to provide insight into the interactions between Pacific Islanders and Chinese actors in the region.

We hope these pieces will prompt our readers to reflect on how their own research has changed over the course of the last year and a half. As always, our goal is to publish articles that will stimulate further discussion and research in the humanities and social sciences in the Asia Pacific region and promote positive change. We appreciate the help and guidance of the journal’s editorial board in bringing this issue to publication. Special thanks to Prof. John Nelson for his many years of support of the journal. We wish him much happiness and many new adventures in his retirement. Thank you to Serena Calcagno, our editorial assistant, for her excellent work communicating with scholars and for always looking for ways to better organize and streamline our production process. We appreciate our production team, Kevin Zaragoza (print) and Tiffany Nguyen and Isabella Cruz (web), for their professionalism, attention to detail and design, and positive attitude. Last, we thank our authors for their perseverance and dedication to ensuring that research and writing continued despite the challenges of the ongoing pandemic.

Melissa S. Dale, Editor