Jan Kubik, UCL SSEES

What to do with area studies and cross- (multi) disciplinarity in the 21st century?

Why area? Why not country or locality?
Area studies
Ontological placement: Locality <—> Region <-> Nation/State <-> Area <-> globe

Trouble in the West

Relationism
- internal networks that create and maintain area situations
- external networks (in-betweenness)
  - in the case of democratization, Russia is a “black knight”
Historicism
- objective - legacies that define and legitimize area situations
Contructivism
- Common interpretation(s) of the area studies
- critical junctures (conflict of interpretations), e.g. the “in-betweenness” of “Central Europe” and South Korea
Formal/informal hybrids
- Hybridity typical for the area situations
  - Distribution of resources to certain classes: “Nomenklatura capitalism” - corruption/informality
Attention to scale

Why Eastern Europe?
- internal “others”
- “Century Europe” - kidnapped West (Kundera)
- Westocentricm

Problem first, not ‘area’
Comparisons and connections
Area/discipline?
- Disciplines started to evolve in the 19th century - they take elements elsewhere as well
- Interdisciplinary
- post-colonialism vs. asymmetrical knowledge
How is knowledge produced?
Dialogues and differences
Inter-penetration/confusion - how to foster it?

Area Studies have multiple objectives and purposes
- Deep knowledge
- Place
- Multi-disciplinary
Most disciplinary departments ignore areas
- narrowed interests
  - this is not true for Humanities because it recruits around knowledge
Dealing with departmental bureaucracy
- the need to intervene and place area studies in the disciplines
- think outside of the box
- traditional interdisciplinary conversations have become increasingly difficult
How to foster interdisciplinary conversations
- Have deep understanding of a culture - traditional
- Idiosyncratic-disciplinary conversation
- Problem-driven strategies
- To sum up:
  - Deep area knowledge
  - Robust training
  - Specialization (niche)

The number of area studies specialists in Social Sciences have dropped from 2008-2014; courses have dropped 38%; mostly offered in history
Humanities does not recruit full-time instructors/lecturers
Drawbacks:
- The lack of deep knowledge of cultures for policy making
- Shortage of specialists
- Students don’t get the opportunities to think outside of their cultures
- Global economy
- Reproduction of academic hierarchies
- Production of social scientific knowledge
  - empirical information: results, testing
  - scholars cater to neoliberalism and publish in disciplinary journals
Past successful cases: Benedict Anderson, Jim Scott
There’s the need to compare specific cases with the global phenomena to find theories and exceptions.
Solution
- Be fluent in methodologies
- Critique from within
- Pay attention to:
  - specification error
  - measurement error
  - level of analysis (ecological fallacy)
  - careful interpretation of quantitative analysis

Study a SS PhD with area studies skills in place
Departments can nominate people (based on other departments’ curriculum needs)
Multi-disciplinary
- For what purpose?
- Whom?
- Why
Participate in problem-driven projects
- various areas
- common issues
Reinvent the relationships between SS and AS
University intervention
In the perspectives of SSEES
- island studies
- urban studies
- convenience of organizing funding
- asking the right questions