This collection of articles about assessments of, and vulnerabilities to, current and projected future risks from both “natural” and more obviously anthropogenic hazards across Asia shifts the question from the long-debated “What do we mean by Asian studies?” (e.g., Duara Reference Duara2010; Thongchai Reference Winichakul2014) to “What is Asian studies?” Can Asian studies move forward by bringing understandings of culture, politics, and society into direct conversation with studies of biophysical processes? After all, social and cultural processes are necessarily also “natural” in the sense that they are creative products of being-in-the-(biophysical) world. And if we take Bill Kibbens's apocalyptic-sounding “end of nature” as a restatement of geographer Neil Smith's (Reference Smith1984) theorization of the “production of nature”—meaning that capitalism transforms all of what we might think of as external, or first, nature through uneven development—then the “nature” studied in the natural sciences is always already social. These premises of “social nature,” as political ecology would have it, or “coupled social-ecological systems,” as it is formulated in sustainability science, are not widely shared across the disciplines, though, and might meet resistance from literature and physics alike. In this commentary, then, I read these four articles in relation to each other and offer a few thoughts on what heading toward a transdisciplinary Asian studies might look like.
I focus on observations about two differences among the articles: on questions of spatial and temporal scale, and on the relationship between knowledge and action. First, the two anthropological articles, both written by single researchers as is the norm in the humanities and interpretive social sciences, present studies grounded in single sites—Bhopal, India, and eastern Kazakhstan—and build their arguments from the bottom up. The two other articles, written by teams of scholars as is more typical in the biophysical sciences, take what could be called the 30,000-foot view, the perspective of the remote sensing satellite, or of mainstream international relations where the relevant actors are states. The articles grounded in the physical sciences adopt a synoptic view of particular types of vulnerabilities—to Landslide Dam Outburst Floods or nuclear war—whereas the anthropological work focuses on a smaller-scale examination of how different types of vulnerabilities intersect with each other in the shaping of lived experience. This corresponds loosely here to concerns with different temporalities as well. As Alāna Wilson et al. starkly explain, “changes to the cryosphere discussed here cannot be controlled on time scales meaningful to a single generation of people.” The humanities and interpretive social sciences, by contrast, must necessarily make even unthinkably long epochs of time meaningful to humans today. Where Owen B. Toon et al. hope to shock policymakers into action to avert the unimaginable death of most of the world's population from nuclear radiation, Magdalena Stawkowski dwells in the everyday, meaning-making activities of those who live with radiation exposure.
These differences in scale speak to Kavita Philip's (Reference Philip2014, 984) recent argument in the Journal of Asian Studies that “historians, social scientists, philosophers—trained to think in smaller chunks of time and space” must “begin to think along the timelines of ecology, and the spatial lines of the planet.” Such new ways of thinking will be very difficult, she states, but this transcendence of disciplinary boundaries is necessary as Asian studies continues to exist in the Anthropocene. Scholarly analyses of Asia as such, and discussions of climate change, among other issues, should not continue to exist as if in parallel universes (Hilton Reference Hilton2014). Wilson et al. address the issue of scale, though their argument turns Philip's message around. It is not just that scholars in the humanities must expand the scales of their thinking, but policymakers and the biophysical sciences on which they should draw must always bear in mind that scale itself is political. Given the fractal nature of watersheds, they remind us, “any framing of High Asia as defined by hydrology and ecology cannot be viewed as a natural decision divorced from politics.”
Heeding the constructed nature of scales of both social and biophysical processes is important as we work toward a more transdisciplinary way of imagining “Asian studies.” Out of the awareness that their primary disciplines are not typically thought of in the ambit of “Asian studies,” the multi-authored, synoptic articles more self-consciously locate their discussion in Asia. By their situation in a region conventionally named Asia, humans and their cultural meanings, bureaucratic institutions, and political economies can be described as Asian, but the same is not true of biophysical processes of ice melt, groundwater depletion, or firestorms, which may have geographical patterns but are also presumed to conform to underlying universal physical laws and processes that have no inherent relationship to place. As Mark Hudson (Reference Hudson2014, 943) noted in the Journal of Asian Studies forum on the Anthropocene, “processes that comprise the Anthropocene are truly global and apply as much in Asia as anywhere else.” Thus, it is not the basic principles of hydrology that make water relevant in Asian studies, and Asian studies relevant to the study of water. (That is, there is no field of Asian hydrology, nor should there be.) Instead, what binds these concerns together is the fact that water distribution and control creates critical regional interdependencies that are shaping Asia as both a reality and a field of inquiry (Duara Reference Duara2010, 976). Indeed, in asking what scholars of Asia can offer to the ongoing discussions of the Anthropocene, Johan Elverskog (Reference Elverskog2014, 965) builds on Duara's discussion as well as work by Terje Tvedt (Reference Tvedt2010) to suggest that “Asia's hydrology is what makes Asia.” But in making this analytical move, we must remain mindful—as Wilson et al. caution—that the framing of interdependencies around the flow of water as “hydrological” cannot be allowed to obscure its own politics.
