Asiacentrism (also Asiacentricity or Eastern-centrism) is a political ideology, an economic perspective, or an academic orientation with "a focus on Asia or on cultures of Asian origin."[ The Oxford English Dictionary, "Asiacentrism,"
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/ref> In some cases, this stance regards Asia to be either unique or superior to other regions and takes the form of ascribing to Asia ethnocentric significance or supremacy at the cost of the rest of the world. The concept is often associated with a projected Asian Century, the expected economic dominance of Asia (primarily China) in the 21st century.
History
In 1902, Chinese scholar Liang Qichao remarked that Asia is "immeasurably vast and mighty", compared to a "shallow and small" Europe, as he predicted Asia to regain a powerful position in the world.
In 1988, Deng Xiaoping coined the term 'Asian Century' during a meeting with Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership and subsequent withdrawal of the United States from it were viewed by some analysists as a symbol of declining Western world.
Some commentators have cited the effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Asia as a sign of superiority of Asia.
In 2021, 'Asiacentrism' was added to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Economics
It is projected that the world's economic center of gravity will move back to Asia, between India and China by 2050,[Quah, Danny. "The global economy’s shifting centre of gravity." Global Policy 2.1 (2011): 3-9.] spurred by the economic growth of East Asian economies.
The combined GDP of Asia is also projected to surpass that of the rest of the world around 2020, a position which the continent had lost in the 19th century.
According to a McKinsey Global Institute report, Asia is entering the post-2019 era as 'the word's new majority,' with Asia "accounting for more than half of the world's key economic metrics."
Asian American studies
Paul Wong, Meera Manvi, and Takeo Hirota Wong proposed "Asiacentrism" in the 1995 special issue of Amerasia Journal on "Thinking Theory in Asian American Studies." They envisioned Asiacentrism both as a critique of hegemonic Eurocentrism in theory building in the humanities and social sciences and as a post-Orientalist epistemological paradigm in Asian American Studies. There is a need to tap into Asian traditions of thought for analyzing Asian American behaviors and for advancing global knowledge in the human interest. The objective is to explore a common core of Asian worldviews and values that overlap in their influence on particular regions, nations, and communities. In their view, Asiacentrism may be able to offer an alternative Asian perspective grounded in an awareness of the dynamics of a postcolonial world.[
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Wong, Manvi, and Wong also submitted that Asiacentrism can be a paradigmatic way of integrating Asian American Studies and Asian Studies by acknowledging the colonial histories, recognizing the common interests, and recovering the cultural roots. They stressed that Asian American Studies should play an important role in decolonizing Asian Studies by interrogating its Eurocentric legacies.
Communication studies
Yoshitaka Miike, Professor of Intercultural Communication at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, is considered as the founding theorist of Asiacentricity in the discipline of communication.[Molefi Kete Asante, "Afrocentricity," In Reiland Rabaka (Ed.), Routledge Handbook of Pan-Africanism, London: Routledge, 2020, p. 157.][Shelton A. Gunaratne, "Excursus: Intercultural Asiacentricity," in Shelton A. Gunaratne, The Dao of the Press: An Humanocentric Theory, Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2005, pp. 132–135.][Robert T. Craig and Heidi L. Muller, "Non-Western Traditions," in Robert T. Craig and Heidi L. Muller (Eds.), Theorizing Communication: Readings across Traditions, Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage, 2007, pp. 500–501.][Stephen W. Littlejohn, Karen A. Foss, and John G. Oetzel, Theories of Human Communication (11th Ed.), Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2017, p. 422.][Guo-Ming Chen, "Asian Communication Studies: What and Where to Now," The Review of Communication, Vol. 6, No. 4, October 2006, p. 296.][Robert Shuter, "Robert T. Oliver: Trailblazer in Intercultural Communication," China Media Research, Vol. 7, No. 2, April 2011, p. 123.][Mei Zhang, "Recent Studies in East Asian Communication," Journal of Multicultural Discourses, Vol. 7, No. 3, November 2012, p. 264.] He was inspired by Molefi Kete Asante, who is one of the early pioneers in the fields of intercultural and interracial communication.