Download Interaction and confrontation between Area studies and Disciplines

Interaction and Confrontation between
Area Studies and Disciplines
Souksavanh (Bee)
Tran Thi Bich Ngoc (I21008)
Teke (ID00603)
Plan
Introduction: definition of Area studies
and the disciplines: Bee
Case study: Blurring the Disciplinary
Boundaries- Area Studies in the United
States- Ngoc
The Controvery and the confrontation:
Nikki
Introduction: causal argument
 For the last 20 some years there has been a quiet but
fundamental struggle btw conventional disciplines and
area studies which has affected the self-identities of
aspiring scholars, the designing, funding and execution
of research and even the organizing and hiring of
faculties.
 The need for area specialization came about because
of changes in the world, and raised ?s in very vivid
form such as: how responsive should universities be to
public problems? How readily should the academy
follow the path that has been paved with foundation
funds? In a rapidly changing world what can guide
those who seek only integrity in the cause of
knowledge?
 Interaction and confrontation between Area studies
and Disciplines: Blurring the Disciplinary Boundaries
souksavanh Sithivong
Definitions of area studies and disciplines
 Area Studies:
 Interdisciplinary fields of research of a particular geographical,
national or cultural region.
 Fields are defined differently from one academic institution to
another.
 Examples: Asian Studies or Korean Studies.
 Disciplines (Academic Disciplines):
 field of study; a branch of knowledge which is taught or
researched at the college or university level. Example: social
sciences such as Sociology, Anthropology, political science..
 Disciplines are defined and recognised by academic journals
in which research is published.
How they are related to each other and
their differences
 Instead of studying a deeper understanding of a particular area like
area specialist, social scientist strive to develop general theories and
to identify and test hypotheses derived from them.
 Social scientists do not seek to master the literature on a region but
rather to master the literature of a discipline.
 A useful controversy: the synthesis not only between area studies
and the discipline, but also between context specific knowledge and
formal theory.
 area studies talks about the important of cultural distinctions.
The shift from Area studies toward a
disciplinary oriented of comparative politics
 The shift from area specialization to social science also alters the
balance of power within academy.
 Influenced graduate training
 Alter the balance of power
 Created the tension within the field through the government deficits
and the end of cold war.
 Reacting to the new realities as American politics viewed themselves
as social scientists.
 Moving toward news disciplines areas such as market force and
liberalization of economic system
Blurring the Disciplinary BoundariesArea Studies in the United States
Richard D. Lambert
TRAN THI BICH NGOC
 Definition of area specialist: a person who devotes all or a
substantial portion of his/her professional career to the study of
another country or region of the world. Area studies are what area
specialists do.
 In many countries, much of area studies are implemented within
government agencies or in separate academies. In the United
States, area studies are carried out in the university setting.
 In this article, the author tries to highlight the perspective of area
studies in the United States and in other countries.
 Recognizing the national need for specialists - It was missionary
for American scholars with a greater knowledge of contemporary
countries of the world during the World War II. The area studies
programmes were formed on a few universities to train students to
be specialists on other countries.
 A basic organizational decision - It was apparent that the
decision to fit area studies into the university produces both
benefits and drawbacks. The balance of benefits and drawbacks
of the university versus the academy model of area studies may
be different.
 Rapid growth - The post-World War II developments provided a
strong impetus for the rapid development of area studies
programs in American universities with the support of the
government. Area specialists became more important for
American interests.
 Area Studies as a highly differentiated enterprise - The author
argued that area studies are not a single phenomenon. The very
general term “area studies” hides vital differences among area
studies that make generalization extremely dificult.
Elements within area studies
 Area studies is best seen as a general rubric that covers many very different
intellectual enterprises. The following classificatory variables are minimal
criteria for specifying the aspect of area studies;
 Degree of specialization - The U.S. Democratizes area studies. The
degree of area specialization is a continuum ranging from the person who
conducts a single piece of research on another country and then moves on
to another topic, to the scholar whose entire professional life is devoted to
research and teaching on a particular area. The area specialists in the
Amercian system do not spend the bulk of professional time in an area
specialization which have costs and benefits.
 Broad factual knowledge
 The serious area specialist has mastered a substantial amount of
factual information on the area as well as have hand-on experience with
the area and has a high command of local language.
 The formal training provides specialists with factual knowledge about
the area of specialization.
 Some area scholars try to import analytic concepts indigenous to the
societes they study into their own analyses.
 In-country experience - Area specialists are required to have in-country
research experience in the U.S. American research became viewed
increasingly as an extractive industry in which data were collected by
Americans on field trips and by local academics and then were analysed
and published in the U.S.
 Language competency - A command of a regional language is becoming
increasingly important for area specialists. The area studies programs in
American universities taught 76 different languages from Amharic to
Quechua and Zulu.
