Area Studies

Under globalization, the project of area studies and its relationship to the fields of cultural, ethnic, and gender studies has grown more complex and more in need of the rigorous reexamination that this volume and its distinguished contributors undertake. In the aftermath of World War II, area studies were created in large part to supply information on potential enemies of the United States. The essays in Learning Places argue, however, that the post–Cold War era has seen these programs largely degenerate into little more than public relations firms for the areas they research. A tremendous amount of money flows—particularly within the sphere of East Asian studies, the contributors claim—from foreign agencies and governments to U.S. universities to underwrite courses on their histories and societies. In the process, this volume argues, such funds have gone beyond support to the wholesale subsidization of students in graduate programs, threatening the very integrity of research agendas. Native authority has been elevated to a position of primacy; Asian-born academics are presumed to be definitive commentators in Asian studies, for example. Area studies, the contributors believe, has outlived the original reason for its construction. The essays in this volume examine particular topics such as the development of cultural studies and hyphenated studies (such as African-American, Asian-American, Mexican-American) in the context of the failure of area studies, the corporatization of the contemporary university, the prehistory of postcolonial discourse, and the problematic impact of unformulated political goals on international activism. Learning Places points to the necessity, the difficulty, and the possibility in higher education of breaking free from an entrenched Cold War narrative and making the study of a specific area part of the agenda of education generally. The book will appeal to all whose research has a local component, as well as to those interested in the future course of higher education generally. Contributors. Paul A. Bové, Rey Chow, Bruce Cummings, James A. Fujii, Harry Harootunian, Masao Miyoshi, Tetsuo Najita, Richard H. Okada, Benita Parry, Moss Roberts, Bernard S. Silberman, Stefan Tanaka, Rob Wilson, Sylvia Yanagisako, Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto

This collection identifies the challenges facing area studies as an organized intellectual project in this era of globalization, focusing in particular on conceptual issues and implications for pedagogical practice in Asia and the Pacific. The crisis in area studies is widely acknowledged; various prescriptions for solutions have been forthcoming, but few have also pursued practical applications of critical ideas for both teachers and students. Remaking Area Studies not only makes the case for more culturally sensitive and empowering forms of area studies, but indicates how these ideas can be translated into effective student-centered learning practices through the establishment of interactive regional learning communities. This pathbreaking work features original contributions from leading theorists of globalization and critics of area studies as practiced in the U.S. Essays in the first part of the book problematize the accepted categories of traditional area-making practices. Taken together, they provide an alternative conceptual framework for area studies that informs the subsequent contributions on pedagogical practices. To incorporate critical perspectives from the "areas studied," chapters examine the development of area studies programs in Japan and the Pacific Islands. Not surprisingly, given the lessons learned from critical examinations of area studies in the U.S., there are competing, state, institutional, and intellectual perspectives involved in each of these contexts that need to be taken into account before embarking on an interactive and collaborative area studies across Pacific Asia. Finally, area studies practitioners reflect on their experiences developing and teaching interactive, web-based courses linking classrooms in six universities located in Hawai‘i, Singapore, the Philippines, Japan, New Zealand, and Fiji. These collaborative on-line teaching and learning initiatives were designed specifically to address some of the conceptual and theoretical concerns associated with the production and dissemination of contemporary area studies knowledge. Multiauthored chapters draw useful lessons for international collaborative learning in an era of globalization, both in terms of their successes and occasional failures. Uniquely combining theoretical, institutional, and practical perspectives across the Asia Pacific region, Remaking Area Studies contributes to a rethinking and reinvigorating of regional approaches to knowledge formation in higher education. Contributors: Conrado Balabat, Lonny Carlile, T. C. Chang, Hezekiah A. Concepcion, Arif Dirlik, Jeremy Eades, Gerard Finin, Jon Goss, Peter Hempenstall, Lily Kong, Lisa Law, Martin W. Lewis, Robert Nicole, Neil Smith, Teresia Teaiwa, Ricardo Trimillos, Christine Yano, Terence Wesley-Smith.

In Comparative Area Studies, the editors and contributors are motivated by two basic convictions: first, that intensive regional research remains indispensable to the social sciences; and second, that this research risks becoming marginalized in the absence of concerted efforts to link it to disciplinary concepts and theories that have relevance beyond a single region.

