Area Studies has garnered a lot of criticisms over the past several decades. This, of course, is to be expected as the initial foundation of the study itself is polemical, and very much colonial. Many have seen area studies as antiquated, unable to rise to the challenges of globalization. Indeed, as a project that relies upon “areas” conventionally demarcated, globalization poses as the threat/potential double-bind that can make or break area studies. Stepping up to the challenge, area studies have been in dialogue with other disciplines such as diaspora studies, postcolonial studies and cultural studies that have become prominent critics of area studies. These flirtations have been fruitful for more alternatives and possibilities come to fore. In the same vein, the nature of this writing is to build a dialogue between area-based knowledge and the travelling ideas spurred by globalization, and in doing so, hoping that such dialogue will produce thematic issue that connects localities, history, and knowledge production. This paper proposes the discourse of reconciliation as a thematic issue to reconnect and re-integrate different “areas” in the larger project of Area Studies.
Teaching Cultural Studies and Area Studies in Thailand