Orientalizing the Pacific Rim: - History, Department of

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Although Jan professed herself to be “quite out of sympathy with the Baptist Mission people” and “emanicipated from all religious influence,” Merle Davis was alerted to the presence of Jan through his contacts with the Fresno Baptist Mission. 36 Davis located many other research ‘subjects’ through his church connections. The reliance of the Survey of Race Relations on the network of Protestant churches and missions on the West Coast had several important ramifications. For one, the sociologists, because they felt their project was entwined and conflated with the missionaries, tried to distance themselves rhetorically from the missionary reformers. The strident tone of Park’s attempts to distinguish the work of social science from the work of religion reflected just how much they were connected with each other. 37 Social science was a profession of faith of a different order from the missionary’s, one which emphasized a belief in ‘objectivity’ and ‘science’ rather than ‘salvation’ and ‘mission.’ 36 Davis to Park, June 5, 1924, Box 11, Papers of the Survey. 37 Park was particularly derisive of Davis and the other ministers’ attempts to insure that everyone involved in the survey felt included and informed. Davis left a voluminous amount of correspondence, testament to his constant attempts to network and to keep people feeling involved. As mentioned before, this need to foster communication, produce harmony, and minimize misunderstandings and conflict, was an essential part of the missionaries’ goals for the survey. To Park, they were a waste of time. Davis wrote about how Park took “another shot at our ‘over organization.’ Since his arrival here in January he has lost no opportunity to ridicule and deplore what he calls the absurd amount of machinery which we have set up on this Coast for carrying on the Survey.” Park felt that only a handful of expert researchers was necessary for his purposes. Letter Davis to Fisher, March 24, 1924, Davis Correspondence, Box 11, Papers of the Survey. 26
Park, though, was forced to exaggerate the chasm which lay between the two disciplines. Within the context of a missionary project in which the sociologists were inextricably bound, Park’s insistence on the sociologists’ difference from the social reformers took on much more meaning. The social scientists’ belief in what they were doing was predicated upon their not having to justify the ultimate ‘good’ of their research. The justification was self-apparent within the larger aim of social reform which could be derived from a sense of mission shared with the reformers. The Protestant ministers and the Chicago sociologists both believed in the ultimate good of ‘enlightenment’ and ‘knowledge;’ they just disagreed on how direct the application of that knowledge would be. Park’s unease with his allies, though, remained throughout the survey and many of the missionaries became increasingly disillusioned with Park’s management of the survey research. 38 A major result of the Survey of Race Relations’ reliance on the Protestant missions was the lasting definition of who and what ‘Orientals’ were. Because the missionaries had a preponderence of contacts with the Chinese and Japanese on the West Coast, and in particular Christianized members of these communities, most of the life histories collected by the survey and subsequent research results reflected these connections. Because there was virtually no contact with the smaller numbers of Filipino and East Indian migrant workers on the Coast, those groups dropped out of the definition of the ‘Oriental problem.’ 39 Moreover, because the missionaries often 38 Harvey Guy, one of the prominent returned missionaries, was particularly put off by Park’s disdain for reformers, and more than once Davis was required to convince Guy to remain committed to the survey. Harvey Hugo Guy Correspondence Folder, Box 11, Papers of the Survey. 39 Immigrants from the Philipines would not arrive in great numbers until after the 1924 immigration laws cutting off Japanese immigration (Chinese immigration had been 27
Page 1 and 2: Orientalizing the Pacific Rim: The
Page 3 and 4: small Chinatown in California? What
Page 5 and 6: definitions of the 'Orient.' 5 This
Page 7 and 8: Far Eastern missions, Baptists, Met
Page 9 and 10: Davis recognized that the missionar
Page 11 and 12: struggles over the threat to ‘whi
Page 13 and 14: Emperor was the ultimate fount of t
Page 15 and 16: It is up to us in this country to f
Page 17 and 18: y their adoption of superficial sig
Page 19 and 20: persons experience a sense of relie
Page 21 and 22: sociologists had been ministers or
Page 23 and 24: Baptist Foreign Mission Society bef
Page 25: with empathy and description than t
Page 29 and 30: premise of a traveller's expertise
Page 31 and 32: West of the American frontier. In a
Page 33 and 34: communication. 46 Like Park, McKenz
Page 35 and 36: positive force in pushing for chang
Page 37 and 38: American clothes, as opposed to the
Page 39 and 40: the ‘Oriental’ was nonetheless
Page 41 and 42: seemingly for all of America, that
Page 43 and 44: The institutionalization of Orienta
Page 45: institutionalizing knowledge about

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