[KS] Re: R: AKSE Conference and the International Dimension

[Alain Delissen]

Dear Andrea,

Good to hear from you.
The issue you are raising is both an apparently old one and, in your
formulation, a highly misleading one. I am making my remarks public
therefore.

Note : this reaction is clearly of a current (and recent) AKSE Council
member, however, it is not the position of the Council, nor the position of
the AKSE.

1) AKSE is not the Big Ministry for Research on Korea in Europe. It does
not have research funds, research programs, research fellows, or anything
like research priorities. It does not decide what research about Korea in
Europe should (or should not) be.

2)AKSE certainly decides what conferences should look like from world-wide
paper proposals.
However, papers selected to be presented in AKSE conferences fall in so
broad, vague and undefining categories (e.g. Modern society) that they can
hardly be thought of as excluding a priori such and such problem area or
topic (like international affairs). In short, papers, which have to be
neatly focused research-papers, are picked up for their own, inner quality.


3) There might have been a period when, because of the participation of NK
in conferences and because Europe was what it was (remember...), sensitive
issues and overtly political papers were possibly kept at bay.
However, I just don't see how this question gets to be articulated with
AKSE's supposed focus on "non modern" "humanities" and bias against
"modern" "social sciences".
Also, beyond the mere fact that you can raise highly controversial issues
through "humanities" (remember Tan'gun in Prag), and summon up
state-of-the-art social sciences to decipher Silla Korea, I think Youngsook
and Ross somehow missed the point in their "dated" comments: over the last
10 years (of my participating into AKSE conferences), political, social,
economic, most contemporary, even controversial issues clearly soared on
conferences' programs.

To cut a long story short, the idea that AKSE would be systematically
harbouring prejudices against or neglecting contemporary, political issues,
and, more particularly, international affairs is both unfounded and
far-fetched.

It is not that there are not problems of that sort, but they are all well
beyond AKSE's reach.

4)Indeed, for all its imperfections, AKSE is what it is: the mirror of
Korean Studies in Europe. And the issue you are raising, Andrea, is more
the problem of Europe, the problem of Asian Studies in each different
country than AKSE's. If tomorrow one can find three, four or more people in
Europe with a twofold specialization in international affairs and Korean
studies, it might bring out two or more interesting papers at each AKSE
conference : good!
I can see, here in Paris, 3 or 4 major Institutions of International
affairs that work every day on the Korean situation, but none has ever
devised to hire somebody able to read a word in Korean. Is is AKSE's fault?
Is it sb's fault?

For better and worst, Europe is Europe. It is not Asia, nor America.
Korean studies in Europe rest 1) on a strong tradition (and good
collections of materials) of classical studies (phylology-linguistics,
orientalism -not necessarily a naughty word here-, religion-literature) ;
2) on a set of dominant disciplines which is different in every country (it
seems to me that political sciences and their "international branch" are
more among the dominated disciplines than among the dominating ones  on the
Continent, but it might only be the case of France) ; 3) there is no such
thing in Europe as a large community of Korean-Europeans (???) which could
sustain constant debates on Korean affairs and/or alter the scale and speed
up the development of Korean Studies ; 4) Nonetheless, specialists in more
contemporary issues armed with other methodologies and double-training gets
more numerous year after year.

This is happening and this is all beyond AKSE's control...


Ciao,

Hope your return in Firenze was smooth.

Alain

Alain DELISSEN
EHESS, CENTRE COREE

Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales/
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Maison d'Asie, 22 avenue du Pdt Wilson, 75116 Paris
Tel/Fax 01 53 70 18 76




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