ABSTRACT
Area studies of Asia can be said to be a product of the post-Second World War new world order under hegemony of the United States. The national modernization paradigm continued to dominate scholarship on Asia within developing Asian nations. Very few, if any, regional and national universities contained programmes of the Asian studies, let alone area studies. Critical Asian studies has encountered a world in which the possibilities of non-capitalist emancipation has receded and one where revolutionary states have been discredited. Since the early 2000s, two relatively new fields of enquiry that might suggest new horizons for research – at least for Asian studies – have opened up. The first of these is the study of circulations and connections, especially within and with Asia under the broad title of ‘Inter-Asian Connections’ or more simply ‘Asian Connections’. The second is the problem of the environmental sustainability.