 Languages are roughly divided into four categories such as the western
European languages
 (French, Spanish, and Italian), Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean
and etc.
 “Ologizing” area studies: country or region - The combination of a high
level of specialization and of the need for substantial amounts of factual
knowledge about a country or region, field trips, and high levels of language
competency results in “ologizing” area studies such as Japanologists,
Sinologist, Sovietologists.
 Area studies tribes
 Distinct tribes of scholars focusing on each of the particular world areas
interact within the tribe and not with people outside the tribe.
 The region represented in area studies reflect the broad cultural
subdivisions of the world such as East Europe follows the cold war,
Burma goes with Southeast Asia.
 The implication of the tribalization of area studies are twofold. First,
each world-area studies group has its own tradition, definition of
scholarship, and set of relationships with the countries being studies
and the scholars in that country. Second, the territory lying between the
tribes tends to be plowed by others.
 Discipline
 The basic reference point for most area specialists is the
discipline in which he or she resides, and the long-term tendency
is for more and more disciplinary specialization. Area-studies
students have to learn a variety of disciplines as they relate to
their area of specialization.
 Area studies is not as an interdisciplinary tradition of scholarship
but as a set of sub disciplines, each of which lies inside the larger
tradition of the discipline.
 The distribution of scholars by degree of specialization, world
area, and discipline is the result of a laissez-faire system of
recruitment and growth in the American universities setting.
 Area studies as a transdisciplinary enterprise - Area studies are viewed
as transdisciplinary and subdisciplinary. The area studies programs in
American universities gather together scholars from different disciplines who
share the same area focus. The area studies program will offer courses in
many disciplines to train specialists.
 Area studies as an interdisciplinary enterprise
 The true blending of disciplianry perspectives in area studies is most
frequent in two types of activity. The first of these is in conferences,
symposia, and thematic sessions at professional association meetings.
 The second type of blurring of disciplinary boundaries occurs in the
research of individual area specialists.
 Area specialists will often start to choose topics that naturally belong in a
variety of disciplines.
 Area studies as a non-disciplinary enterprise
 The term non-disciplinary refer to the topics often fall in domains where the
conceptual and methodological apparatus of particular disciplines is least
relevant.
 The core of area studies in the social science lies in the non-technical,
frequently non-disciplinary end of the discipline.
 There are four core disciplines in area studies: anthropology, history,
literature, and political science.
 Area specialists have a great deal more intellectual interaction with
humanists than do most of their non area-oriented disciplinary colleagues.
 The social science research in area studies leans toward the humanities, it
is likewise considered non-disciplinary.
 Area studies as a sub-disciplinary endeavor
 There are particular sub-disciplinary domains within each discipline.
 Area studies serve national objectives; in American it serves the need of the
government and business. It is impossible to narrow and direct the focus of
research under the American laissez-faire system.
The ‘Big’ Controversy and the
confrontation which by the way is not
a new thing.
Nikki Teke (ID00603)
Area studies ‘specialist’ VS
Discipline-oriented ‘Scientist’
 The bone of contention
 Disagreement about social science epistemology, the paradigm
by which scholars construct knowledge on pol, econ, IR; which is
greatly influenced by current trends and US gov’t funding. Global
phenomenon through the social science theory prism threatens
regional studies program or make them defensive.
 Area specialist are hostile to social science theory and their
research lack conceptual sophistication and methodological rigor.
(the case of Middle Eastern specialist who are also SSD theorist
rebuts this claim)
 AS lacks analytical cumulativeness, is very descriptive, shows no
interest in parsimony and generalization and is very overly preoccupied with detail and specificity.
 International and cross cultural research have been charged with
faddishness (briefly fashionable) and oversimplification, constructing
abstract models with little insight into complex behaviour.
 Increasing sophistication in quantitative analysis and rational choice
theory in pol science and economics has made redundant the
importance attached to foreign language proficiency and oversea
research.
 The postmodernist in the fields of soc & Ant have called into ? The
possibility of objective scholarship and led some to condemn crosscultural field work on both intellectual and political grounds (??)
 A charge against orientalism is that it places so much emphasis on
behavior which is determined by cultural influences and history.
Such as studies titled, “The Arab mind”, “Temperament and
Character of the Arabs”.
 The relevance of AS in relation to global confrontation and the
‘struggle for men’s minds’. AS was the brainchild of the Cold War,
the US needed to ‘know their enemy’ and as such funds and even
acts were passed such as the National Defense Education Act,
1958. Today global concerns such as ethnic conflict, transition to
democracy,economic globalization are being funded when the need
 All hail the information high-way, which is breaking down isolation
and disseminating a ‘common cultural forms and shared behavioural
norms’. It’s the End of History as F. Fukuyama claims. Who needs
detailed history, culture, language of most developing countries?
