Asian studies as basically all efforts to engage in inter-culturally is caught in producing and
reproducing prejudices on the one hand and denying differences and specificities on the other.
In particular in academic studies and teaching the challenge is to overcome this apparent
dichotomy and the task is to establish understanding without prejudice of what Asia really was
and is. The extensive range of topics and views in this volume challenge a mode of
globalisation that simply overthrows national traditions by a Darwinian-kind of rule of the
survival of the strongest the fittest will actually be the one who is well capable to manage
difference by understanding them in a historical context and acknowledge them as part of
something new that is emerging in front of our eyes. This book will stimulate further research
and debate within and without the boundaries of Asian Studies.
