area studies at the crossroads

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as a golden age, in terms of funding largesse from rich foundations and bulging state ...... to identify potential building blocks for establishing mid-range concepts of analytical value ...... In O. Kaltmeier & S. Corona Berkin (Eds.), Methoden deko-.
AREA STUDIES AT THE CROSSROADS KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION AFTER THE MOBILITY TURN

Edited by Katja Mielke and Anna-Katharina Hornidge

Area Studies at the Crossroads

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Katja Mielke  •  Anna-Katharina Hornidge Editors

Area Studies at the Crossroads Knowledge Production after the Mobility Turn

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Editors Katja Mielke Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC) Bonn, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

Anna-Katharina Hornidge Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) & University of Bremen Institute of Sociology Bremen, Germany

ISBN 978-1-349-95011-9    ISBN 978-1-137-59834-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59834-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017930497 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Plrang GFX / Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Nature America Inc. The registered company address is: 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004, U.S.A.

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Foreword: A Third Wave

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Area Studies

Area Studies is an enduring source of fascination. Firstly there are places and intersecting areas to reckon with. With them come languages, literature, nature, cuisine and cultures. And there are also political economies, ecologies, and media. Secondly, there is always something new to think about, for Area Studies cuts across multiple disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Area Studies at the Crossroads bears witness to this cross-disciplinary allure and the enthrallment of working in and through areas. This book also marks a coming of age of what might be conceptualized as a third wave in Area Studies. To be sure, the history of different strands of Area Studies varies in their details. Accordingly in the 1960s and 1970s, Southeast Asian Studies was deeply shaped by critical reactions to the Vietnam War and Latin American Studies affected more by radical economic and social ideas than say Slavic Studies or South Asian Studies, which were less caught-up in the tumult. But if we step back and consider Area Studies in a “global” sense (in the old fashioned sense of that word as encompassing the whole of things), the fortunes of its constituents all tend to reflect the changes in the status of Area Studies as a whole. There may have been precursors in classics, philology, and theology, but historically, the first incarnation of Area Studies conscious of itself as a systematic set of sciences coincided with the long nineteenth century’s consolidation of European empires and the stirrings of American and Japanese ones. These were in broad competition with each other and the Romanovs, and most operated at the expense of the declining Mughal, Ottoman, Safavid and Qing empires. Like the British in the century before, v

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Portugal and Spain lost ground in the Americas, but out of the debris rose a stronger commitment to African empire among the Portuguese and an intense debate about Spain’s role in the world (the intellectual and political currents known in Spain as the generation of 1898), as well as revanchist British imperialism in Asia and Africa. What we might therefore call the first wave of Area Studies saw a proliferation of scholarly centers and learned societies across Europe, usually with close ties to imperial administration. It was served too by emergent modern disciplines, notably anthropology, archaeology, geography, and sciences like tropical medicine and linguistics. The second wave arrived around the mid-twentieth century. Unsurprisingly its leaders, norms, structures and parameters were American. This was the highpoint of Area Studies. It tends now to be seen as a golden age, in terms of funding largesse from rich foundations and bulging state coffers. But equally, it has come to be viewed suspiciously by those critical of its Cold War and universalizing underpinnings. The third wave is conspicuously post-Cold War. As in the chapters that follow here, this reworking of Area Studies displays influences from social and cultural theory, and registers geopolitical and geoeconomic shifts that are yielding a more multipolar world. It is also wrought by other social and political forces (themselves represented as having experienced third waves): democracy, feminism and technology. Each wave, with respect to the one before it, developed in a historical epoch associated with reconfigurations of space, time and scholarship; the first marked by the novelty of the telegraph and powered shipping, the second by television and aircraft, and the third by the internet and digitization. The transitions between each wave of Area Studies were marked by contention and a sense of loss of mission or crisis. Hence the end of European empires saw a critique of the gazetteer-style of description that had accompanied exploration and formed the archive of colonial governance. Instead, there was a demand for more analytical Area Studies. The rise of Development Studies and the impacts of modernization theory, as well as a shift from “race” to culture as an explanatory variable inaugurated the second wave. Critiques accumulated from the 1970s however, pointing to continuity in the ways that many of Area Studies’ mid-twentieth century categories and assumptions were still rooted in the colonial discourses of its forerunner. As a master’s student in late 1980s England, I recall a slightly older and more traveled (hence in my mind, a wiser) friend knowingly advising me to avoid taking classes from any professor who

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called themselves an Orientalist. At graduate school we all read Edward Said’s Orientalism. Then came the end of the Cold War. Areas seemed passé. Globalization was the talk of the town. It has taken a couple of decades for the third wave to come of age. Many of the critiques leveled at its predecessors are still in the air, for Orientalism was back on active service after 9/11 and the legacy of the Cold War division of intellectual labor and areas lingered, although they looked increasingly arbitrary. But fresh approaches have been celebrated, foregrounding connections while challenging Eurocentric assumptions about their geography and histories. The secondary literature on Edward Said is now much larger than his work and postcolonial theory has most likely become more influential than what remains of theories of modernization or dependency. Alternative demarcations of areas are increasingly evident too, as exemplified by the debates about the Black Atlantic and the value of concepts like Zomia or oceanspaces. And other areas, which had been partitioned by the Cold War into adjuncts of Soviet or Middle Eastern Studies have seen their legibility remerge in the form of the Persianate and Turkic worlds. In short, this book is very timely. And if, as I believe it will, Area Studies at the Crossroads encourages more scholars to join these ongoing conversations or broadens and deepens debate among those who are already part of them, it will have commendably served its purpose. James D. Sidaway Department of Geography National University of Singapore Singapore

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Acknowledgements

We would like to express our utmost gratitude to several anonymous reviewers, our colleagues from Crossroads Asia for acting as discussion partners over the past three years and Christoph Blumert for his tremendous support in preparing this volume. Finally, we thank the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany for the financial and project support that made this work possible.

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Contents

Part I  Area Studies at the Crossroads

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I ntroduction: Knowledge Production, Area Studies and the Mobility Turn  3 Katja Mielke and Anna-Katharina Hornidge  he Neoliberal University and Global Immobilities of Theory 27 T Peter A. Jackson

Part II To Be or Not to Be Is Not the Question. Rethinking Area Studies in Its Own Right

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 oing Area Studies in the Americas and Beyond: Towards D Reciprocal Methodologies and the Decolonization of  Knowledge  47 Olaf Kaltmeier  rea Studies @ Southeast Asia: Alternative Areas A versus Alternatives to Areas  65 Christoph Antweiler

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 etween Ignoring and Romanticizing: The Position of  B Area Studies in Policy Advice  83 Conrad Schetter

Part III  Knowledge Production after the Mobility Turn

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 ositionality and the Relational Production of Place in the  P Context of Student Migration to Gilgit, Pakistan  103 Andreas Benz  ed Lines for Uncivilized Trade? Fixity, Mobility and  R Positionality on Almaty’s Changing Bazaars  121 Henryk Alff  argins or Center? Konkani Sufis, India and “Arabastan”  141 M Deepra Dandekar

Part IV  From Local Realities to Concepts and Theorizing

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 he Role of Area Studies in Theory Production: A  T Differentiation of Mid-Range Concepts and the Example of Social Order  159 Katja Mielke and Andreas Wilde  he Production of Knowledge in the Field of Development T and Area Studies: From Systems of Ignorance to Mid-Range Concepts for Global Ethnography  177 Gudrun Lachenmann  ew Area Studies, Translation and Mid-­Range Concepts  195 N Vincent Houben

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 id-Range Concepts—The Lego Bricks of Meaning-Making: M An Example from Khorezm, Uzbekistan  213 Anna-Katharina Hornidge

Part V De-Streamlining Academic Society: Pedagogy and Teaching

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 he Case for Reconceptualizing Southeast Asian Studies  233 T Cynthia Chou  his Area Is [NOT] under Quarantine: Rethinking T Southeast/Asia through Studies of the Cinema  251 Arnika Fuhrmann  eaching to Transgress: Crossroads Perspective and  T Adventures in (?)-Disciplinarity  269 Epifania A. Amoo-Adare

Part VI  Anticipating the Future of Area Studies

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 re Transregional Studies the Future of Area Studies?  289 A Matthias Middell  eflecting the Moving Target of Asia  309 R Heike Holbig  oncluding Reflections: The Art of Science Policy for  C 21st Century Area Studies  327 Anna-Katharina Hornidge and Katja Mielke Index345

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Notes

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Contributors

Henryk Alff  was trained as human geographer and as a specialist in Russian literature and the cultures and languages of Central Asia, in Potsdam, Berlin, Almaty and Dushanbe. He has spent extensive periods on field research, particularly in Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan, during his doctoral and postdoctoral projects, using a mix of qualitative (ethnographic) and quantitative methodologies. He was a member of the competence network Crossroads Asia at the Centre for Development Studies (ZELF) of Freie Universität Berlin between 2011 and 2016, and is currently a fellow at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Studies in Leipzig. Alff’s work is firmly grounded in the post-disciplinarity and Area Studies debate, and he has a particular interest in the epistemological value of knowledge production from an actor- and place-based perspective. Furthermore, he is currently investigating the multi-dimensionality of spatial production as an important theoretical contribution to “rethinking Area Studies.” Epifania A. Amoo-Adare  has a PhD in Education from University of California, Los Angeles, and is also a RIBA part II qualified architect with diverse, postdisciplinary interests in critical pedagogy, critical social theory, critical spatial literacy, Cultural Studies, decoloniality, international educational development, Mobility Studies, “Third World” feminisms, and Urban Studies. She has worked as an educator and researcher for over 18 years, acquiring certain socio-spatial insights into locations within North America, Europe, the South Caucasus, the Middle East, and Asia. Within research, her areas of work include education program evaluation, as well as studies in gender, globalization, social development and urbanization issues. Her experiences as an educator include managing multi-year education programs in a post-conflict context. Amoo-Adare is specifically interested in how individuals, especially women, critically read and negotiate the politics of space, as

