Fw: H-ASIA:Seeking introductory resources on social media and virtual world cultures in Asia (Comment)

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----- Original Message -----
From: "Linda Dwyer" <dwyer@MAIL.H-NET.MSU.EDU>
To: <H-ASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2012 5:50 AM
Subject: H-ASIA:Seeking introductory resources on social media and virtual
world cultures in Asia (Comment)


> H-ASIA
> August 7, 2012
>
> Seeking introductory resources on social media and virtual world cultures
> in Asia (Comment)
> ************
> From: Ian Welch <ian.welch@anu.edu.au>
>
>
> This is an important note, even if it may not immediately seem so.
>
> I am currently working on the history of the American Protestant Episcopal
> Mission in Shanghai, China. In the process, not only am I learning a great
> deal about the everyday life of Chinese in and surrounding Shanghai, I am
> also finding fascinating insights through the mostly young but well
> educated American missionaries. These personal and contemporary
> experiences can be missing from traditional text approaches.
>
> One thing that has emerged along the way is the almost totally unknown
> story of the attempt of the Episcopal Church to evangelise Chinese
> immigrants in the early 1850s, not only in California, but initially in
> New York involving many American business men whose names are rarely
> linked to their religious values. I plan to have a working paper on this
> topic online in a month or two.
>
> Members may recall that I have recently been trying to track travels
> inland from Shanghai for a distance of around 100 miles at a time when the
> foreigners were supposedly locked into the treaty port of Shanghai. That
> small task, (readily undertaken by any undergraduate as well as others)
> has demonstrated, conclusively, that the supposed travel freedoms granted
> by the Chinese Government in the Treaty of Tientsin were already available
> as most magistrates made their own decisions about managing adventurous
> foreigners. I had already noted the same pattern in Fujian Province, when
> researching the English Anglicans.
>
> I have been engrossed, more recently, in the reports of American
> missionaries who were on board the American ships that visited Nagasaki in
> the wake of the Perry "opening" of Japan. Their descriptions of Japanese
> officials and the general life of people in Nagasaki provide further
> insights into the relationships of foreigners with the Japanese and
> particularly the dislike of Christianity that dated back more than two
> hundred years to the murders of Catholic Christians in that part of Japan.
>
> All this may seem a bit esoteric, but my point is that my information,
> running into literally thousands of pages, is coming entirely from digital
> sources in the United States with some other very valued assistance from
> librarians, archivists and historians in the US and Australia. I stress
> that much of this material does not seem to have been worked by historians
> as it was taken by and large, almost inaccessible.
>
> I appreciate that Mr. Zulkarnain's inquiry is probably focussed on digital
> material from within Asia, presumably written by Asians for Asians, but if
> we are talking more generally in the context of virtual world cultures,
> the amount of material coming online, daily, across Asia as well as
> elsewhere, is growing faster than many of us realise, especially academic
> teachers wedded to conventional texts in undergraduate teaching.
>
> I believe reading, at online, details of the meeting of East with East, as
> well as East with West, can transform undergraduate learning and make the
> whole experience exciting for students who are frustrated by traditional
> textbooks and much conventional teaching practice.
>
> The tendency to serve up well cooked stew in a traditional academic
> curricula in the humanities and social sciences is long past due date. It
> is time, as I think, to see, as Mr. Zulkermain's request envisages,
> getting u/g students into a solid meal as quickly as possible.
>
> The serious, dramatic, and troubling worldwide decline in student
> enrolments in the humanities and social sciences is surely linked to the
> boredom of many undergraduate course designs and classroom experiences.
>
> Ian Welch, Canberra.
>
> *******
> Ed. Note: Best wishes in your pursuit of this research, Ian. In the
> current context of instantaneous communication and ease of travel, we too
> often forget that transnational networks are not new despite rigors of
> travel and time lags in communication. Thanks for the generosity of
> sharing your important work with the list.
> Regarding research in contemporary virtual networks, much of it is
> sponsored by industry interests. Microsoft has posted a few lectures to
> the internet. TED recorded a short video of a lecture by Amber Case, a
> "cyborg anthropologist." I believe that in Great Britain this
> specialization is "digital anthropology." Case's video records the ways
> in which being "cyborg" affects how we experience being human--not quite
> what you may wish in your course:
> http://www.ted.com/talks/amber_case_we_are_all_cyborgs_now.html . LD
>
>
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