Second, all of the articles deal in one way or another with questions about the production and application of scientific knowledge in relation to disasters, past and projected. All point to the need for better scientific data—whether from epidemiological studies that are actually conducted, in a timely fashion, with data collected continuously and made publicly available in Bhopal, or from new isotope and remote sensing studies that can better reveal differential contributions to river flow and more precisely monitor glacial lake hazards in the Himalayas. However, the articles differ in their inferred linkages between knowledge, understanding, and action. Toon et al. suggest that evidence should produce action in a relatively straightforward way. Thus, their title suggests that the countries of Asia are treading the nuclear path because of a lack of awareness among leaders and citizens that self-assured destruction will be the result. Similarly, the lack of evidence that North Korea is technologically superior to Japan and South Korea is presented as reason enough for North Korea to be persuaded to give up its nuclear weapons. Toon et al. are concerned not so much with understanding why nuclear weapons have not been eliminated but actually increased in recent years, but rather with offering a clarion call, backed by scenario analysis, for nuclear disarmament.
In contrast, an analysis of politics, particularly of secrecy, is front and center in this issue's articles by Bridget Hanna and Magdalena Stawkowski, and to a lesser extent, also by Alāna Wilson et al. In Bhopal, the fact that scientific (epidemiological) studies were conducted did not lead to action. Instead, because the studies’ results were never revealed, doctors now dismiss patient claims and medical providers believe there are no long-term effects of exposure. In Kazakhstan, scientific evidence of contamination does not lead to restricted human access to such sites. Moreover the convergence of post-Soviet market reforms with a long history of secrecy leads both local scientists and local residents to conclude, against a preponderance of scientific evidence, that a former nuclear test site is not a health hazard to those who live on and around it. History, political economic pressures, cultural idioms, and sedimented social practice complicate any tidy assumptions that scientific knowledge leads to particular types of action. We cannot do without studies about how likely it is that climate change will cause summer flooding or growing season water scarcity, or what kinds of illnesses are caused by different levels of chemical exposure, but the data they produce are only the beginning, not the end, of understanding. Wilson et al. acknowledge this, presenting new knowledge about how anthropogenic climate warming is changing regional water balance while simultaneously cautioning that bland calls for multi-basin water governance obscure the deeply political nature of transboundary water relations.
Clearly, scientific studies alone cannot grapple with the causes or consequences of vulnerability to hazards. Developing ways to analyze and predict the effects of climate change on groundwater systems is necessary before any understanding of who will be affected can be achieved, but so too is an analysis of what shapes differential access to resources across country, region, class, caste, gender, race, and ethnicity, as well as how different and contested meanings of water and its use may shape the experience of water scarcity, changes in cropping patterns, or the likelihood of the adoption of new technologies. An analysis of water in the Himalayas that takes equally seriously hydrologic modeling, commodification and its relationship to capitalism's spatial fix, and how the presence and agency of nagas (water deities) shape the ways in which certain bodies of water are used would move us toward a transdisciplinary Asian studies.
The four contributions here point in particular to the need to bring techniques of modeling biological and physical processes together with analyses of the role of the state, the nation, and commodities in producing, mitigating, and coping with disasters. The Bhopal Gas disaster was constituted as such by Union Carbide Corporation's corporate power and drive to profit maximization, by state failure, and by the mismatch between scientific and legal protocols and understandings of causality, uncertainty, and persuasive evidence. These same imbroglios plague debates about radioactive exposure, articulating with the post-Soviet economic collapse to enable the circulation of “killer commodities” in Kazakhstan. Toon et al.’s analysis too demonstrates the ways in which catastrophes necessarily involve the state (concerns about state security), commodities (food prices in the wake of a potential nuclear-induced reduction in food production), and biophysical uncertainties. Wilson et al. remind us of inequalities both within and among nation-states of Asia, and the dam-building that they discuss is profoundly tied to not only economic interests but also national pride.