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Notes on Contributors

well as rewrite it (including as fictional and factual texts). This interest resulted in her dissertation on Asante women’s critical spatial literacy within urbanity. Christoph  Antweiler  is an anthropologist teaching Southeast Asian Studies at Bonn University, Germany. Before entering the fields of anthropology and constructivist humanities he had studied geosciences and paleontology, both being sciences oriented toward understanding natural history. In his view, anthropology is itself cross-disciplinary and inclined toward a holistic approach. Thus he takes a realist stance implying an explicit search for general models. Institutionally, Antweiler is acting from a Western position within Southeast Asian Studies, even if Germany may be a marginal place within Southeast Asian Studies. Despite current critiques on science, he defends analysis and the search for general insights, emphasizing that the search for universal knowledge is no Western peculiarity but a general human endeavor. Being culturally insiders or outsiders to an area entails no truth criteria whatsoever. Any attempt at inter-­subjective insights implies that methods, concepts and results should be valid across genders as well as across cultures. Andreas Benz  is a lecturer and senior researcher in human geography at Augsburg University, Germany. After studying human geography, political sciences and Islamic Studies at Freie Universität Berlin and Albert-­ Ludwigs-­ Universität Freiburg, he entered the transdisciplinary field of Development Studies for his PhD on opportunities and constraints of education for rural development and livelihoods in Northern Pakistan at the Centre for Development Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, which he completed in 2011. Following an actor-centered qualitative approach, his work is informed by critical theories on development, social inequality and socio-spatial positionality, allowing a critical stance toward modernist visions of development. In recent years he developed a strong interest in the role which social networks, migration, multi-local livelihood strategies and translocal geographies play in facilitating processes of social, cultural and economic change. Since 2010 he has engaged with these topics as a member of the BMBFfunded competence network Crossroads Asia: Conflict, Migration, Development. Cynthia Chou  holds the C. Maxwell and Elizabeth M. Stanley Family Chair of Asian Studies and is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Iowa. After obtaining her Master’s degree in social anthropology from the National University of Singapore, she continued her education at the University of Cambridge, where she received her PhD in social anthropology in 1992. Three years of post-doctoral research in the International Institute for Asian Studies at Leiden, the Netherlands, launched her academic career. She habilitated at the University of Copenhagen in 2011. Both intellectually and administratively, she has gained a large reservoir of expertise from Asia and Europe in dealing with Asian Studies programs and their particularities—among others she initiated and coordinated a full degree program

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in Southeast Asian Studies in Copenhagen. In early 2016, she joined the University of Iowa to further the teaching and scholarship on Asia. Deepra Dandekar  is an Associate Member of the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context,” at University of Heidelberg, Germany. She has conducted research on religion, gender and politics in South Asia, and has published work on women’s reproductive health, childbirth rituals and deities, and more recently on Sufi shrines and narratives of Muslim migration and travel in the Indian Ocean. Her current research and forthcoming publications locate the question of Sufi Muslims within contexts of political minoritization, contextualizing Muslim literature and ethnography within the analytical framework of Hinduism, Indian nationalism and the political impositions of Hindutva. Dandekar is currently translating a nineteenth-century biography written in the vernacular, describing the Christian conversion of an influential missionary from colonial Maharashtra. Arnika Fuhrmann  is an interdisciplinary scholar of Southeast Asia, working at the intersections of the region’s aesthetic and political modernities at Cornell University. Her research models a Cultural Studies approach that is simultaneously anchored in thorough linguistic, cultural and historical knowledge of “area.” After completing Ghostly Desires: Queer Sexuality and Vernacular Buddhism in Contemporary Thai Cinema (2016), an investigation of religion, sexuality, personhood and notions of collectivity in contemporary Thai cinema, her current research project, “Digital Futures,” examines how the study of new media allows for a perspective on the political public sphere that transcends commonplace distinctions between liberalism and illiberalism. This project intersects with her interests in the transformation of cities in contemporary Asia. Having worked in Asia, Europe, and the U.S., Fuhrmann stresses both geographically and theoretically comparative frameworks in order to make Area Studies knowledge relevant to inquiry in the humanities and social sciences more broadly. Heike Holbig  is a Professor of Political Science with a focus on Chinese and East Asian Area Studies at Goethe University, Frankfurt/Main, and a senior research fellow at the GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies in Hamburg, Germany. Trained in Chinese Studies, Japanese Studies, European Studies and economics in Erlangen-Nürnberg, Beijing, Heidelberg and Berlin, her academic work is located at the intersections of the humanities and social sciences. Her research interests include political legitimacy, ideological change and shifting statesociety relations in contemporary China, as well as comparative authoritarianism and the protection of weak social groups and interests in East Asian societies. In her approach to Area Studies, she strives to bring the involved epistemic communities into a productive dialogue with each other by applying the insights of various cultural turns to the social sciences and by critically reflecting the fashions and trends in Cultural Studies from a social science perspective.

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Anna-Katharina Hornidge  is Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Bremen as well as Head of Department of Social Sciences and of the Working Group Development and Knowledge Sociology at the Leibniz-Center for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT), Bremen. Hornidge was trained in sociology and Southeast Asian Studies in Bonn, Berlin and Singapore. In 2007 she received her doctorate on “Knowledge Society. Vision and Social Construction of Reality in Singapore and Germany” from the Technical University of Berlin. In 2008, Hornidge widened her geographical research focus from Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia to include Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Some of her research on global discourses of knowledge and their local consequences in Southeast and Central Asia formed part of her post-doctoral degree (habilitation), entitled “Discourses of Knowledge—Normative, Factual, Hegemonic,” with a venia legendi in development research from the University of Bonn in 2014. Hornidge took on the scientific coordination of the competence network Crossroads Asia at the Center for Development Research, University of Bonn, from September 2012 until she became Head of Department and eventually left for Bremen in 2015. As scientific coordinator she was responsible for designing the network’s strategy for conceptualizing and ­synthesizing the conducted research, as well as for network representation, financial management and donor communication. Vincent  Houben is a Professor of Southeast Asian History and Society at Humboldt University Berlin. He was trained in history and Indonesian languages at Leiden University, the Netherlands, where he received his PhD in 1987 on the basis of a study of indirect rule in Central Java in the mid-nineteenth century. After becoming a Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at Passau University in 1997 and starting to work at Berlin in 2001, he has extended his expertise to other parts of Southeast Asia and moved beyond history as a discipline. Since 2004, when he became Director of the Institute of Asian and African Studies at Humboldt University, he has been actively intervening in debates on Area Studies and has published several articles on the issue. He is a main proponent of the so-called new Area Studies approach, which tries to combine area-based research with transdisciplinary and global perspectives. Peter A. Jackson  is Emeritus Professor of Thai History and Cultural Studies at the Australian National University’s College of Asia and the Pacific. Over the past 30 years, he has written extensively on modern Thai cultural history, with special interests in religion, sexuality and critical approaches to Asian histories and cultures. Jackson was editor-in-chief of Asian Studies Review, the flagship journal of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, from 2009 to 2012 and he is a member of the editorial collective of Hong Kong University Press’s Queer Asia monograph series. His most recent books are: The Ambiguous Allure of the West: Traces of the Colonial in Thailand (with Rachel Harrison, 2010), Queer Bangkok: 21st Century

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Markets, Media and Rights (2011), and First Queer Voices from Thailand: Uncle Go’s Advice Columns for Gays, Lesbians and Kathoeys (2016). Olaf Kaltmeier  is Chair for Ibero-American History at Bielefeld University. As Director of the Center for InterAmerican Studies (CIAS) and of the research program “The Americas as Space of Entanglement” he is concerned with the rethinking of the Americas beyond traditional Area Studies. With studies in sociology, social anthropology, geography, Cultural Studies, and history he embodies transdisciplinarity, which is also expressed in the organization of the research group “E pluribus unum?” at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research. Since the mid1990s, Kaltmeier has been working with indigenous movements and communities in Latin America, especially in Chile, Bolivia and Ecuador. This research with indigenous leaders and intellectuals has shaped and sharpened his claim for decolonization not only of the political field, but also of knowledge. Gudrun  Lachenmann is Emeritus Professor of Sociology of Developing Countries and Gender at the University of Bielefeld, Germany. As a research fellow in the Africa division of the German Development Institute Berlin, she became engaged in interdisciplinary and multiregional work contexts beyond academia, and carried out studies with the United Nations Development Programme and the World Health Organization. Her academic work is based on extensive empirical research, mainly in francophone Africa, and focuses on sociology of knowledge and methodologies interfacing with social anthropology. By cooperating with local researchers and transnational epistemic communities on topics such as local economy, social movements, and decentralization, Lachenmann kept in contact with the development cooperation world. She was active in transnational research cooperation making permanent efforts to bring these two knowledge fields of scientic research and practice together, for example regarding critique of methodologies on evaluation, furthering qualitative approaches and promoting global sociology in a research project on translocal female knowledge spaces, and with a particular focus on women in Islamic countries. Matthias Middell  studied history at Leipzig University from 1981 to 1985 and went on to become a research student in the field of French Revolutionary Studies, defending his dissertation on the history of counterrevolution in France, 1788–1792, in July 1989. After research stays in France and Italy, he became managing director of Leipzig’s interdisciplinary Centre for Advanced Studies where he launched a transnational consortium offering a Master’s program in Global Studies in 2005 and a transregional PhD program in 2001. Having completed a habilitation on world history writing in the twentieth century he became Professor of Cultural History in 2007, Director of University of Leipzig’s Global and European Studies Institute in 2008 and of its Centre for Area Studies in 2010. With his colleague Ulf Engel, he launched in 2012 M.A. and PhD programs on Peace and

