AsianDOC Electronic Newsletter 1:2 (June 1998)
by Frank F. Conlon
University of Washington
URL: http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~asia/
This is a revised and shortened version of a presentation made in
a panel on "Community, Pedagogy and New Learning Technologies",
American Historical Association, Seattle, WA January 10, 1998; an earlier
version appeared as a post on H-ASIA on March 23, 1998
- * * -
E. H. Carr was, I believe, the propounder of the image of
history as a conversation, between the present and the past; but
perhaps also between the historian and the documents of the past,
however conceived. Conversations abound, however, beyond the
stuff of historical documentation or indeed the disciplinary
boundaries of history. A vital instance of this conversational
mode may be found in Asian Studies in the world of H-ASIA.
Technological innovation has permitted and stimulated this
further conversational mode. The development of, and increasing
access to, internet communication for social scientists and humanists
during the early to mid 1990s enabled the expansion of academic e-mail
lists. The emerging listserver technology permitted management
of subscriptions and shaping of these lists:
a. Subscription could be "open"--anyone signs up
b. OR access could be controlled.
c. Control's advantage--"target" audience, reduce
the likelihood of "flame wars" etc.
How did H-ASIA come to be? Professor Richard Jensen, the founder
and first executive director of H-NET (and who gave the term
"indefatigable" a whole new dimension of meaning) promoted a
series of discussion lists, which developed into what today is a
family of H-NET lists. (This H-NET affiliation permitted a more rapid and
effective growth for our list than would otherwise have been possible.
As a constituent part of H-NET, we are supported by the H-NET List
server which is now housed, with administrative and technical support
at Michigan State University.)
Innocent enquiries to Richard Jensen in 1993 from Steven Leibo of
The Sage Colleges and Frank Conlon of the University of
Washington about the possibility of East Asia or South Asia H-NET
lists, led to a characteristic Jensenian exercise of initiative.
He wrote and told each of us that the other existed and that we
were now editors of H-ASIA. Did Steven and I know what had
happened. Not immediately; but we soon learned.
After some tentative test messages in March, we officially opened
for business on April 1, 1994. We were the volunteer "list
owners" and moderators (we prefer the term editors) of a "list"
H-ASIA, which consisted of 12 subscribers, 11 in the U.S. and 1
in Japan. A more accurate sense of the situtation may be seen in
the fact that one week later, we knew we were on to something because
we had 66 subscribers, including 2 in Australia, 1 in Japan and 1 in
Germany.
H-ASIA's growth may be encapsulated by the following:
In January 1995 610 subscribers in 25 countries
In January 1996 1275 subscribers in 31 countries
In April 1997 1875 subscribers in 42 countries
In January 1998 2200 subscribers in 50 countries.
In March 1998 2304 subscribers in 53 countires.
Following the general H-NET guidelines, subscriptions were
encouraged from academic faculty, librarians and research
officers, graduate students and independent scholars, as well as
representatives of research agencies, fellowship granting
agencies and museums. We targetted this audience and did not
encourage others. Except in unusual circumstances, undergraduate
students were not subscribed. I recall too that we were told to
not subscribe distribution lists which would redistribute our
materials (e.g. public school systems, or local university lists)
in order that we might be able to document our audience for
present or potential funding agencies. (H-NET has received
generous funding, for example from the National Endowment for the
Humanities.)
Knowing our audience has not meant necessarily hearing from our
audience. H-ASIA has had a number of subscribers who do just
"listen in" or to embrace the net terminology, "lurk". However
it has been my experience that most H-ASIA members sooner or
later do contribute either specific informational posts, or
contribute to discussion "threads."
Targetting subscriber membership in part was intended to give H-
ASIA and its members a chance to define a list culture. Leibo
and I imagined something parallel to the best aspects of a
converation that you might have an AHA or AAS conventions, or in
a faculty common-room--exchanges of ideas, reporting of
educational experiments, queries (and responses) on bibliography
or interpretative issues.
To this we added such "service" content as extracts from the
weekly H-NET Job Guide; Calls for Papers for conferences and
publications and tables of contents for selected academic
journals. Thanks to the work of Matthew Ciolek of Australian
National University, we began publishing some of his assessment
reports on World Wide Web sites.
Questions of participation and access remain a special concern
for an international list such as H-ASIA. Participation has,
from the start, been dominated by the geography of technology and
language. The lion's share of subscribers have always been in
North America, especially the U.S. This has remained a source of
curiosity if not concern. Clearly those members who are not so
comfortable in composing in English, may feel constrained in
posting to H-ASIA. It would not be surprising to hear concerns
about Anglo-American domination of the list's affairs. This is
an interesting issue. Technology does now permit multi-lingual
lists; our sibling list H-JAPAN is bilingual. The prospect of a
list which could accommodate all of the languages of Asia strikes
me a theoretical possibility, but an editorial and logistical
improbability. The practicalities of our present situation
suggest that H-ASIA will remain an English only list.
Another source of concern has been in many Asian countries, as
well as in Europe, Latin America and Africa, relatively few
scholars in history and the humanities have e-mail access; and
those that do, do not enjoy the cutting edge technological
innovations. Thus we must always try to not exclude on the basis
of technology. Some H-ASIA members send in posts utilizing
attachments and sophisticated formats which cannot be easily read
by many other members. Thus, we continue to live in "ASCII-land"
and await the new millenium when everyone will have broad and
equal access to all the technological features of the internet.
Relations within H-ASIA has been shaped in part by our informal
motto which I appropriated from an AMTRAK dining car waiter who
asked that we share a table with others: "there are no strangers
on H-ASIA, only friends who haven't met yet."
A vital feature of H-ASIA is that it has served to overcome what
the Australians have called the "tyranny of distance". One great
aspect of H-ASIA's world is that it overcomes the physical
distance both between major university centers of research and
teaching on Asia and between those centers and colleges and
universities where Asia may be represented by one or two faculty;
it overcomes the physical distance between scholars throughout
the world. For example, the Calls for Papers give isolated
scholars a greater chance at particpation in events that were
formerly often noted in quarterly newsletters delivered in the
mail well after the deadlines for submission of proposals.
Another aspect is the relative democratization of participation--
we do not emphasize the "rank" of posters, although we do note
their location. Not all people are equally comfortable with
this--but on the whole in our nearly four years, we have found
distinguished historians and other scholars of Asia to be
prepared to participate in the conversation. Some who do not,
are in fact also not very much acclimatized to computers and e-
mail and some who do not, are also people you wouldn't be able to
chat up here at the AHA!
Most H-ASIA subscribers receive the individual posts which are
issued daily, tending to run up to fifteen per day during the
academic terms of autumn and winter and falling off in number
during the North American summer holidays. Some subscribers
prefer a single daily digest posting and a few prefer an index
posting which provides only the subjects of posts along with
instructions for a process to then calling up those posts from
the listserver. In 1997, H-ASIA posted 2,976 messages (an
average of 8 per day).
What sorts of topics get discussed? I sampled the initial week
of April, 1997 and found the following topics had been discussed:
China in APEC
CFP Chinese-European Business Relations Conference
Website on Conference on Industrialization in Southeast Asia
Website on the Bangladesh War of Independence
Website on the Pakistan Virtual Library
A discussion of National Public Radio reporting on India
Pandas in Chinese Literature
The question of public signs reading "no dogs or ..."
The Textbook Controversies in Japan
Reviews (and responses) of _The Decision to Drop the Atomic
Bomb_
A new index for _The Economic and Political Weekly_
(an important Indian journal)
Table of contents for _Comparative Studies on South Asia,
Africa and the Middle East_
New sources on the Rape of Nanking
Domestic Conflict in South Asia
Use of Fiction in Teaching Asian History
Use of Coal in Song China
Extracts from the H-NET Job Guide
Three self-introductions by new H-ASIA members
Our content traffic is "edited" or "moderated" -- for the most
part this means trying to create a clear subject line, checking
for spelling and punctuation, removing extraneous headers and, in
the responses to earlier posts, reducing the amount of quoted
materials. We rarely reject a post, but occasionally ask the
poster to reflect on whether a message, perhaps spontaneously
"shot from the lip" really should go to an international
audience? Occasionally someone complains of "censorship" rather
than acknowledge the responsibilties of our editors. I suspect
that few of the small numbers of those who complain of
"censorship" have ever dwelt in a society where real censorship
existed.
