One of the first was to help the youngest among us. Another concerned the development of contacts between Paris and the regions on the one hand, and between France and the European countries on the other hand. He wrote, in substance, that it was also necessary to balance the respective weights of the countries of the North and the countries of the South. In brief, restoring the general balance between Paris-Region, France-Europe and North-South. This language reminds one of a military or economic campaign. Do these words fit for a General or a Minister apply to humble students?
I was a co-founder for and then Director of a Research Center in the province, Institut de Recherche sur le Sud-Est Asiatique (Research Institute on Southeast Asia) in Aix-en-Provence, then again I co-founded and directed the Maison Asie Pacifique in Marseilles. Hence I know enough about the advantages and disadvantages of being based in the province. These advantages and drawbacks are not specific to Asian studies, in my opinion. I am also aware of the comparative advantages and disadvantages of working in France. I spent a long time in foreign centers, at Oxford and Kyoto among others, and I can also assess the value of our French exception. My evaluation of these two aspects does not support the notion that France is a particularly good place to do academic work. If it is an exception, so much the better, let it remain so and let us not make it an example for others.
When young researchers, at the end of their thesis or post-doctoral candidates, ask for my advice, I invariably say: go and try elsewhere. You will be better off in Canada, Australia, Japan. Try Singapore. Write to the United States. Leave.
Nevertheless I remain in France and I work there. I have there, as Research Fellow at the CNRS, a privileged status, and how so! I actually have this luck that my youngest and less fortunate colleagues don’t have and that many of them will never have. However, belonging to this coterie of civil servants does not fill me with enthusiasm. I see a generation of young researchers collide head-on into the barrier of privileges held by aging researchers. I see their troupe knock at the closed doors of big institutions. France has practiced the policy of the bottle for a long time. The neck of the institutions is narrow and we enter into them only drop by drop, but once inside we never ever get out.
All this is not good for our researches on Asia, or for anything else. I therefore completely agree with J-L Domenach.
So the question is to know if a network like the Réseau Asie can bring a solution or an improvement to this state of things. I would be tempted, in view of the statement above, to say that to remain Franco-French is not desirable. It is therefore good for this network to proceed with restoring the balance, striking the same note with our partners and colleagues from the rest of Europe. Francophone maybe, and more.
This remark is not perhaps a very clever transition but it invites me to tell the members of this network of the existence of another one, the SENAS or South European Network of Asian Studies. It was born six years ago at the instigation of a group of scholars and researchers, one of whom was the late Professor Enrica Colotti-Pischel of the University of Milan. This network was born out of the same considerations as those expressed above: deficit of relations between research centers of Southern Europe (in the North Mediterranean zone), absence of big centers like NIAS or IIAS, SOAS or EFEO, lack of communication network. It should be noted that by a sort of ironical paradox this network in Southern Europe was born in fact thanks to the ESF Asia Committee, where it was conceived, and with the help of the IIAS, both institutions of Northern Europe par excellence !
The SENAS had worked modestly but has organized several conferences, in Pavie in 1999, in Marseilles in 2000, in Lisbon in 2002. A big conference is planned next year in Venice.
The network has a Website and a news bulletin of which 4 issues have been published. In spite of its restricted size, its lack of means and its very humble results, it has persisted and we think it will become bigger. But what was it used for? And to what use can it be put now?. To simply get to know one another. Does one know in Marseilles what the dynamic center for Asian studies (the Casa Asia) is doing in Barcelona? No. Do scholars from Naples know about the research work conducted by their colleagues in Montpellier? I doubt it. Did Lyon know that Salamanque existed ? I am not sure. In any case this knowledge is in circulation now and the links are made: we know who is working on what in Lisbon, Venice or Marseilles.
Mediterranean Europe, Southern France, (with Lyon, Marseilles, Nice, Montpellier, Toulouse,) Spain (Barcelona, Madrid, Seville, Salamanque), Italy (with the universities of Milan, Pavie, Rome, Naples, Lecce and others), are big sources of knowledge, archives, persons and resources on Asia. There is still Portugal and Greece. The pipeline must be installed to circulate the oil of information between all these centers.
A network like the SENAS, like the Réseau Asie, therefore serves this purpose: get to know each other, discover the wealth that is within reach and benefit from it. It also serves to dialogue with colleagues from other academic traditions. And this is very good. And pleasant as well!
The Italians and the Spaniards already have networks that work well. I would mention for example our peninsular friends’ AEEP who regularly publish a very extensive bulletin, and ITASEAS, a young Italian network of Southeastern Asian studies which just held its first convention at Naples.
These networks of the Mezzogiorno academique provide support to scholarly activities in the Southern European area and enable one to think that studies on Asia could develop further, find more means, create projects, foster cooperative efforts. This will be of help to the young researchers, in the more or less long term.
Therefore if our network follows this path, I only see advantages, even if in the initial stages it only enables the French experts on Asia to communicate better and more spontaneously among themselves. |
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30/12/14
from 01/04/12 to 31/03/13