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Security in Africa at Addis Ababa University. Since 2013 he has been spokesperson of the Graduate School Global and Area Studies in Leipzig, and since 2016 of the Collaborative Research Centre “Respatialization under the Global Condition.” As editor of the journal Comparativ. Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte and in various functions in international organizations he supports the collaboration of Area Studies specialists and global historians. Katja  Mielke is a senior researcher at the Bonn International Center for Conversion, a peace and conflict research institute. With interdisciplinary training in social sciences, and East European and Central Asian Studies, she was one of the initiators of the Germany-wide research network Crossroads Asia for rethinking Area Studies. Her academic interest as a member of this research network addressed the nexus between socio-­cognitive and spatial (im-)mobilities, as well as mobilization dynamics, looking especially at the positionalities of minoritized and marginalized societal groups in urban Pakistan and Afghanistan. In her PhD research on power relations in rural northeast Afghanistan, Mielke developed the approach to establish and investigate flexible research units according to the people’s everyday interactions in a particular social field, thus taking emic spaces of interaction as spaces/areas where empirical research is based (study sites). Conrad Schetter  is Professor for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Bonn and Director of the Bonn International Center for Conversion. In his academic career, Schetter has always taken an interdisciplinary approach, which means, in his research understanding, a problem-­oriented approach. He studied geography and history with the aim of combining the academic understanding of space and time. Along that line, his PhD on “Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflicts in Afghanistan” aimed to show the significance of spatiality in ethnic constructions. In his further research, Schetter concentrated on the role of the “local” in political processes in Central Asia and South Asia. Particularly by studying the global–local nexus, Schetter became aware of the limitations of classical Area Studies. Together with Katja Mielke, Schetter was the initiator of the research network Crossroads Asia. Due to his longstanding research on countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan, Schetter has been involved in providing policy advice to German ministries, international organizations and NGOs. Andreas  Wilde  graduated in 2005 with a Master’s degree in Iranian Studies, Arab Literature and Islamic Studies from the University of Bamberg. Covering a wide range of different, partly interrelated fields such as history, geography, language and literature, both classical and modern, of the so-called Persianate world, his academic training makes him a classical “areanist.” His PhD on Transoxanian history and concepts of power, authority and social order supplements his profile as a social historian. In addition, he has worked on the history

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of northern Afghanistan and particularly the networks of local landed elites. Wilde is currently an Assistant Professor at the Chair of Iranian Studies in Bamberg and lectures widely on various topics related to Bukhara, Afghanistan and Iran. Regarding the rethinking of Area Studies, he is of the opinion that the debate should also focus on curricula, teaching activities and the training of young academics.

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List

of

Figures

Fig. 1 Fig. 2

Southeast Asia as an Area Formed by Family Resemblances 75 Department Structure of Think Tanks in Peace, Conflict and Security (PCS) Research 86 Fig. 3 Map of Pakistan and Gilgit-Baltistan 106 Fig. 4 Location of the Study Area 126 Fig. 5 Status of the Barakholka Bazaar Agglomeration in May/ June 2014 127 Fig. 6 The Konkani Sufi Muslim’s “Crossroads” Relationship with Arabastan143 Fig. 7 Hermeneutic Circle of New Area Studies 201 Fig. 8 A Sequence of Still Images Is the Culmination of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His past Lives259 Fig. 9 The Descendants of Disappeared Communists Improvise on the History of Nabua 260 Fig. 10 Disappearance Emerges as the Primary Political Metaphor of Uncle Boonmee261 Fig. 11 The Trope of Haunting and the Figure of the Monkey-Ghost Add a Primordial Dimension to the History of State Violence from the 1960s to the 1980s 262

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PART I

Area Studies at the Crossroads

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Introduction: Knowledge Production, Area Studies and the Mobility Turn Katja Mielke and Anna-Katharina Hornidge

A quarter of a century has passed since the demise of the bipolar world order. This change opened new avenues for knowledge production and caused several currents of rethinking of the subsequently arising ontologies in how we see and order the world. The initial enthusiasm about multiple centers that seemed to shape global dynamics and enable new types of interaction and communication in the 1990s has parted, as the new multicentric world continues to be dominated by few, but changing, centers and structures (regarding publishing and academic merits) that further reinforce existing inequalities. This is true for both knowledge production and global power relations. The “us–them” division of the world that is visible, for example, in crisis management regarding refugees and the emphasis on causes of flight in most recent research funding throughout the Global North, is a marked feature of policy circles but also continues to perpetuate domestic and internationalized science policies. The “othering” observed differentiates between societies, nations, cultures (that is, where funding is acquired as well as where collaboration is thought to take place), but also between terrestrial and marine spaces (the “areas” of the future) for instance. Area Studies expertise is again sought for and increasingly funded by governmental and non-governmental organizations in order to understand

K. Mielke (*) • A.-K. Hornidge Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC), Bonn, Germany © The Author(s) 2017 K. Mielke, A.-K. Hornidge (eds.), Area Studies at the Crossroads, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59834-9_1 [email protected]

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the other and how it can have such powerful effects on Northern societies (Powell et  al. 2016). One example is the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 call which aims to clarify Europe’s role and conduct towards other world regions, for example the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe, in the future decades. Although this is not science in the narrowest sense and researchers can choose not to engage in these types of activities, the economization of academia and the transnational regime of so-called “academic quality assessment,” which are also based on the amounts of third-party funding records, provide a major drive towards an increasing dependence of scientists on extra-epistemological forces (Peter A.  Jackson, in this volume). The effect is the nurturing of Eurocentric dominance in both ontological and epistemological scientific worldviews. Science (and as a sub-field, Area Studies) as a “world-making” activity risks becoming instrumentalized—today, just as much as after World War II and during the Cold War. From a European perspective, global dynamics have changed dramatically since as recently as early 2015. The refugee wave from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan is currently changing European societies from the bottom up. Maybe for the first time ever, every ordinary citizen is confronted with how close the world has moved together and that events in one part of the world trigger responses that may significantly alter communal life at the other. Events do not only refer to war, but also oil price dynamics, the spread of diseases, terrorist movements, increasing environmental hazards as well as the understanding that the 30 % terrestrial parts of our planet are not enough to feed and clothe 7.4 billion people. Alternatives making use of the 70 % covered by oceans are sought (for example with floating cities), opening up additional “areas” to be othered. At the same time, the recent renegotiation of the political border between Russia and the Ukraine or the contracting expansion of the so-­ called Islamic State in Iraq, Syria and other parts of the world point us to the relevance of research on the mobile dimension of people’s everyday practices and how these practices scrutinize existing categories of spatial and social organization. The mobility of people, goods, ideas and viruses inherently questions political borders and socio-cultural, ethnicity- and religion-based boundaries. The appearance of Da’esh— or Islamic State— graffiti all over Pakistan in 2015 is just one indicator of how symbols travel; the attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and the pro-freedom press reactions to it worldwide illustrate how powerful symbols are in guiding human action. The outbreak of the Ebola Virus in

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Western Africa illustrated how a virus spreading along the main transport routes and nodes, being geographically as well as socially highly mobile, temporarily redefined the world region of Western Africa through its mobility, leading to the compartmentalization of cities into affected and non-affected parts, a tightening of border controls, but also to the drawing of new cognitive boundaries—equating the region of Western Africa with “the Ebola region.” All these events indicate that some of the geographically fixed categories in which our world operates are increasingly characterized by degrees of dynamism that no longer justify a division of the world into territorially fixed units. This holds true for the conventional world regions identified after World War II, such as Central Asia, South Asia, East or West Africa. Yet in addition, the above referred to events infringe upon the sovereignty of nation-states and their possibilities to act as territorially fixed entities. Ebola, regional Jihadism, just as much as the value of freedom of speech and press do not stop at political borders. Instead, migration flows and the mobility of ideas make our world more complex. And while the efforts to reject change (states ought not to fail and break apart; new powers ought not to establish their authority but to hold on to an ontological perspective of a past world order) are strong, the call for interdisciplinary and transregional Area Studies research becomes even more pressing (Hornidge & Mielke 2015).

