Admission requirements
This course is only available for students in the BA International Studies.
Limited places are also open for exchange students. Please note: this course takes place in The Hague.
Description
Scholars who study “other places” and “other peoples” have long sought to live up to the ideal of representing and understanding what is “really there” in a balanced and objective way, without imposing their own assumptions or prejudices upon their subject. But recent scholarship has shown that this challenge is more complicated than you might think, particularly when power and history are added to the equation. The more power the observer has over “the other,” the easier it is to impose one’s own assumptions and fantasies on “the other,” and the harder it is for “the other” to “talk back.” If the power to speak for and define “the other” is something held for a long time, these one-sided beliefs about “us” and “them” can actually start to shape reality. Not only do the powerful come to see their own superiority and difference from “the other” as normal and natural; “the other” is also increasingly obliged to conform to the expectations of the powerful. Over time, a difference in power between “self” and “other” can thus produce the appearance of essential differences between “us” and “them”—cultural, “racial,” national, religious, and so forth—which seem to exist naturally and separately from one another, but which are actually the products of an ongoing mutual negotiation. Whether we are aware of it or not, our ideas and attitudes regarding “other cultures,” as well as “our own,” are thus deeply connected to shared politics and shared history.
In a world dominated economically, politically, and militarily by a minority of nation-states (and former empires) commonly referred to as “the West,” this is much more than just abstract theory. In the realm of knowledge, Western dominance has long translated into the power to speak for and interpret the “rest of the world”: Consciously or not, seeing things from the perspective of “the West and the rest” has become a habit of thinking, “the West” the imagined center of the world and the yardstick by which we measure and define ourselves and others. These assumptions can be found not only in the self-absorbed worldview of the tourist, the missionary, and the imperialist, but also in the ostensibly “objective” sciences we use to study “other places” and “other people” —anthropology, sociology, geography, history, political science, literary science, linguistics—all the more because the period of the rise of these modern academic disciplines, roughly the last 200 years, has corresponded more or less precisely to the period of global Western dominance.
In the accumulated images and interpretations of “us” and “them” that we encounter as scholars of “other places,” we thus confront an ambivalent heritage: An archive of knowledge and categories that are not nearly as definite, fixed, or neutral they seem, but are themselves the product and reflection of shifting social, economic, and political power balances. What is this intellectual inheritance, what are its implications, and where do we go from here? These are the fundamental questions around which this course is constructed. For the scholar of Area Studies, and indeed for all of us, they are questions whose importance extends far beyond the academic. In a world in which Western dominance is no longer a given—with alarmists in “East” and “West” alike warning of a looming “clash of civilizations”—our answers also have serious political consequences.
The course “Introduction to Area Studies” seeks to equip young scholars of “other places” with a critical awareness of how history and power can shape the categories and assumptions that divide “us” from “them,” fostering scholarship informed by a deeper understanding of an interconnected and interdependent world. As scholars in a global, “postcolonial” world, these are issues that concern all of us, transcending the boundaries between academic specializations, as well as the boundaries between “us” scholars and the rest of humankind. Indeed, the achievement of such an understanding must begin with a willingness to question not only the boundaries and categories that define “them,” but also those that define “us” as well.
This course highlights different angles on these issues through the consideration and analysis of a series of strategically chosen case studies from different places and times. In recent decades, our scholarly understanding of the making of “self” and “other” has profoundly deepened, and broadened, through the combining of insights from several disciplinary fields (in particular anthropology, sociology, literary theory, history, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies), and our approach is therefore informed by such a multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary perspective. Having completed this course, as each student proceeds further in their chosen area of specialization, we hope that their scholarship will continue to be informed, and inspired, by the global lessons learned here.
Course objectives
to develop an introductory-level familiarity with some of the major theoretical and methodological challenges involved in studying “other peoples” and “other cultures” in a global context.
to foster “global positioning sensitivity” based on an awareness that there is no single objective position from which to observe the world.
to develop a critical awareness of how identity categories of “self” and “other” have been historically defined and redefined in a context of shifting global and local power balances.
to develop a basic familiarity with approaches from a variety of social science and humanities disciplines involved in the studies of “other peoples” and “other cultures,” and their evolution over time.
to develop a basic awareness of interdisciplinary approaches to Area Studies, their advantages and challenges.
through encounters with a series of comparative case studies in different places and times, to develop a broad perspective on local cultural, historical and social diversity as well as our inter-relationship and interdependence at the global level.
to become familiar with some of the foundational texts and theories of contemporary area studies (such as Said’s Orientalism).
Timetable
The timetable is available on the BA International Studies website
Mode of instruction
One two-hour lecture per week; bi-weekly tutorials. Lectures are held every week, with the exception of the midterm exam week. Weekly lectures will cover both issues discussed in the readings, and issues outside of the readings.
Attending all tutorial sessions is compulsory. If you are unable to attend a session, please inform the tutor of the course in advance, providing a valid reason for your absence. Being absent without notification and valid reason or not being present at half or more of the tutorial sessions will mean your assignments will not be assessed, and result in a 1.0 for the tutorial (30% of the final grade).
Course Load
Total course load is 5 EC x 28 hours = 140 hours, broken down as follows:
Atending Weekly Lectures: 2 hours per week x 12 weeks: 24 hours
Atending attending Bi-Weekly Tutorials 2 hours per two weeks: 12 hours
Assessment hours (midterms and final exam): 4 hours
Time for Reading/Studying Compulsory Literature: 50 hours
Time for Preparing Tutorial Assignments: 30 hours
Time for writing final Tutorial essay: 20 hours
Assessment method
Assessment
Midterm exam:
Multiple choice written examination
Final exam:
Multiple choice written examination
Weighing
Tutorials 30%
Midterm Exam 30%
Final Exam 40%
To complete the final mark, please take notice of the following: the final mark for the course is established by determining the weighted average.
To pass the course, the average of mid- and end term exams (70%) has to be 5.5 at least.
Resit
If the final grade is insufficient (lower than a 6), there is the possibility of retaking the full 70% of the exam material, replacing both the earlier mid- and endterm grades. No resit for the tutorials is possible.
The resit exam will be a:
Multiple choice written examination
Blackboard
Blackboard will be used. For tutorial groups: please enroll in blackboard after your enrolment in uSis
Students are requested to register on Blackboard for this course.
Reading list
Students must purchase or gain access to
Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Reinventing Japan: Time, Space, Nation, Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1998 (also available under the title Reinventing Japan: Nation, Culture, Identity.
All other assigned readings will be available through Blackboard.
Registration
Enrolment through uSis is mandatory.
General information about uSis is available in English and Dutch
Registration Studeren à la carte and Contractonderwijs
Not applicable