Blurring the Disciplinary Boundaries

Theories of Area Studies

Table of Contents

1. Introduction2. History of Confrontation3. The Present Conflict4. The Attack5. The Middle Ground6. Case Study: United States7. Conclusion

1. Introduction● The tension between the universal and the particular in the social sciences has

always been a subject of passionate debate, since it has always been seen as having immediate political implications, and this has impinged on serene discussion.

● Closely associated with these articles is that point that theory form the discipline and data from the area studies ought to inform one another, but that in actual fact the discipline has produced very little general theory useful to the analysis of the politics of Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

● These articles attempts to answer the question:○ Why must one choose between area studies and discipline?○ Rivals or partners?

2. History of Confrontation

● Initially, the conflict between the traditional disciplines and area specialization was exacerbated because it was an early case of the academic world being buffeted about by the currents of international politics and domestic change.

● The explosive growth of American higher education in the 1950s and 1960s coincided with the discovery that the classical European traditions and perspectives could no longer describe the diverse richness of the real world.

● Change sparked by demographic and economic forces was given broader dimensions by a national need to understand between the non-Western world.

○ Africa and Asia in bidding for attention suggested the need for new intellectual approaches and the end of older academic triation.

● The issues of the legitimacy of area studies was an immediate consequence of war. The urgencies of wartime called from the trampling down the boundaries of disciplines.o World War 2 and the problem of understanding distant national enemies had

already proved the limits of conventional ways of organizing knowledge and the need for new approaches for learning foreign societies.

2. History of Confrontation

3. The Present Conflict● Area studies is a multidisciplinary by

inclination and training. Area specialists prize a deep and detailed knowledge of a people and their political system. o The professional audience of an

area specialists consists of researchers from many disciplines, each of whom has devoted their scholarly life to work on the region.

● The goal of the social science is not to achieve deep understanding of a particular area but to identify lawful regularities must not be context-bound.

o The professional audience of social scientist consists of other scholars from their discipline who share similar theoretical concerns and who draw their their data from a variety of regions of the world.

3. The Present Conflict● Traditional practitioners, known as area specialists, find themselves displaced by

social scientists.

● The shift from Area Studies to “social scientific” approaches to the study to the study of regions abroad most immediately affects graduate training.o As the social sciences increasingly marginalize area specialists, graduate students,

whose resources are limited, increasingly shift from the study of a region to instruction in theory and methods.

● The shift from area specialization to “social science” also alters the balance of power within the academy. Political science departments have long resembled federations, with their faculty in comparative politics dwelling within semi-autonomous Area Studies unit.

● The move toward a disciplinary-oriented view of comparative politics and the declining resource base for Area Studies has shifted the political centre of gravity back to the chairs, who can now apply disciplinary criteria, rather than area knowledge, in evaluating and rewarding professional contributions.

● Within political science, several forces have contributed to the attack upon Area Studies. Some originate from the adjacent field of American politics.

● Students of American politics possess an intellectual architecture that supports well-focused debates and a cumulative research tradition. o This framework is based upon democratic theory, with its themes of

representation, majority rule, and competitive elections.● The study of American politics approximated a "normal science," with increasingly

sophisticated forms of theorizing and means of empirical inference.

4. The Attack

● Students of American politics increasingly viewed themselves as social scientists, but the system within which they labored, they came to realize, was singularly devoid of variation.

● Therefore, there arose among Americanists a demand for comparative political research, and some of the most theoretically ambitious among them sought to escape the confines imposed by the American political system. o Result: exportation of social science methods to the study of foreign areas

4. The Attack

● In Designing Social Inquiry, King, Keohane, and Verba set forth the steps of the positivist program: o take counsel from theory, o extract testable implications, o collect measures, o collect data, o and thereby seek possibilities for falsification.

● The celebrated standing of their work in comparative politics provides a measure of the field's felt need for guidance, as researchers seek ways to move from the in-depth study of cases typical of Area Studies to more sophisticated research designs required for scientific testing.

4. The Attack

● Exploration of analytic national narratives● Analytic narratives represent the use of game theory (an approach currently lodged

within the social sciences) to create logically rigorous and empirically testable accounts of specific political situations. o They may offer a bridge between the social sciences and Area Studies. o To elaborate, the study of politics at the national and local levels.

5. The Middle Ground

● Area specialists stresses the distinctiveness of national political system.o Emphasis on history: not sharing common political historieso Emphasis on culture: different cultures possess distinctive political values,

reflecting the power of learning and thus of socialization in shaping human beings.

They also possess distinctive political institutions: polities based upon kinship secured different responses to the use of power.

● Differences in history, values, and institutions, area specialists contend, render polities distinctive and valid generalizations difficult to extract from political data. o They believe that information from diverse sources cannot profitably be pooled,

area specialists fail to experience diminishing returns to local knowledge. o Characteristically, they prize an increment of knowledge concerning their

particular region more highly than additional data extracted from other political systems.