Looking Back at the Debate

on Area

Studies

With common roots in the colonial projects and the related quest to generate information and knowledge about the other (keyword “Orientalism”) in order to better exploit, understand and master it while at the same time reaffirming the self’s distinction from the other, Area Studies have taken different paths in academia in the USA as opposed to Europe and beyond (Mielke & Hornidge 2014; Powell et  al. 2016). While in Germany and many European countries, Area Studies are built on a strong tradition of historical Oriental Studies and linguistics, the situation and institutionalization of Area Studies in the USA was characterized by the latter’s status as one of the two powers in the bipolar world order until 1990. Subsequently, the rationality to fund Area Studies in the USA was informed by the felt need to “understand the enemy,” not least literally through adequate language training (Burgess 2004, p.  125). Post-World War II Area Studies always had two fixed spatial anchor points in its place of origin (where it was directed and implemented in established centers, written about in

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respective journals and enriched by study organizations, boards, specialized conferences) and its focus region, such as a specific political system as in Sovietology, a region or continent as with South Asia or Africa, or a geopolitically defined space in colonial tradition like the Middle East. In this tradition, Area Studies was meant to help collect information and data to build up encyclopedic-style knowledge about these spatially fixed focus entities. Conceptually informed by modernization and development theories, Area Studies were thought to facilitate the implementation of US development policy (Boatca 2012). The institutional backing, the build-up of study programs around language and the transmission of cultural competences in especially designed curricula, as well as organizational support (manifest in the establishment of departments, boards, chairs and journals) remained basically unabated until the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. As a result, van Schendel (2002) speaks of the evolution of certain area lineages—“imagined area communities” of researchers who interact and relate to each other in a self-referential style without looking beyond the boundaries of their areas. The fact that Sovietologists had not anticipated the demise of the Eastern bloc, caused the scrutiny not only regarding the usefulness of the guild and Area Studies with their ways of knowledge generation in general, but also subsequently regarding its funding structure. “Area Studies are the largest institutional epistemology through which the academy in the US has apprehended much of the world in the last fifty years” (Appadurai 2000, p. 3), however, thereby enabling the enforcement of particular “geographies of power” (van Schendel 2002) in line with the geopolitically informed logic of the Cold War. In several European countries, Area Studies can be traced back to an early interest in studying the societies of European colonies—primitive tribes, and “the uncivilized,” organized in the academic discipline of anthropology (Houben & Rehbein 2010). This interest led to the founding of Indology and Sinology, at the time still focusing on grand (former) civilizations. After World War II, the now independent former colonies, most of which are countries of the so-called Third World, either became part of the Soviet bloc or were to be developed along the societal model of Western capitalism. In Germany, despite the fact that all colonial ambitions and commercial interests as basis for the predecessors of what later was called Area Studies were put to an end with World War I, scientific interest in regions of former world empires, such as India and China, remained (Basedau & Köllner 2007). In comparison to the US-American counterparts, nevertheless a strong historical, textual and thus philological focus of

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the former Oriental Studies and interest in the culture, literature, arts and (ancient) languages of the studied societies continued to determine the disciplines’ development. After the division of Germany into East and West, Area Studies in Eastern Germany evolved with a much less developmentalist orientation than in the USA, but instead yielded a stronger interdisciplinary social scientific orientation. Boatca (2012, p. 24), with reference to Krauth and Wolz (1998), argues that the Area Studies on China in Eastern Germany can retrospectively be viewed “as contract research and directly depending on the respective political relations between GDR and China,” while African Studies, as well as Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies especially before 1980 produced internationally recognized research. After reunification in 1990, parts of this research tradition were lost due to the closing down of departments such as African philosophy, African sociology or Burmese Studies, while in parts it was incorporated into the university system of Western Germany and developed further through the opening of Area Studies departments also in Western Germany.

Recent Reinterpretations

and Thematic

Innovations

Neither in the USA nor in Europe were Area Studies existentially scrutinized before 1990. Only with the increasing impact of globalization (Evers 2000; Prewitt 2003) and subsequently arising influences from different evolving “turns” in academia—the cultural turn (Lackner & Werner 1999; Bachmann-Medick 2007), spatial turn (Jessop et al. 2008; Leitner et  al. 2008; Soja 1989; Massey 2005) and post-structuralism (Jackson 2003), including post-colonial perspectives and post-development, a debate set in. While some (Bates 1996), especially after observing that the US Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) terminated their area-focused committees (Bilgin & Morton 2002), predicted an end of Area Studies as they used to be practiced, scrutinizing its adequacy to contribute any insights into what was thought to be a homogenizing project of globalization; others have argued for re-focusing Area Studies, emphasizing the need to understand globalization’s local impacts. For this, a restructuring (Prewitt 1996; Prewitt 2003; Basedau & Köllner 2007; Ellings et  al. 2010) for the future of Area Studies (Braig & Hentschke 2005), and a new “Area Studies architecture” (Appadurai 2000) was being demanded. It was largely recognized that Area Studies, as they had been practiced over the decades before 1990, had become anachronistic. In the

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new circumstances they proved to be problematic heuristic devices for the study of objects and actors in motions, global flows and cultural processes without being delimited by previously established boundaries in academia and physical or assumed cultural boundaries and political borders “out there.” The proposed shift from so-called “trait” geographies to process geographies to capture flows and motions of ideas, ideologies, discourses, people, goods, images, messages, technologies and techniques is a case in point (Appadurai 2000, p. 5; van Schendel 2002). Reflections on the inadequacies and the perceived crisis of Area Studies brought about several innovations and specifications in Area Studies, for example different sorts of “trans” perspectives, starting with transnationalism (Glick Schiller et al. 1995; Mintz 1998; Spivak 1993), transregionalism and regional orders (Hentschke 2009; Godehardt & Lembcke 2010), transculturalism (Center for Area Studies of FU Berlin) and translocality (Freitag & von Oppen 2010), paving the way for today’s popularity of multi-sited research (Marcus 1998) and applying it. In addition, new research centers on Global Studies and Global History (Middell & Naumann 2010) as well as the analysis of glocal (Robertson 2002) and diasporic connections (Schramm 2008) have been innovative attempts to deconstruct the conventional container focus of Area Studies and seek new levels of spatial relevance. This process was partly aided by deterritorialization tendencies of traditional Area Studies terminology (Appadurai 1996; Segbers 2000; Lewis & Wigen 1997). In addition, renewed emphasis was put on comparative studies (Basedau & Köllner 2007; Nuscheler 2000) across regions and conventional areas. Examples can be found in the establishment of centers for Peace and Conflict Research, Regime Change and Transition Studies, European Integration Studies, but also Development Studies. In Germany, new collaborative research centers (CRCs)—CRC Representations of social order in change (HU Berlin), CRC Governance in spaces of limited statehood (FU Berlin)—and graduate schools like the Berlin Graduate School of Muslim Cultures and Societies, which is a joint initiative of topic- and areafocused departments from both universities and extra-university research institutions, provide evidence of the trend towards ­interdisciplinary research following certain thematic frames or newly (de-)constructed “area” dispositions in a quest to look at the world differently. Preceding and attending this development was a reactivation of the debate on the relationship between Area Studies and “systematic” disciplines (Guyer 2004; Graham & Kantor 2007; Hanson 2009; Mintz 1998; Powell et al. 2016). Not least

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because disciplinarians had also diagnosed crisis tendencies in their fields, albeit vaguer ones than areanists who faced rather existential threats. The conventional wisdom in the debate on Area Studies versus systematic disciplines has mainly been revolving around two points: First, the assumption that Area Studies potentially challenge disciplinary fields, but at least add empirical insights that can motivate disciplinarians to improve the validity of their concepts and theories (eye-opener function, see Puhle 2005, p. 5). Second, with the criticism facing Area Studies after 1990 that they are theory-distant and without “proper” methodologies, a dialectic “Area Studies adopt methodological tools and theoretical lenses from the disciplines” was subsequently added to this debate. This step was a further manifestation of the pressure areanists faced and the need for justification and self-defense. Third, related thinking eventually culminated in the view that both research approaches are interdependent.

Comparative Insights Consequently, more or less intense debates in, on and between particular Area Studies have been surfacing in the last decade in various parts of the world. In the following, selective features of the well-recorded German debates in African and East European Studies as well as international voices of protagonists of Southeast Asian Studies shall be briefly reviewed in order to reflect on similarities and differences in their foci on reconfiguration and positioning of Area Studies. Needless to say that the respective Area Studies throughout their institutionalization over time depended on (geo-)political trends according to related national science policies, and that the “debates” can be read as the results of threats to downsize funding (and actual cuts) for departments and scholarly activities. A striking difference between, for example, the fields of East European, African and Southeast Asian Area Studies is their documented conceptualization of the titular region/area and thus the object of study. While representatives of African Studies seem not to have led a nameable debate about space, scholars of Eastern Europe have been more concerned with the construction of a territorial-cultural entity (Tornow 2005) and, in contrast, Southeast Asianists have emphasized the contrived identity of the region (Chou 2006, p. 123), its highly differentiated nature, fluidity and the absence of a center. Nevertheless, any essentialist territorial area approach in African Studies that might once have existed with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa or the entire continent, has given way to a highly

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fragmented and heterogeneous understanding of the “discipline” as studying the people living in and originating from Africa in other parts of the world, thus including the diaspora (Schramm 2008); but also “the place of Africa in its global context, both historically and contemporaneously,” and “foreign interests, policies and influences, as well as perceptions outside of Africa on Africa” (whatever the definition of “Africa” then is). “To that extent, ‘Africa’ is also understood as a mirror image of international relations, images, projections and their results” (Alpers & Roberts 2002, p. 13, quoted in Melber 2005, p. 370). Despite the domination of African Studies by linguists in its evolution in Germany and the background of African Studies in colonial and culturalist research, its subsequent “social sciencing,” its observation of the decolonization processes and rising contention with the policies towards Africa as the embodiment of the Third World led to the formulation of a critical agenda early on (Probst 2005). In contrast to African Studies, which started forming a scientific core after World War I and the related “loss” of German colonies, scholarship engaged with Eastern Europe experienced major scientification only in the 1970s. Until then the legacy of pre-1945 German Ostforschung connected with expansionist motives during the Hitler regime and with a continued attitude of viewing the East as inferior “other” prevailed, even though the previous preoccupation with Raum (space) had ultimately ceased after 1945 for known political reasons. As Lentz and Schmid (2005, p. 137) put it, with the manifestation of the Cold War, the objecthood of Eastern Europe shifted moreover from a perceived, contemplated and reproduced space towards a non-spatial systemic concept—that means the communist world as societal system with particular economic principles in which spatial categories and units of analysis did not play a role any longer for analysis. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the disintegration of the Eastern bloc, this political systemic space imploded and subsequently caused probably the severest identity crisis among Area Studies specialists in the aftermath of 1989. It also prepared the ground for a rediscovery of space among East European scholars since then (Schlögel 2005). The disciplinary focus which had gradually set in since the policy of détente in the 1970s (that had allowed scholarly exchange and a de-mythologizing of “the East”) is reflected in a self-image of East European scholarship today as primarily disciplinary (Grotz et al. 2013). Despite its disciplinary boundaries being well established, representatives of different disciplines working on, in and about Eastern Europe (including newly emerged area concepts like Central Europe, East Central

