IACS簡介
目前由交通大學亞太／文化研究室負責Inter-Asia Cultural Studies國際性學術期刊之編輯業務，2008年八月以前由清華大學亞太文化研究室負責。本刊的目的在於推動亞洲地區學術的全球化，並且在知識生產的層次上促進亞洲次區域間之互動與整合。
本刊自2000年發刊，是第一個以亞洲為基地之文化研究國際性學術刊物。因為逐漸形成亞洲跨領域的學術思想界的對話平台，本刊受到國際學界廣泛的重視，所以在2005年成為台灣與亞洲第一個被SSCI與A&HCI同時收入的人文學刊。目前本刊在文化研究這個新興的國際學術領域中，已成為亞際文化研究發展之重要指標與據點。
Editoral Statement
Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, also known as the Movements project, is a transborder collective undertaking to confront Inter-Asia cultural politics.
The question of culture is among the most important yet difficult facing Inter-Asia today. Prolonged histories of feudal ideology, patriarchy, heterosexism, and, within as well as between countries, racism and discrimination against subjugated peoples continue to block struggles for popular democracy. Long term complex-antagonisms generated by the uneven histories of global capitalism, colonialism and imperialism, the imposed nation-state structure and regressive forms of nationalist identity politics have rendered meaningful dialogues within the region very difficult. At the same time, the globalization and regionalization of technology, economy, and cultural production, and the recent breakdown of the Cold War structure, have opened up a unique moment for dialogues within Asia and internationally.
Unfortunately this potentially generative moment has been met with triumphalist sentiment. Since the 1980’s, a pervasive rhetoric of the 'rise of Asia' has come to mean more than the concentrated flow of capital into and out of the region. It has come to constitute a structure of feeling that is ubiquitous yet ambiguously felt throughout Asia. Historically, this feeling of the ‘rise of Asia’ is complicated by the region’s colonial past. While Asia’s political, cultural and economic position in the global system will continue to fluctuate, there is a need to question and critique the rhetorical unities of both the 'rise' and of 'Asia'. Wealth and resources are unevenly distributed and there is no cultural or linguistic unity in this imaginary space called Asia. On the other hand, no matter whether there are common experiences shared by sub-regional histories, there is an urgent need for forging political links across these sub-regions. Hence, ‘Inter-Asia’ cultural studies.
The politico-economic transformations across the region in the Post Cold War era have engendered both new social movements and critical cultural studies as forces of decolonisation. These forces have given rise to alternative modes of knowledge production, and yet no adequate means exists for the circulation of intellectual work and for interaction among critical intellectuals.
It is at such a pivotal conjuncture that Inter-Asia Cultural Studies has emerged as part of a movement for the ongoing construction and reconstruction of critical Inter-Asia subjectivities. It gives a long overdue voice to the intellectual communities in the region and recognizes its own existence as an attempt to continue critical lines of practices. The journal’s aim is to shift existing sites of identification and multiply alternative frames of reference: it is committed to publish work not only out of ‘Asia’ but also other coordinates such as the ‘third world’. Its political agenda is to move across: state/ national/ sub-regional divisions, scholarship and activism, modalities/forms of knowledge, and rigid identity politics of any form.
These movements actively engage with local cultural politics within an ever-changing international environment, where politics is increasingly operating in the sphere of culture, under the dictates of a global cultural industry, mediated by new electronic and information technologies, and shaped by different forms of representation－visual, virtual, financial. This new situation has brought political economy, culture and politics together in different ways, and forced us to create new ways of thinking and acting. For this reason the project is more interested in generating new questions or finding ways of asking questions differently, than providing fixed answers.
Toward these ends, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies will serve as a link between critical intellectual groupings; we are actively building connections with journals and groups in different locales.
Acknowledgement
This inaugurating issue of the journal is dedicated to the late Professor Renato Constantino (1919-1999) of the University of the Philippines. A prominent thinker, social critic, and respected historian of over 40 books, Professor Constantino has produced immensely important historical work on nationalism, colonialism and imperialism, which has generated global impacts in the past 50 years. As one critic, Rosalinda Pineda-Ofreneo puts it in 1989, 'His ideas are held together by a single all-encompassing worldview and an uncompromising commitment to the intellectual liberation of his people. By his own description, he is a partisan scholar, one who thrives to be on the side of truth, reason and justice even at the risk of steeping on powerful toes. Constantino, of course, was not born to greatness. His present stature is the result of a long historical process in which he was both active participant and detached observer. In a broad sense, this process is the same one which cleansed Claro M. Recto of his colonial impurities－the process of "decolonization" which alone makes the true Filipino and also, in the final analysis, the true internationalist'
(Partisan Scholarship: Essays in Honour of Renato Constantino, Manila: Journal of Contemporary Asia Publisher, 1989: 1). Even when his physical condition had become weaker in the later part of his life, he still generously supported us in various projects. His death is an intellectual loss not only for the journal, which he had kindly agreed to serve as an advisor, but also for the international community of critical scholars. However, his critical spirit and work will remain with us.
The inauguration of Inter-Asia Cultural Studies has involved infinite number of individuals. We cannot possibly name each of them here to express our gratitude for their supports. We wish to thank Japan Foundation, the National Science Council (ROC), and National Tsing Hua University for financial support so that editorial collective meetings across national boundaries could take place and editorial office can be properly set up. The Center for Asia-Pacific/Cultural Studies has to be acknowledged for its generosity of agreeing to house the journal.
In order to inaugurate the project, the 1998 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies－Problematising 'Asia' Conference was held in July 13-16, in Taipei; and in conjunction with that, Conference on Cultural Studies in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and Mainland China, was organized in July 10-11, 1998. We thank Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies, and the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Tsing Hua University for an initiating fund and loan, to organize the conference. We thank ARENA (Asia Regional Exchanges for New Alternatives) and its staff members for co-organizing the conference and bringing activist intellectuals to the event. For funding support in Taiwan, we thank especially Far Eastern Memorial Foundation, National Science Council, Ministry of Education, Government Information Office, Mainland Affairs Council, Foundation of the United World Chinese Commercial Bank, Research and Development division of the National Tsing Hua University, and Cafe Aroma in Taipei. The hard working staff members of the conferences, and later, of the journal's editorial work, have to be given due recognition.
With supports from these institutions and individuals, the project has now begun.