Thinking about orientals: Modernity, social science, and Asians in twentieth-century America

Between 1920 and 1960, most academic research concerning Asian communities and immigrants in America was conducted within a coherent intellectual and institutional framework created by a set of researchers who had ties to the University of Chicago's Department of Sociology. Social scientists such as Robert E. Park produced a body of texts and engaged in an intellectual discussion about the 'oriental problem' in America, as they saw and defined it. At the same time, they established an institutional network which was not only interested in Chinese and Japanese Americans as objects of study, but also recruited a select few of their subjects and gave them a rare opportunity to join academia as valued experts.; Because very little research was conducted on Asian immigrants during most of the twentieth-century, the Chicago sociologists' construction of the 'oriental problem' dominated thinking about Asians in America. The 'oriental problem' had a profound effect upon definitions of race and culture in America, but it also affected the self-identities of the intellectuals who helped research the 'oriental problem.' Terms, definitions and theories which Chicago sociologists had originally formulated to understand the experiences of 'orientals' in the United States were often used by Chinese and Japanese American scholars to understand themselves and their own roles in American society. In particular, they seized the role offered to them by the sociologists as valued interpreters occupying the 'margin' between 'oriental' and 'white' Americans. The 'oriental' intellectuals used sociology as a powerful tool for analysing the difficulties which Asian immigrants had suffered in the Unite States, but they also used sociological theories as a language for expressing their own existential situations.; This dissertation examines the history of the 'oriental problem' as an intellectual and institutional framework, beginning with the Survey of Race Relations on the West Coast in 1924 and ending with its demise during the 1960's. The intellectual construction of the 'oriental problem' categorized and defined 'orientals' in America, and its legacy would continue through the rise of Asian American consciousness movements and all the way to the present day.; iv...