1. Why Area Studies? Globalization and Area Studies:
When Is Too Broad Too Narrow?
Subject: Theories of Area Studies
Professor: LEE Kyu Young
Presenter: Xiao Wei (I37027)

2. Think about them… Do we still need Area Studies in a globalized world?
Does globalization constitute an ascendant paradigm in International Studies?

3. Contents Over Emphasis on Globalization & Ignoring Area Studies
Causes of Ignoring Area Studies
3 Connotations of the Concept of “Area Studies” and its Value
Considerations of Area Studies
Why is Area Studies Necessary?
Debate

4. Globalization International Forces More Developments in the World
Hopes
(finally achieve a global society)
Fears
(lives and jobs are threatened beyond their control)

5. Italy’s domestic problems
Always Globalization?
e.g. a lecture on government’s pension reform in Italy made by the leader of the largest federation of Italian unions
Globalization
Italy’s domestic problems

6. Strong Support for Programs of Globalization
Ford Foundation & The MacArthur Foundation (1993): a joint project on globalization
The Mellon Foundation: a program on cross-regional issues
Social Science Research Council
“… its traditional support for area studies … must be built on general theoretical frameworks that highlight global trends, such as rising levels of ethnic conflict.”
----Kenneth Prewitt (President of SSRC)

7. Globalization Area Studies
Diminish cultural, historical and political context
Diminish context of trends in particular regions
Area Studies

8. Economist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Are international forces responsible for a growing range of domestic problems?
“There is an odd sort of agreement between the left and the right to pretend that exotic global forces are at work even when the real action is prosaically domestic.”
----in International Herald Tribune
Paul Krugman
Economist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

9. Example: a government’s attitude towards rising levels of unemployment
Global pressures
Structural problems of domestic economies

10. Other Reasons:
The end of the Cold War cutbacks in government support for studies on Communist bloc and the 3rd world
The rise of new academic paradigms devalue culturally specific knowledge in disciplines as political science and sociology
Limit support for area studies while preserve teaching international studies

11. 3 Connotations of the Concept of “Area Studies” and its Value
A detailed description of a nation or region
Scholars committed to the development of “portable truths”
Want to produce accurate generalizations
Rely on area-specific

12. 2) Studies that build on a relatively deep and context-rich knowledge of a specific society or region to develop propositions of more general applicability
Detailed descriptions of individual nations or regions
Knowledge about particular regions
Make more broadly applicable generalization

13. 3) Interdisciplinary teaching or research in a program focused on a particular region
Area Studies
Economists
politicians
Sociologists
Anthropologists
Environmentalists
historians

14. Considerations of Area Studies
Continuing value of Area Centers
1) Influential work in social sciences generated by scholars informed by the interdisciplinary exchange that area centers facilitates
Barrington Moore (1996)
did at the Russian Research Center at Harvard University
Benedict R. Anderson
wrote at Cornell University’s Southeast Asia Program

15. Students and faculty members
2) The presence of area centers would seem to be a small, yet much-needed on their control over the organization of knowledge and teaching 3)
Foreign visitors
Students and faculty members
Insights about other
part of the world
Direct contact with research agendas and approaches to research being developed else where in the world

16. 4) International studies should concentrate more heavily on comparisons, not just among nations, but among regions.
5) The fate of Area Studies is especially consequential for graduate training

17. Why is Area Studies necessary?
International Relations needs Area Studies.
The international system has become so complex that a general survey of international politics can no longer cover many important problems.
2) Area Studies serves as the starting point for examining certain theoretical propositions, as opportunities for testing such propositions or even as launching points of new theoretical inquiries.
3) It is necessary to watch the world from within and outside an area.

18. Debate
If you know about Islam and Islamic culture, do you need to study particular countries for doing the research in the field of International Relation?
Dose an international issue exist which is merely related to “Globalization” rather than “Domestic Problems”? Please simply explain it. If no, why?