Book Review: Asia and the Pacific: China and Orientalism: Western Knowledge Production and the PRC
| Author | Zhao Yujia |
| Published date | 01 May 2013 |
| Date | 01 May 2013 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1478-9302.12016_126 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
the book, namely female leadership, veiling, polygamy
and sexuality.
The first chapter clarifies the process of Islamisation
and democratisation in post-authoritarian Indonesia
and expands the debate regarding both Islam and
gender.The second chapter looks at female leader ship
and explains the significance of female social power in
the new democracy.This chapter deals with Megewati
Sukarnoputri when she announced that she wanted to
be president. Wichelen makes a connection between
the issue of female presidency and female veiling
(wearing the hijab) in the next chapter. In fact,chapter
3 discusses the importance of ‘new veiling’in the social
atmosphere of contemporary Indonesia.
The fourth chapter, entitled ‘Contesting Masculin-
ity’, takes a specific approach to the issue of polygamy.
It does not examine polygamy’s occurrence but inves-
tigates what is involved in defending, justifying or
defying polygamy, as promoted by the campaign (p. 71)
that was initiated by the wealthy entrepreneur Puspo
Wardoyo.The final chapter explores the debate among
politicians, Islamic clerics and feminists on the issue of
female sexuality and women’s presence in society.This
begins with a discussion of Inul Daratista, a young
Indonesian singer and dancer.
For me, although the book is about religion, politics
and the issue of gender in Indonesia, a comparison
with Malaysia as a majority Muslim country with many
aspects of Islamic development would have been useful.
However, the book is a well-written piece of academic
research which focuses on the connections between
religious and political developments and socio-cultural
movements after Suharto’s demise.
Majid Daneshgar
(Academy of Islamic Studies, University of Malaya)
China and Orientalism: Western Knowledge Pro-
duction and the PRC by Daniel F. Vukovich.
Abingdon: Routledge, 2012. 185pp., £80.00, ISBN 9
798 0 415 59220 8
In his book China and Orientalism, Daniel Vukovich
states that there is a new form of ‘orientalism’ – com-
pared to Edward Said’s ‘orientalism’ – in the area of
China studies. The so-called ‘Sinological orientalism’
widely affects the production of knowledge about the
People’s Republic of China (PRC) from the outside.
Vukovich argues that although Sinological orientalism
makes a shift from the belief of ‘essentially different’ to
‘China’s becoming sameness’, it actually inherits the
positional superiority from old orientalists. Sinologists
are obsessed by the idea of finding out the missing parts
from Chinese institutions, culture or politics. They
seem to believe that if those missing parts were ful-
filled, China would become normal and nice just like
‘us’; the only obstacle is the Chinese Communist Party.
Vukovich uses texts from academic papers, novels, films
and journals to illustrate this superiority-positioned but
dominant form of knowledge production in the area of
China studies.
As a critique against the Sinological orientalist tra-
dition,Vukovich calls for the approach of adopting the
Foucauldian notion of discourse and power in order to
understand the PRC (political and communist China).
To be specific, he claims that one needs to understand
Maoist discourse first before demonising the Cultural
Revolution, or the Great Leap Forward,or the Tianan-
men incident in 1989.Vukovich argues that rather than
the terrifying madness and irrationality that many
Sinological orientalists describe, there is actually inter-
nal coherence, logic, normality and complexity within
those events which can be understood. There is evi-
dence that indicates the imbalance in terms of know-
ledge production between West and East.
This book is especially valuable for Western readers
who want to understand China’s behaviour during the
Maoist era, though it is not easy to read for those who
have little background knowledge about Maoist China.
It provides many insightful analyses – even for Chinese
scholars – on Maoist discourse as well as the Cultural
Revolution, the Great Leap Forward and the Tianan-
men incident.
Vukovich makes considerable efforts to compare
Western orientalist knowledge with Chinese self-
understanding of Maoism and its related events. He
successfully demonstrates that there are huge gaps in
the area of China studies. The only critique may lie
with Vukovich’s selection of research materials on
Maoist discourse. One may doubt how representative
these texts (which are a small sample) might be to the
general self-understanding of Chinese people during
the Maoist era, even though that evidence perfectly
supports Vukovich’s arguments.
Yujia Zhao
(University of Nottingham)
BOOK REVIEWS 305
© 2013 TheAuthors. Political Studies Review © 2013 Political Studies Association
Political Studies Review: 2013, 11(2)
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