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Europe, Eurasia and so on) partly agree that they are seen as areanists by “pure” disciplinarians (Grotz et  al. 2013). Besides the usual challenges connected to this divide, the ideologically driven focus of disciplinary research rendered its scholarly exponents marginal among other colleagues, if not completely out of step with demands to find alternative heuristic approaches for explaining the changes and transformations occurring. In East European political science scholarship, for instance, the domination of totalitarianism versus modernization and affiliated development theories became outdated, making way for so-called transition theories and democratization studies. Their adequacy is newly under scrutiny given the heterogeneous political developments in the former “East” (Mommsen 2013). The initially proclaimed “end of East European History” (Baberowski 1998) has given way to imaginations and scholarly programs on Eastern Europe as a historical region (Troebst 2013). The contemporary representatives of Southeast Asian Studies are all the more critical towards and self-conscious regarding conventional social science disciplines. They can not only look back at a considerable body of achievements with regard to grounded, field-based theory development (such as Geertz’s “thick description” and his notion of “theatre state,” Anderson’s “imagined communities” and Scott’s “moral economy” and “weapons of the weak”), but also the scrutinizing of spatial categories through process approaches (van Schendel 2002) and further newly emerging issues (Bunnell 2013; Aung-Thwin 2013; Rigg 2013). This may be owed to the particular nature of the “field” of Southeast Asia, which cannot be grasped spatially by all means and which has felicitously been termed a “conveniently residual category” (Emmerson 1984, p. 17, quoted in King 2006, p. 33) or also as a “convenient contingent device” (Sutherland 2005). Another contributing factor and also a unique feature of Southeast Asian Studies has been the promotion of the discipline in the region itself, most prominently through the creation of respective institutes like the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in Singapore in 1971 (Chou & Houben 2006, p. 7), or the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore in 2001 and interdisciplinary study programs in several countries in the region, for example in Malaysia and Vietnam—a process that has been ongoing and expanded with regional exchange programs since (Feuer & Hornidge 2015). As a result, and in comparison with African or East European Studies, Southeast Asian Studies today possesses a far larger potential to be dominated by discussions of local scholars able to bridge the academic West–Rest divide

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(including issues of cultural and linguistic translation, the advancement of and advocacy for local concepts on an international scholarly scene). The capacities and interests of local scholars in Africa and Eastern Europe seem to carry the weight of their respective Third World identity and Cold War academic legacies. In terms of knowledge production, the popular idea of the respective areas being social constructs (Engel 2003 p.  111; also knowledge constructs [Kleinen 2013, p.  212], discursive field [King 2006, p.  25] or differentiated and hybrid [Lentz in Grotz et al. 2013, p. 100]) seems to be uncontroversial among the representatives of the three Area Studies branches (as is also evidenced for scholarship on the Americas by Olaf Kaltmeier in this volume). Nevertheless, the proponents of the different Area Studies differ in their degree of constructionism and subsequent innovations for the respective Area Studies research agenda. The Southeast Asianists’ view of their region as heuristic device, that defines a study area depending on the particular question and research interest which is then investigated with multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary approaches, is yielding insights that contribute substantially and proactively to the larger Area Studies debate (see also Cynthia Chou, in this volume). In comparison, the agenda of advocates of East European scholarship is more determined by the idea of a complementary existence of the area expertise with disciplinary methods and theories. It is deemed rather reactive and cherishes disciplinary boundaries. The case of African Studies seems to be positioned in the middle of the former two with the peculiarity of centralization in the field due to the institutionalization of collaborative research centers over the past 20 years. The dominance of linguists and literary studies and subsequent feelings of an imbalance in other disciplinary branches of African Studies has provoked the debate on questioning the legitimacy of one over the other—in the end not a fruitful venture— and points towards the sometimes perceived dichotomy between fundamental research and policy-relevant knowledge generation. For the future perspective, advocates of all three Area Studies exemplified above seem to agree on three dimensions at least: First, the relevance of spatialities and their study locally, especially with a view towards how globalization processes affect and are being affected by regional dynamics. Second, the potential for new insights from more comparative research—in intra-, inter-, and cross-regional manners; yet they remain to varying degrees unspecific as to how such comparison should look, which criteria it ought to be based on and whether or not it is always useful. Research on translo-

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cal/transnational phenomena in multi-sited settings seems to have been one recent approach that does successfully avoid the need for a systematic comparative perspective. Third, the significance of collaborative research across disciplinary and regional boundaries as well as the need for stronger engagement of local scholars (and a decolonizing of the academy) in the debates is acknowledged.

Looking Ahead: The Future

of Area

Studies

This volume, and the chapters presented here, draw on the debates outlined above and subscribe to the notion that Area Studies are at some kind of crossroads. By intentionally leaving the crisis debate behind, the collective of authors offers an innovative framing of Area Studies by not only looking at its ontological and epistemological dimension, but also its theoretical and pedagogical bases as well as science policy implications. The book highlights the multiplicity of layers that shape the discussion on the meaning, organization and purpose of Area Studies today. It invites readers on a path-breaking journey in several respects. Most significantly, it differs from previous publications regarding Area Studies scholarship in that it (a) neither remains fixed in ontological debates on what adequate regions are that could become subject for study, nor on how best to capture the dynamism of recent flows and mobilities of people, ideas, goods and capital; and (b) it goes beyond the crisis debate regarding the constructed divide between Area Studies and so-called systematic disciplines. Instead, it is based on ontological, theoretical, methodological and pedagogical reflections of practitioners of inter- and transdisciplinary Area Studies from all over the world. The authors of this volume are cognizant of the challenges pointed out above and have made relative efforts to emancipate themselves from the trodden paths of Area Studies debates over the last 25 years. The book assembles international authors who are all engaged in conducting some new type of Area Studies at the verge of disciplines and in inter- and transdisciplinary centers, research networks and projects. The authors are lecturers, researchers, educationists and area specialists, who are thus challenged on an everyday level to reflect on the way area-based knowledge is generated, how to translate it and how to best train future scholars. The insights offered stem from fieldwork in multiple regions, among them Africa, Latin America, and Asia (Southeast, South, Central Asia). A brief trajectory of this volume’s coming into being simultaneously illustrates the development of the recent discussions on Area Studies. The

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idea for compiling this book arose in the aftermath of the international conference that marked the end of the first funding phase of the Germany-­ wide research network Crossroads Asia at the end of 2014. The so-called competence network, funded by the Area Studies Initiative of the German Ministry of Education and Research, started off in March 2011 with the aim to scrutinize the conventional spatial concepts—the “world regions” of Central and South Asia—underlying today’s conceptualizations and teaching of Area Studies at German universities against the backdrop of obviously historically existing and—since the early 1990s—again increasing mobility of people, goods and ideas along Asia’s crossroads. Thus, the main initial motivation of the research network was to reject conventional ontological perspectives and replace them with counter-ontologies in response to a Eurocentric funding proposal of a governmental funding institution. A second motivation was to ponder what effects the deconstruction of conventional ontologies and the recognition of increasing mobilities would have on Area Studies as a field of knowledge production, its organization, meaning and purpose, especially in distinction to so-called systematic disciplines. This led us—in the conference concluding the first phase of the project and in the follow-up application for extension of funding for another two years (until the end of 2016)—to discuss the epistemological bases for non-Euro-Amerocentric knowledge production. Particularly the exchange with trans- and interdisciplinary areanists from non-Asian fields of research, such as the Americas, was highly useful because it allowed reflecting on post-colonial currents and refocused the discussion on the renegotiations of socio-spatial boundaries, the centrality of positionality and notions of in-betweenness. The research portrayed in these discussions indicated strongly that (a) various forms of mobility and mobilization processes and (b) borders and boundaries, processes of boundary production, weakening and crossing form the core when following local actors’ definitions, usage and social construction of space, that is, taking emic spaces of interaction as spaces/ areas where empirical research is based (study sites). Different mobilities and types of borders and boundaries are negotiated, come into being and take shape as a consequence of human interaction. The Crossroads perspective therefore placed this interrelation between the dynamic (mobilities and mobilization processes), the static (borders, boundaries, their establishment, negotiation and disassembling) and the many differentiations in between proving this constructed dichotomy wrong, studied through the lens of human (individual and collective) interaction. With

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regard to ongoing debates on rethinking Area Studies, we thus located ourselves in the center of what Knorr-Cetina (1999, p. 12) calls “the disunity of science” and “the diversity of the manufacturing systems from which truth effects arise.” Now, this volume marks another step forward in our rethinking efforts, because we move beyond discussing the mere ontological and epistemological bases of Area Studies. On the one hand, we include reflections on the pedagogical implications, that is, how issues of complexity and efforts at overcoming disciplinary boundaries affect teaching in both Area Studies and systematic disciplines; how concepts derived from the multidimensionality of space (such as place, territory, mobility, scale, networks) enrich curricula dealing with rethinking of Area Studies and the disciplines; and what role positionality (as both a concept and a mode of practice) plays in the process of academic deschooling, particularly in the context of tertiary education. On the other hand, we make first steps towards considering the implications of the rethinking efforts in its ontological, epistemological, theoretical and pedagogical dimensions for science studies. This necessarily involves a discussion of the global inequalities in theory production (Peter A.  Jackson, in this volume), the options for a decolonization of knowledge (Olaf Kaltmeier, in this volume) and a concerted pondering on the ethical-political and science policy implications of recent critics, turns and (self-)reflections in the debate on and in Area Studies (see our concluding reflections in this volume). Following McClennen (2007), we believe that a larger ethical-political project of challenging universally spread practices of domination—manifest in neoliberal capitalism, colonialism and global hegemonies of power—is necessary for overcoming the continuous perpetuation of ontologies in Area Studies by mere de- and reconstruction efforts. To tackle the conventionally fixed and hegemonic power-­knowledge order between North and South, East and West, increasing attention to the modes and logic of science policymaking as well as its implementation, manifest, for example, in cultural and epistemic diversity fostered on professorial level at universities, is of utmost importance.

