Beyond the West as Method: Repositioning the Japanese Education Research Communities in/against the Global Structure of Academic Knowledge

Drawing on the recent critiques of the global knowledge economy of social science research, this article explores possible ways in which the Japanese education research communities can reposition themselves in the wider international education research community. The premises of this discussion are that there exists a global structure of academic knowledge and that Japanese education scholarship is deeply imbedded in this structure. Hence, repositioning is called upon so that alternative knowledge practice can be imagined to unsettle the structure. To develop this argument, the paper makes the following moves. First, it examines how the global structure of academic knowledge operates and how it has shaped the knowledge practices within Japanese education scholarship. It identifies the particular pattern of knowledge practices among Japanese education researchers, or what Kuan-Hsing Chen (2010) calls ‘the West as method’—the use of ‘Western experience’ as the single point of reference against which the Japanese self and context are made intelligible. Based on this critique, the paper then explores how the Japanese education research communities can engage in the type of alternative knowledge practices and relations that unsettle the global structure of academic knowledge and what paradoxes they might have to negotiate in the process. In concluding, the paper once again turns to Chen’s work, in particular his exposition of ‘Asia as method’ to articulate possible strategies towards alternative knowledge work which recognizes the ambivalent epistemic location of Japanese education scholarship.