Finally, in this commentary I have stated the need for a “transdisciplinary” approach rather than an “interdisciplinary” one in part because Asian studies already sees itself as “interdisciplinary” across the humanities and social sciences, and bringing these into conversation with the biophysical sciences is a transformative step beyond current interdisciplinarity. But transdisciplinarity is a tall order. It goes beyond the additive nature of multidisciplinary work, in which disciplines work within their own frameworks of knowledge (Lawrence and Despres Reference Lawrence and Despres2004; Murphy Reference Murphy2011). It also implies moving beyond interdisciplinarity, which aims to coordinate across different ways of knowing, developing integrated conceptual frameworks and synthesizing results, but usually stays rooted within a single overarching epistemological framework (Murphy Reference Murphy2011). Transdisciplinary work transgresses and transcends disciplinary and epistemological boundaries and norms, requiring reflexive engagement across, rather than subsumption of, other knowledge frameworks. This means recognizing that the production of all knowledge, including scientific knowledge, is socially situated. This is admittedly not an easy dialogue to have when conversation partners may range from those who study the meaning and interpretation of calamities in poetry, to those who seek an understanding of why some people are more vulnerable to suffering and catastrophe than others, to those who study the biophysical drivers based on universal physical laws.
Explicit and specific discussion of disagreements, such as those concerning epistemology, the nature of “systems,” and ontology, is necessary, as is the recognition that these debates cannot be settled once and for all (Yeh Reference Yeh2016). Nor, of course, can or should all, or even most, work be transdisciplinary. Rather, the goal should be to create a space for a transdisciplinary Asian studies, whether in the form of teams of scholars working together in research and writing endeavors or by creating forums, such as this collection, that encourage reading and thinking across disciplines. All the while, we must recognize that the devil is in the details of our subjectivization by our respective disciplines and the accompanying everyday practices of peer review, funding priorities, presentation format, rhetorical style, and judgments of quality and value. Though difficult, it is an important goal for Asian studies if it is to continue to fully embrace the complexities of being human in a more-than-human Asia.
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This collection of articles about assessments of, and vulnerabilities to, current and projected future risks from both “natural” and more obviously anthropogenic hazards across Asia shifts the question from the long-debated “What do we mean by Asian studies?” (e.g., Duara Reference Duara2010; Thongchai Reference Winichakul2014) to “What is Asian studies?” Can Asian studies move forward by bringing understandings of culture, politics, and society into direct conversation with studies of biophysical processes? After all, social and cultural processes are necessarily also “natural” in the sense that they are creative products of being-in-the-(biophysical) world. And if we take Bill Kibbens's apocalyptic-sounding “end of nature” as a restatement of geographer Neil Smith's (Reference Smith1984) theorization of the “production of nature”—meaning that capitalism transforms all of what we might think of as external, or first, nature through uneven development—then the “nature” studied in the natural sciences is always already social. These premises of “social nature,” as political ecology would have it, or “coupled social-ecological systems,” as it is formulated in sustainability science, are not widely shared across the disciplines, though, and might meet resistance from literature and physics alike. In this commentary, then, I read these four articles in relation to each other and offer a few thoughts on what heading toward a transdisciplinary Asian studies might look like.
I focus on observations about two differences among the articles: on questions of spatial and temporal scale, and on the relationship between knowledge and action. First, the two anthropological articles, both written by single researchers as is the norm in the humanities and interpretive social sciences, present studies grounded in single sites—Bhopal, India, and eastern Kazakhstan—and build their arguments from the bottom up. The two other articles, written by teams of scholars as is more typical in the biophysical sciences, take what could be called the 30,000-foot view, the perspective of the remote sensing satellite, or of mainstream international relations where the relevant actors are states. The articles grounded in the physical sciences adopt a synoptic view of particular types of vulnerabilities—to Landslide Dam Outburst Floods or nuclear war—whereas the anthropological work focuses on a smaller-scale examination of how different types of vulnerabilities intersect with each other in the shaping of lived experience. This corresponds loosely here to concerns with different temporalities as well. As Alāna Wilson et al. starkly explain, “changes to the cryosphere discussed here cannot be controlled on time scales meaningful to a single generation of people.” The humanities and interpretive social sciences, by contrast, must necessarily make even unthinkably long epochs of time meaningful to humans today. Where Owen B. Toon et al. hope to shock policymakers into action to avert the unimaginable death of most of the world's population from nuclear radiation, Magdalena Stawkowski dwells in the everyday, meaning-making activities of those who live with radiation exposure.