This interdisciplinary volume is a new introduction to area studies in the framework of whole-world thinking. Emerging in the United States after World War II, area studies have proven indispensable to American integration in the world. They serve two main purposes: to equip future experts with rich cultural-historical and political-economic knowledge of a world area in its global context and advanced foreign language proficiency, and to provide interested readers with well-founded analyses of a vast array of the world's communities. Area Studies in the Global Age examines the interrelation between three constructions central to any culture—community, place, and identity—and builds on research by scholars specializing in diverse world areas, including Africa; Central, East, and North Asia; Eastern and East Central Europe; and Latin America. In contrast to sometimes oversimplified, globalized thinking, the studies featured here argue for the importance of understanding particular human experience and the actual effects of global changes on real people's lives. The rituals, narratives, symbols, and archetypes that define a community, as well as the spaces to which communities attach meaning, are crucial to members' self-perception and sense of agency. Editors Edith W. Clowes and Shelly Jarrett Bromberg have put into practice the original mission of US area studies, which were intended to employ both social science and humanities research methods. This important study presents and applies a variety of methodologies, including interviews and surveys; the construction of databases; the analysis of public rituals and symbols; the examination of archival documents as well as contemporary public commentary; and the close reading and interpretation of fiction, art, buildings, cities, and other creatively produced works in their social contexts. Designed for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students in allied disciplines, Clowes and Bromberg's volume will also appeal to readers interested in internationally focused humanities and social sciences.

Whereas Area Studies and cross-border cooperation research conventionally demarcates groups of people by geographical boundaries, individuals might in fact feel more connected by shared values and principles than by conventional spatial dimensions. Knowledge Production, Area Studies and Global Cooperation asks what norms and principles lead to the creation of knowledge about cross-border cooperation and connection. It studies why theories, methods, and concepts originate in one place rather than another, how they travel, and what position the scholar adopts while doing research, particularly ‘in the field’. Taking case studies from Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, the book links the production of alternative epistemologies to the notion of global cooperation and reassesses the ways in which the concept of connectedness can be applied at the translocal and individual rather than the formal international and collective level. Knowledge Production, Area Studies and Global Cooperation provides an innovative and critical approach towards established means of producing knowledge about different areas of the world, demonstrating that an understanding of pluri-local connectivity should be integrated into the production of knowledge about different areas of the world and the behavioural dimension of global cooperation. By shifting the view from the collective to the individual and from the formal to often invisible patterns of connectedness, this book provides an important fresh perspective which will be of interest to scholars and students of Area Studies, Politics, International Relations and Development Studies.

The usefulness and political implications of Area Studies programs are currently debated within the Academy and the Administration, where they are often treated as one homogenous and stagnant domain of scholarship. The essays in this volume document the various fields’ distinctive character and internal heterogeneity as well as the dynamism resulting from their evolving engagements with funders, US and international politics, and domestic constituencies. The authors were chosen for their long-standing interest in the intellectual evolution of their fields. They describe the origins and histories of US-based Area Studies programs, highlighting their complex, generative, and sometimes contentious relationships with the social science and humanities disciplines and their diverse contributions to the regions of the world with which they are concerned.

Area Studies became increasingly common after World War II as a means of responding to perceived 'external threats' from the Soviet Union and China. After the Cold War and in the face of increasingly rapid globalisation, it seemed inevitable that Area Studies – institutionally and intellectually – would slowly degenerate. But this has not been the case, and there has recently been a resurgence of interest in it as an effective and positive research paradigm. Responding to this renewed interest, this book brings together an esteemed group of contributors at the cutting edge of the field to consider the state of Area Studies today and its prospects for the future. The Rebirth of Area Studies demonstrates that numerous aspects of the research paradigm in fact recommend it as well-suited for the present moment and the challenges posed by globalisation, both as a means to overcome disciplinary limitations and to increase self-reflexivity. Area Studies research is grounded in place-specific knowledge, yet by definition it transcends nation as the basic unit of analysis and thus empowers comparative and trans-national approaches. This book outlines a new, critical Area Studies for the 21st century – self-reflexive, aware of its limitations and conscious of its origins in geopolitical, strategic or ideological considerations – and is essential reading for historians, geographers and political scientists.

"Explores the paradigm of "area studies" - a way of supporting regionally-focused collecting, processing, and liaison work - in the academic library, through an explicitly anti-colonial lens"--