Why do AS specialist have to cling to issues like these? It is oldfashion. Because according to his theory, Western culture and
English language will play an increasingly important role in nonwestern world.
 On the other hand, Samuel P. Huntington contests that we are in a
Clash of civilization era, and as such in-depth studies are essential if
we need to understate present trends.
 Area studies specialist response:
 AS research agenda has a strong theoretical focus, as such the
alleged division between AS and SSD is highly exaggerated.
 The kind of substantive knowledge associated with AS not only can
contribute to the development of SS theory, it is in fact essential.
 The cultural pluralism (the policy or theory that minority groups
within a society should maintain cultural differences, but share
overall political and economic power) by Crawford Young, (Young
1976 and 1993) a political scientist and an Africanist discusses how
pol identity are formed and subsequently change. John C Campbell,
an Asia specialist asserts that “most of the things that people say
about AS are silly…most of the stuff that people say AS should be
doing is what AS is already doing” (Shea 1997, p. 13)
 AS specialists argue that their work is compatible with the concern for
SS theory but that the quest for theory cannot be pursued meaningfully
without attention to the kind of contextual knowledge that AS research
provides. They note that theory construction often begin with
observation… all this requires an ability to recognize, understand, and
evaluate the facts on the ground which is precisely the kind of
knowledge associated with AS.
 In relation to the rational choice theory, Robert Bates, a pol scientist
and Africanist at Harvard illustrates that theoretical contributions grow
from AS research. He cites works of several anthropologists and states
that without the kind of cultural knowledge produced by their studies it
would be impossible to evaluate the significance of the alternative
behaviors among which individuals must choose, and hence to apply
rational choice theory.
 In defense of economic globalization rendering redundant AS
research, Hall and Tarrow accept rational choice theory but insist
that the framework can be applied to particular cases only if
information about the meaning and importance attached to
alternative courses of action is available.
 As concerns objectivity of the AS researcher, some AS scholars
claim that this is precisely what SSD oriented scientist do when they
study their own society and culture and so it is puzzling that they
have difficulty understanding why it is essential for the development
of theory that applies to other parts of the world.
 The view of culture, which rational choice theory
trivializes, makes it the master concept of all social
science. It also leads directly to genuine area studies
since it requires that for a researcher to break free of his
or her own culture, he/she must immerse ‘oneself in
one’s subject, learning the language, living with the
people and getting to understand the society so
thoroughly as a participant that it problematizes one’s
own place as an objective observer’ (Sue-hiro 1997, 2027). This is what social scientists do naturally when
studying their own culture, and it is what they must do in
order to study another culture.
 AS specialist insist that in-depth case studies are fully compatible
with systematic social science inquiry and case studies provide the
“thick description” without which the complex interrelationships
among social processes and events cannot be meaningfully
unraveled.
 Beyond the epistemological and methodological arguments, AS
specialists often make valuable additional observation, as such they
propose an interdisciplinary scholarship, since complex real-world
problems rarely fall entirely within the purview of a single discipline.
They also ask for the need to transcend ethnocentrism and western
bias, not only to ensure accuracy and relevance but also so that
insights from the study of one region or culture might contribute to
innovative thinking about other regions and cultures. It was
important and highly funded during the Cold war and it is still
important today.
 AS insist that their investment in acquiring research skills be
recognised and appreciated. E.g SS Phd programs require not more
than 4~5 course in formal theory and quantitative methods to
prepare students for ‘scientific’ research, while twice as much is
needed for AS research.
 AS specialist also accuse SSD of double standards and about
relevance; AS specialist note that SS scholars produce descriptive
and atheoretical studies of US society and politics, there is nothing
wrong because it is valuable, but the work of these “Americanists” is
considered mainstream by pol science, econs and others SSD,
while the same is not extended to AS Specialist who do descriptive
work or study contemporary issues in other parts of the world,
mostly non-western.
Discussion conclusions
 Changes in the world brought the need for area specialization, but
there has been frictions with this new relatively new study and the
old grounded social science disciplines as we have seen above.
 The divide has also been reflected in scholarly journals, with
disciplinary journals and areas journals rarely having the sane
contributors or even appealing to the same readers.
 The aim is not to drown one discipline or to re-place one for the
other. The purpose is to explore the r/nship btw AS and theoretical
SS as paradigms for the study of any major world region.
 It is not to invite discussion about which perspective offers the more
appropriate guide to social research in comparative and
international studies.
 These controversy are healthy because it forces self-examination
which will eventually lead to an emergence on new conceptual and
methodological refinements and also greater tolerance and respect
for diversity.
 AS and SSD are not incompatible or even competing, but pol
science and other disciplines will be best served by encouraging
research that draws in a meaningful way on both scholarly
perspectives.
Question
 Do such notions as civil society, feminism, gender,
religiosity and family for example, carry the same
meaning and have the same explanatory utility when
applied in different social, cultural or political settings?