5. The Middle Ground: National Level

● Area Studies have always displayed an ethnographic impulse. o Animated by that impulse, students of politics have acquired languages,

resided in villages, and engaged in participant-observation,conducting what amount to anthropological studies of politics.

● Many such researchers have stressed the way in which people behave strategically, anticipating the reactions of others, whether they are rivals in the struggle for power in a village community,competitors for office in a trade union or party, or police and public officials. o The well-timed accusation of "tribalism" or of the violation of a norm: deference

to an elder, the timely performance of a burial service, or the full and prompt payment of a bride price.

o The search for a value-laden social linkage--so as to create a sense of obligation, whether because of common descent, residence,or place of origin.

● The study of politics at the microlevel is actor-centred.

5. The Middle Ground: Local Level

● Elizabeth Colson's commentary upon the Plateau Tonga of Zambiao Their lives resemble the Rousseauian myth, with people residing in peaceful

communities,sharing their belongings, and legislating wisely in village assemblies. But as Colson became more intimate with the lives of these people, she came to learn of their fears: of the greed and envy of their neighbors, of their wrath, and of their desire and capacity to harm.

o Although the lives of the Plateau Tonga may have resembled the accounts of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, their beliefs could have been drawn from the writings of Thomas Hobbes. Colson resolves the paradoxical contrast between beliefs and behavior by conjecturing that the nature of their beliefs supported their peaceful conduct.

● People scrupulously chose to act in ways that would preserve the peace, she argues, for fear of the violence they would unleash should they impinge upon the interests of others.

● Colson's ethnographic account of political order among the Plateau Tonga thus parallels the reasoning adopted by game theorists.

● The illustration reminds us that the use of game theory requires a complete political anthropology: knowledge of the actors, their choices, the constraints they face; and their beliefs about the behaviors of others. It stands as a complement to, not as a substitute for, local knowledge.

5. The Middle Ground: Local Level

6. Case Study: United States

Richard D. Lambert (American Behavioral Scientist)University Affiliation:A.B. 1946, M.A. 1947, Ph.D. 1951Chairman of the South Asia Regional Studies DepartmentDirector of the Office of International ProgramsBiographical Summary:President of the American Academy of Political and Social ScienceAuthor of works on South Asia

Definition of area specialist

“I define an area specialist as someone who devotes all or a substantial portion of his or her professional career to the study of another country or region of the world.”

“..I will be describing area studies as the field is currently organized in the US, where laissez-faire model growth has produced almost a pure market profile of this intellectual enterprise.”

- Richard D. Lambert

Academic debates about area studies in US

Relative value of an area vs. Disciplinary focus

Research technology vs. Content

Applied vs. Pure research

Comparison of US’s & Other Scholars

There are individuals within government agencies who have responsibility for providing policy-relevant information

Research is carried out in universities by scholars, who set their independent agendas, in some cases see themselves not only independent of government policy but opposed to it

Topical & disciplinary focus is determined by interests of public policy

Much of area studies is carried out within government agencies or separate academic that a responsible and responsive to government needs

Recognizing the national need for specialists

Before WW II, only handful of American scholars dedicated their professional lives to study countries outside of western Europe

Participation in WW II created a need for a larger cadre of area specialists with a greater knowledge of the contemporary societies in the world

After the War, military need for these programs disappeared

However, with help from private foundations, 14 organized campus-based area studies programs remained

Elements within area studies

Degree of specialization

In American context, the degree of area specialization is a continuum ranging from the person who conducts a single piece of research on another country, to scholar whose entire professional life is devoted to research and teaching on a particular area. Only 77% spent 25% of their professional time studying or teaching about area (Lambert et al., 1984)

Benefits and DrawbacksIt allows for the continual infusion of fresh ideas and perspectiveIt protests against the enclaving of area studies away from main currents within academic disciplinesIt lessens the danger of dependence on a very few people for information on other societiesIt reduces the likelihood of a descent into very narrowly defined, country-specific esoterica

It may swamp serious scholarly work on other countries in a sea of uninformed dilettantismIt squanders scholarly resources that might be better spent on in depth studiesIt intrudes issues of the advancement of the discipline per se or of the technology of research analysis into the selection of topic and the conduct of research; the importance of the research to the understanding of a country or region becomes a secondary considerationIt dilutes the training of specialists so that attaining genuine expertise on a country or region is displaced by non-area-related disciplinary training

Broad factual knowledge

Serious area specialist has:

Mastered a substantial amount of factual information on the area

Extensive and recent experience of direct contact with the area

High level of competency in a language of an area

Language competency

In 1982, the organized area studies programs on American campuses taught 76 different languages. The purpose of learning most of these languages is for use by area specialists in active research within a country

Ologyzing area studies: country or region

“The combination of a high degree of specialization and the need for substantial amounts of factual knowledge about a country or region, repeated visits to that country or region, and high levels of language competency results in what I would call “ologizing” area studies.”

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 disciplinary 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 America 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.

7. Conclusion

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.

Area Studies and Social science discipline are not incompatible or even competing, but political science and other disciplines will be best served by encouraging research that draws in a meaningful way on both scholarly perspectives.