Area Studies And/Or Social Science: Contextually-Limited Generalizations Versus General Laws

2019 ◽  
pp. 199-216
Author(s):  
Fred Eidlin
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Area Studies

Comparative Area Studies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Köllner ◽  
Rudra Sil ◽  
Ariel I. Ahram
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
Middle Range ◽  
The Social ◽  
Small N ◽  
Scholarly Discourse ◽  
Science Disciplines

Two convictions lie at the heart of this volume. First, area studies scholarship remains indispensable for the social sciences, both as a means to expand our fount of observations and as a source of theoretical ideas. Second, this scholarship risks becoming marginalized without more efforts to demonstrate its broader relevance and utility. Comparative Area Studies (CAS) is one such effort, seeking to balance attention to regional and local contextual attributes with use of the comparative method in search of portable causal links and mechanisms. CAS engages scholarly discourse in relevant area studies communities while employing concepts intelligible to social science disciplines. In practice, CAS encourages a distinctive style of small-N analysis, cross-regional contextualized comparison. As the contributions to this volume show, this approach does not subsume or replace area studies scholarship but creates new pathways to “middle range” theoretical arguments of interest to both area studies and the social sciences.

scholarly journals Comparative Area Studies and the Study of the Global South

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-287
Author(s):  
Rudra Sil ◽  
Ariel I. Ahram
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Science Inquiry ◽  
Global South ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Theory Building ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Variation ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Range Theory ◽  
Sub Saharan

Comparative Area Studies (CAS) offers a template to bring the Global South back into the foreground of social science inquiry. CAS urges researchers to grapple directly with empirical variations derived from across the seemingly different global regions. CAS offers three comparative modes: intra-regional, cross-regional, and trans-regional. A number of scholars have used CAS’s comparative rubrics, even without knowing about the wider CAS agenda and program. CAS unsettles assumptions about discrete, fixed “regional” or civilizational blocks as well as about nomothetic theory-building aimed at universal or general laws. At the same time, CAS engages in the idea of medium-range theory-building, focusing empirical rigor and induction in order to create concepts and analyses that are portable yet contextualized. These macro-historical theories must be attentive to spatial and temporal variation in the social world. Claims of universalism are suspect. For the study of the Global South, in particular, CAS provides a path for aggregating and leveraging the wide range of observations and interpretations area specialists have to offer on regions as diverse as South Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa. CAS thus changes the division of labor within social science to allow greater input for scholarship derived from and originating in the developing world.

Tsugaru Gaku as Area Studies: Research plasticity and researcher hybridity

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 349-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Rausch
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Specific Area ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
The Future ◽  
Social Science Researcher ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
Social Scientific

This review essay speaks to the crisis of Area Studies, offering a view from the field in the form of a review of Tsugaru Gaku (Tsugaru Studies) as a specific Area Studies research case. After presenting an overview of the work of social science researchers working in Japan, both foreign and Japanese, the essay turns to major questions articulated in the literature of Area Studies regarding the purpose, character and future of Area Studies. By reviewing the multi-dimensional and combinative implications in the process and dissemination of his own social science research work together with consideration of the work of Japanese social scientists conducting research in rural Japan and publishing in Japanese, the author positions such ‘domestic,’ place-based sociological and anthropological research as a vital contribution to the future of Area Studies. Capitalizing on social scientific research that can contribute to Area Studies research requires a view of the ‘plasticity of research.’ Further, recognition of the ‘hybridity of the Area Studies researcher,’ both as the trained Area Studies specialist as well as a ‘domestic social science researcher’ capable of theory, methodology and analysis, as well as dissemination of Area Studies research originating in a specific place and in a specific language, is vital to the future of Area Studies research.

“Soft” Area Studies versus “Hard” Social Science: A False Opposition

Slavic Review ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loren Graham ◽  
Jean-Michel Kantor
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Set Theory ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Relativity Theory ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
Quantitative Approaches

Much criticism of area studies has come from social scientists, some of whom consider area studies to be “soft,” emphasizing description and culture, while social science is “hard,” emphasizing mathematics, rigor, and replicability. Loren Graham, an area studies specialist, and Jean-Michel Kantor, a mathematician, maintain that this contrast is simplistic and undervalues area studies. They show that an area studies approach can help understand, not only society, but mathematics and quantitative approaches themselves. They use an area studies approach to help explain developments in set theory and relativity theory and call for a resurgence of area studies, for both intellectual and political reasons. At the same time, they do not undervalue social science, and celebrate its achievements. As they argue, a sophisticated understanding of social reality will require multiple approaches, including both social science and area studies.

The Presidential Address: An Action Agenda for Area Studies

1975 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-19
Author(s):  
Richard D. Lambert
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
General Development ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
Federal Support ◽  
Size Classes ◽  
The Social

Many of you will have heard of the Social Science Research Council's Language and Area Studies Review. In fact many of you filled in one or more of its tedious questionnaires. Unfortunately, it has been caught up in the debate about the relative merits of various size-classes of language and area studies centers, a debate set in motion by withdrawal of Federal support from half of the NDEA VI centers. As a consequence, many of the problems brought out by the data contained in that report have not yet been faced, and no agenda for collective action in our field has been agreed upon. I do not wish to repeat all of these data and conclusions here, but only draw out a few of the features more relevant to the general development of area studies, and add a few events that have occurred since that survey was conducted.

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