TY - JOUR
AU - Guelcher, Greg
AB -  observation? As a method, fieldwork was pioneered by anthropology but now is widely used in other disciplines (though what an anthropologist means by `fieldwork' is at times very different from what, say, a political scientist might mean; i.e. the `participant observation' component does not necessarily figure in non-anthropological accounts of fieldwork). The point behind this rhetorical manoeuver of discussing the `field' requires elucidation, and Harootunian's view of studying in the field comes off as a caricature if not downright inaccurate: `students were required to take intensive language courses and to experience living among the natives. These two conditions were considered--and still are--as more than adequate substitutes or replacements for theory and methodology; in fact, they were seen as functional analogues of both' (p. 39). Such sweeping generalizations do not make persuasive arguments. Finally, other statements may be interpreted as tactless, as when he writes that, since the war, students of Asian studies `have regularly acquired wives who could double as native informants and stand in for field experience during their time away from the "field"' (p. 39). Harootunian's book is in a certain respect similar to Ivan P. Hall's Bamboozled! (2002), a polemic that pulls no punches in 
TI - The Making of Japanese Manchuria, 1904–1932, by Yoshihisa Tak Matsusaka. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001, 522 pp. $52.00 (hardcover ISBN 0-674-00369-1)
JO - Social Science Japan Journal
DO - 10.1093/ssjj/7.1.132
DA - 2004-04-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/the-making-of-japanese-manchuria-1904-1932-by-yoshihisa-tak-matsusaka-OzPJsDJW95
SP - 132
EP - 134
VL - 7
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -