“Indian Ocean World Studies Project: INDOWS”

Indian Ocean World Studies (INDOWS) project is one of the regional studies projects implemented under “Global Area Studies Program,” launched by National Institute for the Humanities (NIHU) [in Japanese] .

This project focuses on the Indian Ocean as well as its adjoining land areas, and aims to elucidate the dynamism of how the mobility and the expansion of people, materials, information, money, culture and faith have contributed to the generation, development, accumulation or extinction of various relations within and outside of this world. Another objective is to open up new perspectives in regional studies, by establishing a regional setting as Indian Ocean Word as well as an analytical method which contributes to its study. Specifically, the following four themes have been set for the project: 1) linkage and continuity of movement; 2) hybridity and creativity in literature and ideas; 3) development, medicine, and environment; and 4) peaceful coexistence. The four project centers carry out its own research focusing on one of the themes. We are also going to organize a consortium to unite research institutes and organizations with common interest in Japan and overseas, leading the international networking in this research field.

Objectives of this Center at the National Museum of Ethnology

The theme for the center at the National Museum of Ethnology is the elucidation of “the linkage and continuity of movement.” Various flows of people, goods, information, money, and values of the Indian Ocean World are intrinsically expandable beyond any certain geographical boundary, making this world always porous. At the same time, these flows have not always been unidirectional and diffusional, but have moved circular ways. We define these phenomena as “cultural gyres”, and assume that overlapping and entangling trajectories of cultural gyres have shaped, sustained, and transformed the Indian Ocean World over 2000 years. Our aim is to grasp exact trajectories of these flows, and transformation in various levels (individual, local, regional culture and society) incurred by these flows through collaboration of anthropological field studies and historical research in this world.