On another level, we have attempted to introduce what might be
termed "Value-added editing"--that is when possible, adding
bibliographical citations to books or titles mentioned. This has
led to some useful sources that may be of broader use, as in a
bibliography on the Subaltern studies school of historians.
With the development of the H-NET Web page, there is an
opportunity of drawing together "threads" from H-ASIA for
preservation in discrete categories. What has held us back has
largely been the need for workers.
In fact, with additional workers, H-ASIA might be able to offer
still further value to its members. But our work is NOT subject
to a supplemental payment, nor have we yet received "release
time" from our institutions. Editing takes time. During just
under three of the past four years, almost all subscription
matters were handled by me. We now have a subscription editor,
Professor Ming-Te Pan. We have been blessed by recruitment of
three additional editors, Marilyn Levine, Christiane Reinhold and
Richard White. Robert Entenmann and Patrick Peebles have joined
as book review editors. Raymond Lum of Harvard University and T.
Matthew Ciolek of Australian National University have just been added
to our editorial ranks and will contribute the the expansion and
enhancement of H-ASIA coverage, particularly with reference to web
pages. Frankly, we need further volunteers to push the potentials of
our services as well as provide some rotation of responsibilties for
the current editors.
Some subscribers ask us why we don't have lists that are more
regional like H-INDIA or H-CHINA? Possibly someone would like to
start such lists; H-JAPAN emerged in a very special conjunction
of interests and funding. Frankly, the calls for specialization
(or for "filters" to enable subscribers to get ONLY what they
want) in part is frustrated by technology--there are far too many
categories both geographical and disciplinary to work out a
"code" for selection that would fit into the subject line of the
headers.
AND, at least as far as the current editors are concerned, to
start breaking things down (or breaking them up?) is to return us
to the very condition of isolation/specialization which we seek
to overcome. Also we are enabling people to discover comparative
perspectives. We have been encouraged in this thinking by a
number of scholars who see H-ASIA as a means of restoring the
comparative interests of many scholars active in the Association
for Asian Studies. It is in part for that reason that H-ASIA has
an affiliate status with the Association for Asian Studies.
On the other hand, we have also pushed for Asia to be recognized
in disciplinary organizations. One of my favorite subjects since
1994 has been my annual survey of "Asia at the A.H.A."-- I am
told by many that our coverage of Asia-content in the annual
convention program, has (along with the energies of the program
commitee--including H-ASIA member Ann Woltner) produced a far
greater Asia content in the 1998 American Historical Association
convention than at any time in the past, and encouraged the
inclusion of Asian subjects in a wider range of comparative
panels.
H-ASIA however, I must emphasize, is NOT a History list. If the H in
H-NET once stood for History, it was soon replaced by Humanities,
conceived in the broadest terms. (When others have expressed concern
over this detail, my own response has been that when asked "what does
the H in H-NET, H-ASIA, etc. stand for?" the best response is "it stands
for quality.")
H-ASIA's membership has included scholars of from across the disciplines.
At a time when the concept and practice of "area studies" is under assault
from a variety of quarters, H-ASIA may serve as a technological AND
intellectual support for area studies, but need not do so. I think the
editors of H-ASIA regard discussions of eptistomological discussion as
only one of the many strands in our conversational potential.
We need to keep in mind a distinction between the message and the
medium. H-ASIA (at least as I see it) is the use of a technology
which was new a few years ago (and still is in most of the world)
to sustain and promote a very traditional human activity--
conversation. It is ironic that for those scholars to whom
computers and e-mail are new and still a bit strange, H-ASIA
represents technological innovation, while for who are at home
with the latest technologies, H-ASIA and its related lists,
represent something rather "old fashioned."
So far as I am concerned, I lose no sleep over this--I lose sleep
only to find time to edit!--because we are also old fashioned in
trying to promote and sustain a conversation, in which the study
of Asia is renewed every day of the year and our colleagues who
pursue that study are refreshed and invigorated by the discovery
of our subject and the company of our fellow scholars.
Frank F. Conlon
University of Washington
URL http://asiandoc.lib.ohio-state.edu/v1n2/dbs/H-Asia.html
|