Circulation of Social Sciences Between the West and Asia: A Contemporary Assessment

The paper aims to introduce some of the findings of the Interco-SSH survey on the international circulation of Social and Human Sciences (a European Union project under the supervision of Gisele Sapiro  - EHESS Paris). Albeit this survey has primarily dealt with intra-European knowledge exchanges, an additional grant has allowed to broaden the focus and to take Asian-European relations into account (mostly from Japanese, Chinese and Korean case-studies). Two sets of empirical/theoretical questions will be tackled. The first one deals with the patterns of intellectual and scholarly exchanges: taking an historical approach, the paper analyzes both what authors, theories, books or concepts have been circulating between Asia and Europe, as well as what kind of students/scholars migrations have taken place. Given the asymmetrical nature of the scientific relations between the West and Asia in the recent decades, the paper’s primary focus is on the European authors and texts that have been translated in Asia and have impinged on the various scientific fields. Yet, in a second moment, the paper also deals with the consequences of the contemporary political and economic rise of Asia in terms of scientific shifts. This new balance of power has already resulted in the growing influence of Asian universities as well as in significant changes in terms of academic migrations: has it also allowed for new theories and notions to emerge? What credit, in other words, should be given to counter-hegemonic attempts at creating social sciences in Asia that bypass their European origins? Due to the broadness of the scope, both in terms of historical approach and inter-national comparisons, the paper will engage with only a limited number of case studies, which accurately illustrates the main theoretical problems at stake.