Asian Indigenization of Knowledge

History

Western science and technology dominate throughout the world. Beginning in the late 15th century, the West came to Asia with immense prestige. One pronounced effect has been Asia's tendency to imitate the West. Fundamental assumptions of Asian indigenous knowledges are rarely presented as established sets of beliefs and as processes or coherent methods of learning and teaching.

The authenticity of Western science and its methodology as the arbiters of “truth” have been increasingly questioned in Asia, especially since the 1980s. Efforts of Asian societies to indigenize their social research aim to explain Asia's social reality more accurately and to rebalance Western and Eastern patterns of knowledge. Universities are called upon to create unitary bodies of theory and take pride in approaches to truth rooted in local knowledge, in the hope that there will be mutuality and companionship in learning across cultural boundaries, rather than the approach whereby Western scholars are seen as providers of advanced and scientific knowledge to Asia.

Calls for alternative discourses in the social sciences have long lingered in Asia, dating back to the early part of the 20th century. Chinese sociologists made some impressive progress in the 1930s. Advocating treating each culture as a source for generating knowledge, rather than as a recipient of imported knowledge or merely as a target of investigation, Filipino psychology became a visible movement by the 1970s. Energetic centers of indigenization then sprang up in various parts of Asia—in Japan and Korea over the past 3 decades and in Chinese societies especially since the 1980s. Calls for indigenization in the social sciences have also become vocal in India.

Current Tensions

With globalization, there is a vast range of transnational processes. Although rich countries are [Page 163]dominant, the situation is not static. The direction of transnational flows is not unilateral, especially in the noneconomic dimensions of globalization. The participation in global, or transnational, processes often entails a vitalization of local cultural expressions. Such vitalization offers an ideal opportunity for localized struggles to create new forms of knowledge and power to capture as many voices as possible to reaffirm a moral universe that respects the plurality of perspectives and paths to truth, to avoid global cultural homogenization, and to reinterpret the Western tradition, which has staked its claim to universality. Asia's recent development reveals increased self-determination in its scholarly development. A cultural consciousness of epistemic protest against Western domination has begun to rise in Asia, as more Asian scholars view their indigenous knowledge as valid and essential for addressing the issue of identity in a globalized world. Springing from a strong desire to reexamine traditional patterns of life and thought and to reinterpret ancient and classical scriptures, a seismic activity is emerging and might become a significant movement.

...