These differences in scale speak to Kavita Philip's (Reference Philip2014, 984) recent argument in the Journal of Asian Studies that “historians, social scientists, philosophers—trained to think in smaller chunks of time and space” must “begin to think along the timelines of ecology, and the spatial lines of the planet.” Such new ways of thinking will be very difficult, she states, but this transcendence of disciplinary boundaries is necessary as Asian studies continues to exist in the Anthropocene. Scholarly analyses of Asia as such, and discussions of climate change, among other issues, should not continue to exist as if in parallel universes (Hilton Reference Hilton2014). Wilson et al. address the issue of scale, though their argument turns Philip's message around. It is not just that scholars in the humanities must expand the scales of their thinking, but policymakers and the biophysical sciences on which they should draw must always bear in mind that scale itself is political. Given the fractal nature of watersheds, they remind us, “any framing of High Asia as defined by hydrology and ecology cannot be viewed as a natural decision divorced from politics.”
Heeding the constructed nature of scales of both social and biophysical processes is important as we work toward a more transdisciplinary way of imagining “Asian studies.” Out of the awareness that their primary disciplines are not typically thought of in the ambit of “Asian studies,” the multi-authored, synoptic articles more self-consciously locate their discussion in Asia. By their situation in a region conventionally named Asia, humans and their cultural meanings, bureaucratic institutions, and political economies can be described as Asian, but the same is not true of biophysical processes of ice melt, groundwater depletion, or firestorms, which may have geographical patterns but are also presumed to conform to underlying universal physical laws and processes that have no inherent relationship to place. As Mark Hudson (Reference Hudson2014, 943) noted in the Journal of Asian Studies forum on the Anthropocene, “processes that comprise the Anthropocene are truly global and apply as much in Asia as anywhere else.” Thus, it is not the basic principles of hydrology that make water relevant in Asian studies, and Asian studies relevant to the study of water. (That is, there is no field of Asian hydrology, nor should there be.) Instead, what binds these concerns together is the fact that water distribution and control creates critical regional interdependencies that are shaping Asia as both a reality and a field of inquiry (Duara Reference Duara2010, 976). Indeed, in asking what scholars of Asia can offer to the ongoing discussions of the Anthropocene, Johan Elverskog (Reference Elverskog2014, 965) builds on Duara's discussion as well as work by Terje Tvedt (Reference Tvedt2010) to suggest that “Asia's hydrology is what makes Asia.” But in making this analytical move, we must remain mindful—as Wilson et al. caution—that the framing of interdependencies around the flow of water as “hydrological” cannot be allowed to obscure its own politics.
Second, all of the articles deal in one way or another with questions about the production and application of scientific knowledge in relation to disasters, past and projected. All point to the need for better scientific data—whether from epidemiological studies that are actually conducted, in a timely fashion, with data collected continuously and made publicly available in Bhopal, or from new isotope and remote sensing studies that can better reveal differential contributions to river flow and more precisely monitor glacial lake hazards in the Himalayas. However, the articles differ in their inferred linkages between knowledge, understanding, and action. Toon et al. suggest that evidence should produce action in a relatively straightforward way. Thus, their title suggests that the countries of Asia are treading the nuclear path because of a lack of awareness among leaders and citizens that self-assured destruction will be the result. Similarly, the lack of evidence that North Korea is technologically superior to Japan and South Korea is presented as reason enough for North Korea to be persuaded to give up its nuclear weapons. Toon et al. are concerned not so much with understanding why nuclear weapons have not been eliminated but actually increased in recent years, but rather with offering a clarion call, backed by scenario analysis, for nuclear disarmament.