Organization of the Book In accordance with the particular ambitions of this volume to go beyond the discussion of how to define Area Studies and who should and is entitled to practice it, the book begins by outlining contours of Area Studies as an ethical-political project. In Chapter “The Neoliberal University and

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Global Immobilities of Theory,” Peter A. Jackson illustrates how theory production has remained largely impervious to the otherwise decentering effects of transnational processes. While the empirical phenomena of globalization reflect accelerating mobility, the sites of the production of theory about these mobilities remain insistently immobile and centered in universities located in Western metropoles. He argues that this is a major factor in the continued failure of social and cultural analysis to adequately explain the contemporary world. Illustrating how these global inequalities in academic prestige value result from the worldwide imposition of neoliberal policies of research “quality” assessment in both Western and non-Western universities, Jackson suggests a range of strategies to mitigate this impasse both at the level of epistemology as well as in forms of academic practice. The authors in Part II, “To Be or Not to Be is Not the Question: Rethinking Area Studies in Its Own Right” (Chapters “Doing Area Studies in the Americas and Beyond. Towards Reciprocal Methodologies and the Decolonization of Knowledge; Area Studies @ Southeast Asia: Alternative Areas versus Alternatives to Areas; Between Ignoring and Romanticizing: The Position of Area Studies in Policy Advice”), agree that there is value in conducting Area Studies in its own right and address the need to develop new or alternative epistemologies against the backdrop of entanglements constituted by increasing flows and mobilities of people, ideas, capital and goods. The contributions vary in their departure from conventional ontologies of what constitutes an area. In addition, what gets highlighted is the potency of certain cultural and colonial imaginations that is effective in policy circles which request Area Studies knowledge and often determine science policy on the basis of geopolitical interests. In Chapter “Doing Area Studies in the Americas and Beyond. Towards Reciprocal Methodologies and the Decolonization of Knowledge,” Olaf Kaltmeier provides an outline for a reconceptualization of the Americas as space of entanglement and analyzes the construction of the “area” of the Americas in terms of coloniality, thereby adding another critique on the hegemonic geopolitics of knowledge. By proposing dialogical, entangled methodologies that allow for spaces of difference, his contribution is a plea for relational and pluri-topic Area Studies that reflect power relations and that do not fix or define the meaning of areas. In contrast, and strongly emphasizing socio-spatial relations for the development of an Area Science instead of mere Area Studies, Christoph Antweiler argues in Chapter “Area Studies @ Southeast Asia: Alternative Areas versus Alternatives to

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Areas” that areas may be conceived as an amalgam of material surfaces, spatial relations and concepts of these spatial features. Departing from his expertise in Southeast Asia, he proposes that network and family resemblance are the two most fruitful concepts to allow for a critically reflected yet empirically oriented Area Science. From the perspective of a director of a policy-oriented research institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, Conrad Schetter looks at the role of Area Studies expertise in policy advice (Chapter “Between Ignoring and Romanticizing: The Position of Area Studies in Policy Advice”). Illustrating the ramifications of the conventional Area Studies approach that has dominated the interpretation of political developments in Afghanistan since 2001, the ethical-political message of his contribution is that area experts should first and foremost fulfill an irritation function in policy advice and subvert policymakers’ ideas about practical knowledge. In Part III, “Knowledge Production after the Mobility Turn,” Chapters “Positionality and the Relational Production of Place in the Context of Student Migration to Gilgit, Pakistan; Red Lines for Uncivilized Trade? Fixity, Mobility and Positionality on Almaty’s Changing Bazaars; Margins or Centre? Konkani Sufis, India and ‘Arabastan’” depart from the surplus value of the mobility lens (Urry 2007). The empirical case studies point to the relationship between (im)mobility and spatiality, how place/s and space/s are constructed, and how socio-spatial boundaries undergo renegotiations. Positionality—although ever present—has long been treated as invisible in the quest for neutrality and objectivity in science, as well as given the desire for the universality of knowledge and its production. Currently, positionality is increasingly viewed as critical to scholarship due to the understanding that all knowledge is specific, limited, partial and situated, that is, produced in particular circumstances that shape it (as well as the researcher and the researched) in discrete and certain ways (Rose 1997; England 1994). It has a bearing on the production of knowledge at different scales. The case studies in this section illustrate ways in which the epistemological gap between the local and empirical, on the one hand, and a North marked as universal and theoretical, on the other could be bridged. However, they also emphasize the in-between character of the research process, that is, between emic and etic knowledge, between policy and practice, between Western canon and “local” knowledge, between the external and local construction of regions, place and spaces. In Chapter “Positionality and the Relational Production of Place in the Context of Student Migration to Gilgit, Pakistan,” Andreas Benz

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explores how education migrants’ socio-spatial positionality is modified and renegotiated in places of their everyday life away from home where students interact across social, ethno-linguistic, denominational, gender and regional boundaries in the hostels and campus places. Taking the example of different gendered lifeworlds of the Wakhi Ismaili students from northern Pakistan, he illustrates the persisting significance of places and “the local” in translocal contexts, amid flows. Similarly, Henryk Alff, in Chapter “Red Lines for Uncivilized Trade? Fixity, Mobility and Positionality on Almaty’s Changing Bazaars,” highlights how a place, such as Almaty’s Barakholka Bazaar in Kazakhstan, is discursively produced and transformed through everyday trade activities, the symbolics of ordering practices and negotiations of position between trade entrepreneurs and Almaty’s city authorities who aim to “modernize” and ban bazaar trade behind “red lines.” His contribution explores the meanings of fixity, position and mobility in actors’ narratives and argues that a perspective towards constructions of socio-political connectedness and boundedness, as well as the discursive interactions between trade entrepreneurs, state and bazaar officials helps to elucidate how remoteness and centrality coexist and perpetuate each other in one place. The friction between centrality and remoteness is also visible in Deepra Dandekar’s contribution (Chapter “Margins or Centre? Konkani Sufis, India and ‘Arabastan’”) on Konkani Sufi Muslims between India and Arabastan. She shows how the Konkan coast of the western Indian state of Maharashtra acts as both a borderland and as a central meeting ground between Maharashtra and Arabastan (loosely the Arabian Peninsula) which evolved out of Muslim Sufi trading networks across the Arabian Sea and make up an own cognitive space. The example of the Konkani Muslim Sufis collapses complex regional barriers as well as dichotomies between religions and epistemic differences. Part IV, “From Local Realities to Concepts and Theorizing,” is devoted to the role of Area Studies in theory production. Chapters “The Role of Area Studies in Theory Production. A Differentiation of Mid-Range Concepts and the Example of Social Order; The Production of Knowledge in the Field of Development and Area Studies: From Systems of Ignorance to Mid-Range Concepts for Global Ethnography; New Area Studies, Translation and Mid-Range Concepts; Mid-Range Concepts—The Lego Bricks of Meaning-Making: An Example from Khorezm, Uzbekistan” seek to identify potential building blocks for establishing mid-range concepts of analytical value for understanding (trans)locality-based social processes

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beyond the Euro-American realm. Given the situatedness of knowledge and the consequent difficulties in the establishment of universal social theories, scholars researching non-Northern societies have come to seek “mid-range concepts” (Merton 1949), broadly understood as observations about patterned relationships between certain objects, derived from close involvement with local societies, ideally based on long-term field research and immersion of the researcher into local society and its “culture.” By reviewing various empirical insights, the chapters address the potential value, role and function of mid-range concepts in the process of theory construction at the intersection of Area Studies and systematic disciplines. In Chapter “The Role of Area Studies in Theory Production. A Differentiation of Mid-Range Concepts and the Example of Social Order,” Katja Mielke and Andreas Wilde introduce a distinction of three categories of mid-range concepts, each with a different scope and implicit underlying methodologies. The potential of mid-range concept development is illustrated with the example of the concept of Social Order. The enabling conditions and necessary skills for theorizing in Area Studies are discussed, given that mid-range concept development relies on the long-term immersion of the individual researchers in the social context or the textual sources and archives from which the data originates. Based on her expertise in working with African partners in academia and development cooperation, Gudrun Lachenmann (Chapter “The Production of Knowledge in the Field of Development and Area Studies: From Systems of Ignorance to Mid-Range Concepts for Global Ethnography”) emphasizes ways to overcome “systems of ignorance” through North to South transfers/diffusion and negotiations of meanings that take place across national borders in transnational spaces. Networking development work exemplifies an interactive approach based on sociology of knowledge, grounded theory and global ethnography that allows focusing on negotiation of global development visions amongst global, translocal and local institutions. In Chapter “New Area Studies, Translation and Mid-Range Concepts,” Vincent Houben outlines the epistemological and methodological bases of “new Area Studies” around a core of what he terms a double-layered hermeneutic circular “motor” involving a highly reflexive and mutually reinforcing determination of four variables: area, theme, perspective and epistemology. He calls for a three-step approach in Area Studies, moving from situational analysis to translation and finally to mid-level analysis based on the coining of mid-range concepts. In a related contribution,