[Molefi Kete Asante and Yoshitaka Miike, "Paradigmatic Issues in Intercultural Communication Studies: An Afrocentric-Asiacentric Dialogue," China Media Research, Vol. 9, No. 3, July 2013, p. 3.] Asante's Afrocentrism idea[Molefi Kete Asante, Afrocentricity: Imagination and Action ( Dissenting Knowledges Pamphlet Series, No. 12), Penang, Malaysia: Multiversity & Citizens International, 2013, pp. 24–58.][Molefi Kete Asante, African Pyramids of Knowledge: Kemet, Afrocentricity, and Africology, Brooklyn, NY: Universal Write, 2015.][Molefi Kete Asante, "Afrocentricity and the Cultural Question: On Theorizing Humanity and Communication," in Yoshitaka Miike and Jing Yin (Eds.), The Handbook of Global Interventions in Communication Theory, New York, NY: Routledge, 2022, pp. 89–102.] as well as Wong, Manvi, and Wong's Asiacentric reflection led Miike to coin the term Asiacentricity and outline an Asiacentric project in culture and communication studies in 2003.[Yoshitaka Miike, "Beyond Eurocentrism in the Intercultural Field: Searching for an Asiacentric Paradigm," in William J. Starosta and Guo-Ming Chen (Eds.), Ferment in the Intercultural Field: Axiology/Value/Praxis ( International and Intercultural Communication Annual, Vol. 26), Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003, pp. 243–276.] He was later influenced by Maulana Karenga’s Kawaida philosophy,[Maulana Karenga, Kawaida: A Communitarian African Philosophy, Los Angeles, CA: University of Sankore Press, 1997.][Maulana Karenga, "Philosophy in the African Tradition of Resistance: Issues of Human Freedom and Human Flourishing," in Lewis R. Gordon and Jane Anna Gordon (Eds.), Not Only the Master's Tools: African-American Studies in Theory and Practice, Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2006, pp. 243–271.][Maulana Karenga, Kawaida and Questions of Life and Struggle: African American, Pan-African, and Global Issues, Los Angeles, CA: University of Sankore Press, 2008, pp. 3–12.] which emphasizes the role of culture for self-understanding and self-assertion and the importance of ethics for human freedom and flourishing.[
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Miike defined Asiacentricity as "the thought and practice of centering Asians as subjects and agents and Asian cultures as reflective resources in seeing and shaping the Asian world."[Yoshitaka Miike, "Asiacentricity and the Field of Asian Communication Theory: Today and Tomorrow," in Shi-xu (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Cultural Discourse Studies, London: Routledge, p. 48.] According to him, Asiacentricity "insists on revivifying and revitalizing diverse Asian cultural traditions as theoretical resources in order to capture Asians as subjects and actors of their own cultural realities rather than objects and spectators in the lived experiences of others."[Yoshitaka Miike, "Asiacentricity," Key Concepts in Intercultural Dialogue, No. 24, July 21, 2014, Washington, DC: Center for Intercultural Dialogue.]
Borrowing from Daisetz Suzuki's words, Miike stated that Asiacentricity is essentially "the idea of being deep and open," that is, the idea of being rooted in our own culture and, at the same time, open to other cultures.[Yoshitaka Miike, "Asiacentricity: The Idea of Being Deep and Open," in Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini, Catherine Nickerson, and Brigitte Planken, Business Discourse (2nd Ed.), Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp. 57–58.] He differentiated Asiacentricity as a particularist position from Asiacentrism as a universalist ideology and maintained that Asiacentricity is a legitimate culture-centric approach to cultural Asia and people of Asian descent, while Asiacentrism is an ethnocentric approach to non-Asian worlds and people of non-Asian heritage. In Miike's conceptualization, therefore, Asiacentrists are not cultural chauvinists and separatists.[Yoshitaka Miike, "Asiacentricity," in Young Yun Kim (Ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication (Vol. 1), Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2018, pp. 39–46.]
Miike identified six dimensions of Asiacentricity: (1) an assertion of Asians as subjects and agents; (2) the centrality of the collective and humanistic interests of Asia and Asians in the process of knowledge reconstruction about the Asian world; (3) the placement of Asian cultural values and ideals at the center of inquiry into Asian thought and action; (4) the groundedness in Asian historical experiences; (5) an Asian theoretical orientation to data; and (6) an Asian ethical critique and corrective of the dislocation and displacement of Asian people and phenomena.[Yoshitaka Miike, "An Anatomy of Eurocentrism in Communication Scholarship: The Role of Asiacentricity in De-Westernizing Theory and Research," China Media Research, Vol. 6, No. 1, January 2010.]
