A 1999 electronic publication by the Asian Studies Association of Australia. Site design and hypertext markup by by T.Matthew Ciolek.

Australians studying Asia:
the ASAA 1976-1997

http://coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProj/ASAA/King/King01.html

Rebecca King

November 1997

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree
of Bachelor of Arts Honours in History at the University of New South Wales.

Note: Electronic version of this thesis was placed on the Web on 1 Nov 1999. Visual appearance of the original paper document was slightly modified to allow for adequate online appearance and navigation. Also, some of the online resources cited by Ms King (rebeccajking@mailcity.com) and operational in 1997, due to the high volatility of the Web, do not necessarily function any longer - ed.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank the many people who have helped me during the research and writing of this thesis. In particular I am indebted to my supervisor Ian Black for his ready assistance and advice throughout the year and for conveying his enthusiasm for history. This thesis would not have been possible without the help and encouragement of members of the Association and I am especially grateful to those people who gave me access to their personal papers and allowed me to interview them. These people are acknowledged in the foreword. The President of the ASAA Anthony Reid was particularly helpful in allowing me access to the archives of the Association at the National Library of Australia. Finally I wish to thank Helen Jarvis and my family and friends for their interest and encouragement at all stages of the project.

Table of Contents

Synopsis

The Asian Studies Association of Australia formed in the mid-1970s with an initial membership of 200. Current membership is approximately 900. It was inaugurated at a time of dramatic change in Australia's official and popular relations with Asia, and has been variously successful in achieving its goals. As a mostly voluntary and underfunded organisation it has not always been able to match rhetoric with action but nonetheless there have been some commendable achievements. The Association has been most successful as an academic body, holding biennial conferences, and publishing a thrice yearly journal and a large number of academic studies through regional and other series. In these ways it has provided professional support for Asia educators but it has at the same time attempted to educate the general community about Asia. The establishment of a Commonwealth funded Asian Studies Council was a direct response to the Association's lobbying. Attempts to bring Asia to a wider community through political commentary, the media, arts and with business have been less focussed and it is difficult to disentangle the role of the Association from other influences. Continuing university funding cuts, a diversifying Asian studies scene and the present government which appears to have less overt commitment to Asia means the Association continually needs to reinvent itself to maintain its position as a critical and innovative organisation. One obvious change will be forced on the Association as the journal develops an international reputation as a scholarly publication.

Foreword: Sources on the ASAA

The Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) did not simply come into being on a specific date but had its genesis in the early 1970s in discussions between a number of Asianists largely based in Canberra and Melbourne. The official foundation is 16 May 1976, when the constitution was adopted at the first formal meeting of the Association at the first conference. It was not until some twelve years later that the Association (perhaps realising its own worth) lodged archival material at the National Library of Australia. As a result tracing the first steps of the Association is inevitably based on limited and incomplete records assembled after the event. I have been helped however by the fact that many early members of the Association are still active and have participated in this project. As an honours student I was unable to interview ASAA members across Australia who may have provided valuable information though I was able to speak to a number of key players: Ian Black, Susan Blackburn, Jan Elliott, John Ingleson, Helen Jarvis, Jamie Mackie, Jim Masselos, Elaine McKay, Anthony Reid and Jim Wilson.

The initial archive depositions are in six boxes lodged in 1988 and a further four in 1992. These contain mostly secretarial documents such as correspondence, meeting minutes, and also conference and publications series documents. In 1996 a further three cartons were archived containing conference papers from the 1996 Conference. The collection has never been sorted and there is no topic or time frame to link each set of papers. The task of sifting through the boxes of material was made difficult through this lack of organisation. In tracing the Association's activities I had, in addition to full access to this material, the private papers of two key ASAA members, John Ingleson and Helen Jarvis, who each had a box of documents that spanned their years of involvement in the Association. I was also able to look at some specific documents from Anthony Reid. The early ASAA Newsletters and then thrice yearly Review journal have provided much information but I am aware that most of the commentary available on ASAA activities has been written by Association members themselves. The fact that the Association includes most Asianists in Australia has meant that even the available sources on Australia-Asia relations have been generally the work of members. Journal, newspaper and book articles as well as government reports and the collection of microfiche conference papers at the UNSW library were useful as were the two websites of the Association. For more details on sources see the bibliographical notes. One of the major problems inherent in an organisation such as the ASAA is that many proposals were made and even endorsed at conferences but in the absence of a paid full time secretariat may not have been put into operation. The non-systematic nature of the archival material leads to a position where sometimes one can only speculate.

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