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Anna-Katharina Hornidge (Chapter “Mid-Range Concepts—The Lego Bricks of Meaning-­Making: An Example from Khorezm, Uzbekistan”) argues for the need for analytical and critical social sciences-inspired Area Studies. Drawing on the intricate pattern of boundary negotiations in Uzbekistan’s water management as an example of a first-level abstraction, she illustrates how such first-level abstractions act as building blocks of sense- and meaning-­making and thus constitute mid-range concepts. To enable Area Studies students to identify first-level abstractions, instead of getting lost in the ever increasing empirical complexities of a mobile world, according to Hornidge it is therefore imperative to systematically strengthen critical social theory in Area Studies teaching. Part V, “De-Streamlining Academic Society: Pedagogy and Teaching,” departs from the assumption that the complex and dynamic world we live in requires transdisciplinary, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and even post-disciplinary approaches to knowledge production. The rethinking of Area Studies aims to promote a reflexive praxis for transforming knowledge through epistemological critique and the conscious co-constructions of evidence-based “truth claims” that are simultaneously about emic and etic viewpoints. Achieving success in such an endeavor requires a form of academic deschooling, which is a process that is already in progress in various academic institutions focused on issues of complexity and the overcoming of disciplinary boundaries. Chapters “The Case for Reconceptualizing Southeast Asian Studies; This Area is [NOT] Under Quarantine: Rethinking Southeast/Asia through Studies of the Cinema; Teaching to Transgress: Crossroads Perspective and Adventures in (?)-Disciplinarity” therefore discuss pedagogical implications of rethinking Area Studies; how this affects teaching in both Area Studies and systematic disciplines; how concepts derived from the multidimensionality of space (place, territory, mobility, scale and networks) enrich curricula dealing with rethinking of Area Studies and the disciplines; and what role positionality (as both a concept and a mode of practice) plays in the process of academic deschooling, particularly in the context of tertiary education. In Chapter “The Case for Reconceptualizing Southeast Asian Studies,” Cynthia Chou highlights that Area Studies are gaining ever more ground and priorities in Asia where they enjoy a cheerful state of affairs in contrast to the general scenario of gloom in Europe, particularly in Denmark. Given that there are possibly different Southeast Asias to study, the author pleas for a broad heuristic approach in the academic inquiry of the region, necessitated by the cultural complexity and differentiation within it. The

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heuristic approach rests on the appreciation and valuation of the wealth of Southeast Asia’s different trajectories and bears the potential for the continued vitality of Southeast Asian Studies. Arnika Fuhrmann (Chapter “This Area is [NOT] Under Quarantine: Rethinking Southeast/Asia through Studies of the Cinema”) employs a rethinking approach on Southeast Asia through studies of the cinema. With a focus on the chronotopes, or the spatio-temporal properties of contemporary Southeast Asian cinema, she draws attention to a mode of analysis that exceeds the merely spatial logics of cinema and area and argues that new Area Studies pedagogies cannot forgo the concomitant consideration of temporality. The approach significantly strengthens the study of the region as multiply networked in time and space, rather than bounded by geography and the conventions of traditional area scholarship. In Chapter “Teaching to Transgress: Crossroads Perspective and Adventures in (?)-Disciplinarity,” Epifania A. Amoo-Adare draws on her experience in teaching and argues that there is a growing need for scholars and their students to actively engage in post-disciplinary ventures in order to adequately study today’s world. This not only necessitates a form of teaching to transgress, an ability to cross beyond the boundaries around and within given epistemological and ontological borders, but also epistemic disobedience, border consciousness and a conscious positionality to engage in the co-­construction of knowledges from, within and on the many contested in-betweens. The final part, Part VI—“Anticipating the Future of Area Studies,” discusses several ways forward in recent Area Studies debates. In Chapter “Are Transregional Studies the Future of Area Studies?” Matthias Middell reasons from his point of view as historian and Global Studies proponent for a transregional perspective in Area Studies, based on the observation that different generations of regional and Area Studies not only coexist but also interact, while successive historical eras provoke new kinds of areas as well as reflexive configurations of old ones. Such a transregional perspective bears the potential to renew the relationship between Area Studies and macro-interpretations as developed in Global Studies, Global History or interpretations of global processes within the social sciences. In Chapter “Reflecting the Moving Target of Asia,” Heike Holbig takes the sub-regions of East and Southeast Asia to illustrate how the communicative construction of areas results from a process of dialectical movements between de- and reterritorialization, which should be examined as issues of equal empirical rank. According to her, such “reflexive essentialism” can inherently encourage a more systematic reflection on simultaneous

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entrenchments and essentialist self-assurances from an interdisciplinary perspective. The conclusion (Chapter “The Art of Science Policy for 21st Century Area Studies: Concluding Reflections”) reflects on the implications of the reorganization of the science system towards greater interdisciplinarity on Area Studies as a field of knowledge production. It points out that the often-heard claim for mainstreaming Area Studies to exploit their suitability for context-sensitive research/data generation and their inherent awareness of entanglements and increasing global connectedness falls short of the actual potential of Area Studies for knowledge production after the mobility turn. Area Studies research and knowledge production should not only be afforded the chance to irritate and to be selectively noted by the systematic disciplines, but they must take on a much bigger role for the latter’s revision and expansion in order to produce insights that offer valid solutions to global problems. Departing from the initial criticism in “the debate,” Area Studies have proven to be highly self-critical and innovative over the last few years by reflecting on their epistemological, methodological and conceptual vantage points in producing scientific knowledge on largely non-Western, non-Northern societies. It has been a process that some so-called systematic disciplines are invited to learn from.

Bibliography Alpers, E., & Roberts, A. (2002). What Is African Studies? Some Reflections. African Issues, 30(2), 11–18. Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Appadurai, A. (2000). Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination. Public Culture, 12(1), 1–19. Aung-Thwin, M. (2013). Continuing, Re-Emerging, and Emerging Trends in the Field of Southeast Asian History. Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia, 1(1), 87–104. Baberowski, J. (1998). Das Ende der Osteuropäischen Geschichte. Bemerkungen zur Lage einer geschichtswissenschaftlichen Disziplin. Osteuropa, 48(8–9), 784–799. Bachmann-Medick, D. (2007). Cultural Turns. Neuorientierungen in den Kulturwissenschaften. Reinbek: Rowohlt. Basedau, M., & Köllner, P. (2007). Area Studies, Comparative Area Studies, and the Study of Politics. Context, Substance, and Methodological Challenges. Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft, 1(1), 105–124.

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Bates, R. (1996). Letter from the President. Area Studies and the Discipline. APSA-CP: Newsletter of the APSA Organized Section in Comparative Politics, 7(1), 1–2. Bilgin, P., & Morton, A. (2002). Historicising Representations of “Failed States.” Beyond the Cold-War Annexation of the Social Sciences? Third World Quarterly, 23(1), 55–80. Boatca, M. (2012). Catching up with the (New) West. The German “Excellence Initiative,” Area Studies, and the Re-Production of Inequality. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, 10(1), 17–30. Braig, M., & Hentschke, F. (2005). Die Zukunft der Area Studies in Deutschland. Tagungsbericht 14.-16.7.2005, Max-Liebermann-Haus, Berlin. Afrika Spectrum, 40(3), 547–558. Bunnell, T. (2013). City Networks as Alternative Geographies of Southeast Asia. Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia, 1(1), 27–43. Burgess, C. (2004). The Asian Studies “Crisis.” Putting Cultural Studies into Asian Studies and Asia into Cultural Studies. International Journal of Asian Studies, 1(1), 121–136. Chou, C., & Houben, V. (2006). Introduction. In C. Chou & V. Houben (Eds.), Southeast Asian Studies. Debates and New Directions (pp. 1–22). Leiden: International Institute for Asian Studies. Chou, C. (2006). Reconceptualizing Southeast Asian Studies. In C. Chou & V. Houben (Eds.), Southeast Asian Studies. Debates and New Directions (pp. 123– 139). Leiden: International Institute for Asian Studies. Ellings, R., Hathaway, R., Clarke, C., Yang, A., Bobrow, D., Acharya, A., et al. (2010). Roundtable. Are We Adequately Training the Next Generation of Asia Experts? Asia Policy, 9, 1–43. Emmerson, D. (1984). “Southeast Asia”: What’s in a Name? Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 15(1), 1–22. Engel, U. (2003). Gedanken zur Afrikanistik. Zustand und Zukunft einer Regionalwissenschaft in Deutschland. Afrika Spectrum, 38(1), 111–123. England, K. (1994). Getting Personal. Reflexivity, Positionality, and Feminist Research. The Professional Geographer, 46(1), 80–89. Evers, H.-D. (2000). Die Globalisierung der epistemischen Kultur. Entwicklungstheorie und Wissensgesellschaft. In U. Menzel (Ed.), Vom ewigen Frieden und vom Wohlstand der Nationen (pp. 396–417). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Feuer, H., & Hornidge, A.-K. (2015). Higher Education Cooperation in ASEAN: Building towards Integration or Manufacturing Consent? Comparative Education, 51(3), 327–352. Freitag, U., & von Oppen, A. (2010). “Translocality.” An Approach to Connection and Transfer in Regional Studies [Introduction]. In U. Freitag &