In contrast, an analysis of politics, particularly of secrecy, is front and center in this issue's articles by Bridget Hanna and Magdalena Stawkowski, and to a lesser extent, also by Alāna Wilson et al. In Bhopal, the fact that scientific (epidemiological) studies were conducted did not lead to action. Instead, because the studies’ results were never revealed, doctors now dismiss patient claims and medical providers believe there are no long-term effects of exposure. In Kazakhstan, scientific evidence of contamination does not lead to restricted human access to such sites. Moreover the convergence of post-Soviet market reforms with a long history of secrecy leads both local scientists and local residents to conclude, against a preponderance of scientific evidence, that a former nuclear test site is not a health hazard to those who live on and around it. History, political economic pressures, cultural idioms, and sedimented social practice complicate any tidy assumptions that scientific knowledge leads to particular types of action. We cannot do without studies about how likely it is that climate change will cause summer flooding or growing season water scarcity, or what kinds of illnesses are caused by different levels of chemical exposure, but the data they produce are only the beginning, not the end, of understanding. Wilson et al. acknowledge this, presenting new knowledge about how anthropogenic climate warming is changing regional water balance while simultaneously cautioning that bland calls for multi-basin water governance obscure the deeply political nature of transboundary water relations.
Clearly, scientific studies alone cannot grapple with the causes or consequences of vulnerability to hazards. Developing ways to analyze and predict the effects of climate change on groundwater systems is necessary before any understanding of who will be affected can be achieved, but so too is an analysis of what shapes differential access to resources across country, region, class, caste, gender, race, and ethnicity, as well as how different and contested meanings of water and its use may shape the experience of water scarcity, changes in cropping patterns, or the likelihood of the adoption of new technologies. An analysis of water in the Himalayas that takes equally seriously hydrologic modeling, commodification and its relationship to capitalism's spatial fix, and how the presence and agency of nagas (water deities) shape the ways in which certain bodies of water are used would move us toward a transdisciplinary Asian studies.
The four contributions here point in particular to the need to bring techniques of modeling biological and physical processes together with analyses of the role of the state, the nation, and commodities in producing, mitigating, and coping with disasters. The Bhopal Gas disaster was constituted as such by Union Carbide Corporation's corporate power and drive to profit maximization, by state failure, and by the mismatch between scientific and legal protocols and understandings of causality, uncertainty, and persuasive evidence. These same imbroglios plague debates about radioactive exposure, articulating with the post-Soviet economic collapse to enable the circulation of “killer commodities” in Kazakhstan. Toon et al.’s analysis too demonstrates the ways in which catastrophes necessarily involve the state (concerns about state security), commodities (food prices in the wake of a potential nuclear-induced reduction in food production), and biophysical uncertainties. Wilson et al. remind us of inequalities both within and among nation-states of Asia, and the dam-building that they discuss is profoundly tied to not only economic interests but also national pride.
Finally, in this commentary I have stated the need for a “transdisciplinary” approach rather than an “interdisciplinary” one in part because Asian studies already sees itself as “interdisciplinary” across the humanities and social sciences, and bringing these into conversation with the biophysical sciences is a transformative step beyond current interdisciplinarity. But transdisciplinarity is a tall order. It goes beyond the additive nature of multidisciplinary work, in which disciplines work within their own frameworks of knowledge (Lawrence and Despres Reference Lawrence and Despres2004; Murphy Reference Murphy2011). It also implies moving beyond interdisciplinarity, which aims to coordinate across different ways of knowing, developing integrated conceptual frameworks and synthesizing results, but usually stays rooted within a single overarching epistemological framework (Murphy Reference Murphy2011). Transdisciplinary work transgresses and transcends disciplinary and epistemological boundaries and norms, requiring reflexive engagement across, rather than subsumption of, other knowledge frameworks. This means recognizing that the production of all knowledge, including scientific knowledge, is socially situated. This is admittedly not an easy dialogue to have when conversation partners may range from those who study the meaning and interpretation of calamities in poetry, to those who seek an understanding of why some people are more vulnerable to suffering and catastrophe than others, to those who study the biophysical drivers based on universal physical laws.
Explicit and specific discussion of disagreements, such as those concerning epistemology, the nature of “systems,” and ontology, is necessary, as is the recognition that these debates cannot be settled once and for all (Yeh Reference Yeh2016). Nor, of course, can or should all, or even most, work be transdisciplinary. Rather, the goal should be to create a space for a transdisciplinary Asian studies, whether in the form of teams of scholars working together in research and writing endeavors or by creating forums, such as this collection, that encourage reading and thinking across disciplines. All the while, we must recognize that the devil is in the details of our subjectivization by our respective disciplines and the accompanying everyday practices of peer review, funding priorities, presentation format, rhetorical style, and judgments of quality and value. Though difficult, it is an important goal for Asian studies if it is to continue to fully embrace the complexities of being human in a more-than-human Asia.