In Miike's comprehensive outline, Asiacentricity (1) generates theoretical knowledge that corresponds to Asian communication discourse, (2) focuses on the multiplicity and complexity of Asian communicative experience, (3) reflexively constitutes and critically transforms Asian communication discourse, (4) theorizes how common aspects of humanity are expressed and understood in Asian cultural particularities, and (5) critiques Eurocentric biases in theory and research and helps Asian researchers overcome academic dependency.[
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Miike's contention is that there has been the established hierarchical relationship between "Western theories" and "non-Western texts" in Eurocentric scholarship, where non-Western cultures remain as peripheral targets of data analysis and rhetorical criticism and fail to emerge as central resources of theoretical insight and humanistic inspiration.[Yoshitaka Miike, "Culture as Text and Culture as Theory: Asiacentricity and Its Raison D’être in Intercultural Communication Research," in Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani (Eds.), The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, pp. 190–215.] Miike thus insisted that Asiacentric scholarship reconsider Asian cultures as "theories for knowledge reconstruction," not as "texts for knowledge deconstruction." Such an Asiacentric approach, according to him, would make it possible for both Asian and non-Asian researchers to theorize as Asians speak in Asian languages, as Asians are influenced by Asian religious-philosophical worldviews, as Asians struggle to live in Asian historical experiences, and as Asians feel ethically good and aesthetically beautiful.[Yoshitaka Miike, "The Asiacentric Turn in Asian Communication Studies: Shifting Paradigms and Changing Perspectives," in Molefi Kete Asante, Yoshitaka Miike, and Jing Yin (Eds.), The Global Intercultural Communication Reader (2nd Ed.), New York, NY: Routledge, 2014, pp. 116–117.]
Miike also synthesized a large body of literature in the field of Asian communication theory while paying homage to such pioneers as Anantha Babbili, Guo-Ming Chen, Godwin C. Chu, Wimal Dissanayake,[Wimal Dissanayake (Ed.), Communication Theory: The Asian Perspective, Singapore: Asian Mass Communication Research and Information Center, 1988.] D. Shelton A. Gunaratne, Satoshi Ishii, Young Yun Kim, D. Lawrence Kincaid,[D. Lawrence Kincaid (Ed.), Communication Theory: Eastern and Western Perspectives, San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1987.] Hamid Mowlana, Louis Nordstrom,[Louis Nordstrom (Ed.), "Communication: East and West" (Special Issue), Communication, Vol. 8, No. 1, August 1983, pp. 1–132.] Robert T. Oliver, Tulsi B. Saral, Robert Shuter, K. S. Sitaram, William J. Starosta, Majid Tehranian, Muneo Yoshikawa, and June Ock Yum.[Yoshitaka Miike, "Non-Western Theories of Communication: Indigenous Ideas and Insights," in Ling Chen (Ed.), Intercultural Communication ( Handbooks of Communication Science, Vol. 9), Boston, MA: De Gruyter Mouton, 2017, pp. 67-97.] He urged Asiacentric research to overcome "comparative Eurocentrism"[Yoshitaka Miike, "What Makes Multicultural Dialogue Truly Multicultural? Rethinking Cultural Convergence, Theoretical Globalism, and Comparative Eurocentrism," Journal of Multicultural Discourses, Vol. 17, No. 1, 2022, p. 39.] and direct more attention to common insights gained from non-Eurocentric comparisons. In his opinion, five types of alternative non-Eurocentric comparisons can enlarge the theoretical horizons of Asian communication research: (1) continent-diaspora comparisons; (2) within-region comparisons; (3) between-region comparisons; (4) diachronic comparisons; and (5) co-cultural domestic comparisons.[Yoshitaka Miike, "Asian Communication Studies at the Crossroads: A View to the Future from an Asiacentric Framework," Journal of Content, Community, and Communication, Vol. 3, June 2016, pp. 3–4.]
Miike asserted that humanity is most deeply felt not through universal abstractions but through linguistic and cultural particularities, and that human commonalities in their full distinctiveness must be theorized within, not outside, cultural particularities for mutual understanding across cultures. He thus concluded: Asiacentricity "substantiates the content of humanity and possibly enhances the vision of humanity." Ultimately, Asiacentricity "promotes an appreciation of humanity despite differences and because of differences."[Yoshitaka Miike, "The Question of Asianness in Asian Communication Studies: Notes on Asiacentricity and Its Critics," in Yoshitaka Miike and Jing Yin (Eds.), The Handbook of Global Interventions in Communication Theory, New York, NY: Routledge, 2022, p. 159.]
See also
Further reading
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Khanna, P. (2019). The future is Asian: Commerce, conflict, and culture in the 21st century. Simon & Schuster.
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Mahbubani, K. (2008). The new Asian hemisphere: The irresistible shift of global power to the East. PublicAffairs.
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Miike, Y. (2014). The Asiacentric turn in Asian communication studies: Shifting paradigms and changing perspectives. In M. K. Asante, Y. Miike, & J. Yin (Eds.), The global intercultural communication reader (2nd ed., pp. 111–133). Routledge.
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Miike, Y. (2024). Asiacentricity and the field of Asian communication theory: Today and tomorrow. In Shi-xu (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of cultural discourse studies
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Wong, P., Manvi, M., & Wong, T. H. (1995). Asiacentrism and Asian American Studies? Amerasia Journal, 21
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Yin, J. (2022). Rethinking Eurocentric visions in feminist communication research: Asiacentric womanism as a theoretical framework. In Y. Miike & J. Yin (Eds.), The handbook of global interventions in communication theory (pp. 188–214). Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003043348-14
External links