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A. von Oppen (Eds.), Translocality. The Study of Globalising Processes from a Southern Perspective (pp. 1–24). Leiden: Brill. Glick Schiller, N., Basch, L., & Szanton Blanc, C. (1995). From Immigrant to Transmigrant: Theorizing Transnational Migration. Anthropological Quarterly, 68(1), 48–63. Godehardt, N., & Lembcke, O. (2010). Regionale Ordnungen in politischen Räumen. Ein Beitrag zur Theorie regionaler Ordnungen. GIGA Working Paper Series 124, Hamburg. Graham, L., & Kantor, J.-M. (2007). “Soft” Area Studies versus “Hard” Social Science: A False Opposition. Slavic Review, 66(1), 1–19. Grotz, F., Langenohl, A., Lentz, S., Middell, M., Obertreis, J., von Steinsdorff, S., et al. (2013). Streit der Fakultäten: Area Studies und Fachdisziplinen in der Globalisierung. Osteuropa, 63(2–3), 81–102. Guyer, J. (2004). Anthropology in Area Studies. Annual Review of Anthropology, 33, 499–523. Hanson, S. (2009). The Contribution of Area Studies. In T. Landman & N. Robinson (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Comparative Politics (pp. 159–174). London: Sage Publications. Hentschke, F. (2009). Area Studies Revisited [Conference Report]. Available at:. http://www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-2625 [Accessed 26 May 2016]. Hornidge, A.-K., & Mielke, K. (2015). Crossroads Studies: From Spatial Containers to Studying the Mobile. Middle East—Topics and Arguments, 4, 27–33. Hornidge, A.-K., Oberkircher, L., & Kudryavtseva, A. (2013). Boundary Management and the Discursive Sphere—Negotiating “Realities” in Khorezm, Uzbekistan. Geoforum, 45, 266–274. Houben, V., & Rehbein, B. (2010). Regional- und Sozialwissenschaften nach dem Aufstieg des globalen Südens. ASIEN, 116, 149–156. Jackson, P. (2003). Mapping Poststructuralism’s Borders. The Case for Poststructuralist Area Studies. Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 18(1), 42–88. Jessop, B., Brenner, N., & Jones, M. (2008). Theorizing Sociospatial Relations. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26, 389–401. King, V. (2005). Defining Southeast Asia and the Crisis in Area Studies. Personal Reflections on a Region. Working Papers in Contemporary Asian Studies 13, Lund. King, V. (2006). Southeast Asia. Personal Reflections on a Region. In C. Chou & V. Houben (Eds.), Southeast Asian Studies. Debates and New Directions (pp. 23–44). Leiden: International Institute for Asian Studies. Kleinen, J. (2013). New Trends in the Anthropology of Southeast Asia. Trans Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia, 1(1), 121–135. Knorr-Cetina, K. (1999). Epistemic Cultures—How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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Krauth, W.-H., & Wolz, R. (1998). Wissenschaft und Wiedervereinigung: Asienund Afrikawissenschaften im Umbruch. Berlin: Akademie. Lackner, M., & Werner, M. (1999). Der cultural turn in den Humanwissenschaften. Area Studies im Auf- oder Abwind des Kulturalismus? Bad Homburg: Programmbeirat der Werner Reimers Konferenzen. Lentz, S., & Schmid, S. (2005). Blauer Riese. Das OSTEUROPA-Raumbild 1951–1955. Osteuropa, 55(12), 133–138. Lewis, M., & Wigen, K. (1997). The Myth of Continents. A Critique of Metageography. Berkeley: University of California Press. Leitner, H., Sheppard, E., & Sziarto, K. (2008). The Spatialities of Contentious Politics. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 33(2), 157–172. Marcus, G. (1998). Ethnography through Thick and Thin. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Massey, D. (2005). For Space. London: Sage Publications. McClennen, S. (2007). Area Studies beyond Ontology: Notes on Latin American Studies, American Studies, and Inter-American Studies. A Contracorriente: A Journal on Social History and Literature in Latin America 5(1), 173–184. Melber, H. (2005). African Studies: Why, What for and by Whome? [Editorial]. Afrika Spectrum, 40(3), 369–376. Merton, R. (1949). Social Theory and Social Structure. Toward the Codification of Theory and Research. Glencoe: Free Press. Middell, M., & Naumann, K. (2010). Global History and the Spatial Turn: From the Impact of Area Studies to the Study of Critical Junctures of Globalization. Journal of Global History, 5, 149–170. Mielke, K., & Hornidge, A.-K. (2014). Crossroads Studies: From Spatial Containers to Interactions in Differentiated Spatialities. Crossroads Asia Working Paper Series 15, Bonn. Mintz, S. (1998). The Localization of Anthropological Practice. From Area Studies to Transnationalism. Critique of Anthropology, 18(2), 117–133. Mommsen, M. (2013). Paradigmenwechsel. 60 Jahre politikwissenschaftliche Osteuropaforschung. Osteuropa, 63(2–3), 119–136. Nuscheler, F. (2000). Vom (großen) Nutzen und (kleinen) Elend der Komparatistik in der Entwicklungstheorie. In U. Menzel (Ed.), Vom ewigen Frieden und vom Wohlstand der Nationen (pp. 467–492). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Powell, R., Klinke, I., Jazeel, T., Daley, P., Kamata, N., Heffernan, M., et al. (In Press). Geography, Area Studies, and the Imperative of Singularity. Political Geography. Prewitt, K. (1996). Presidential Items. Items, 50(2/3), 31–40. Prewitt, K. (2003). Area Studies Responding to Globalization. Redefining International Scholarship. Berliner Osteuropa Info, 18, 8–11. Probst, P. (2005). Between and Betwixt. African Studies in Germany. Afrika Spectrum, 30(3), 403–427.

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Puhle, H.-J. (2005). Area Studies im Wandel. Zur Organisation von Regionalforschung in Deutschland [pdf]. Available at: http://crossroads-asia. de/fileadmin/user_upload/Literatur/Area_Studies/Puhle2005_Area_ Studies_im_Wandel.pdf [Accessed 15 May 2015]. Rigg, J. (2013). From Rural to Urban. A Geography of Boundary Crossing in Southeast Asia. TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia, 1(1), 5–26. Robertson, J. (2002). Reflexivity Redux: A Pithy Polemic on “Positionality.” Anthropological Quarterly, 75(4), 755–762. Rose, G. (1997). Situating Knowledges. Positionality, Reflexivities and Other Tactics. Progress in Human Geography, 21(3), 305–320. Schlögel, K. (2005). Die Wiederkehr des Raums—auch in der Osteuropakunde. Osteuropa, 55(3), 5–16. Schramm, K. (2008). Leaving Area Studies Behind. The Challenge of Diasporic Connections in the Field of African Studies. African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, 1(1), 1–12. Segbers, K. (2000). Vom (großen) Nutzen und (kleinen) Elend der Komparatistik in der Transformationsforschung. In U. Menzel (Ed.), Vom ewigen Frieden und vom Wohlstand der Nationen (pp. 493–517). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Soja, E. (1989). Postmodern Geographies. The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London: Verso. Spivak, G. (1993). Outside in the Teaching Machine. New York: Routledge. Sutherland, H. (2005). Contingent Devices. In P. Kratoska, R. Raben, & H. Schulte Nordholt (Eds.), Locating Southeast Asia: Geographies of Knowledge and Politics of Space (pp. 20–59). Singapore: Singapore University Press. Tornow, S. (2005). Was ist Osteuropa? Handbuch der osteuropäischen Text- und Sozialgeschichte von der Spätantike bis zum Nationalstaat. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Troebst, S. (2013). Sonderweg zur Geschichtsregion. Die Teildisziplin Osteuropäische Geschichte. Osteuropa, 63(2–3), 55–80. Urry, J. (2007). Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity Press. van Schendel, W. (2002). Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Jumping Scale in Southeast Asia. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 20(6), 647–668.

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The Neoliberal University and Global Immobilities of Theory Peter A. Jackson

As Harry Harootunian observes, Area Studies “was founded on the privilege attached to fixed spatial containers…. The model for these spatial regularities has undoubtedly been the nation state” (2012, p.  8). Area Studies’ simplifying assumption that comparative analysis can follow the contours of the borders of nation states has been subject to intense criticism. However, contrary to predictions made by first-wave globalization theorists in the early years of the post-Cold War era (for example Waters 1995), spatiality has not been erased as either an empirical phenomenon or a theoretical issue. A key legacy of Area Studies is the understanding that forms of knowledge continue to be deeply patterned by geographical divides. Neoliberal capitalism is entrenching some spatial divides at the same time that other dimensions of economic and social life are being despatialized (Spivak 2003; Dirlik 2005). One’s geographical location in a global system that is hierarchically patterned by multiple centres and peripheries, and one’s positionality in the networks of power that crisscross this system, both remain central to the forms of knowledge of the contemporary world. The challenges for the “contemporary version of area studies” envisioned by Arif Dirlik (2005, p. 168) are to develop models of the geographies of knowledge under globalization and to ­understand

P. A. Jackson (*) Australian National University, Canberra, Australia © The Author(s) 2017 K. Mielke, A.-K. Hornidge (eds.), Area Studies at the Crossroads, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59834-9_2 [email protected]

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spatialized epistemologies in terms of forms of power that structure the global order.

A Multiplication of World Powers: Area Studies in the Context of Proliferating Hegemonies Area Studies has been critiqued as a form of knowledge emerging from European imperialist Orientalism and Cold War era political agendas of American hegemony (Miyoshi & Harootunian 2002; Thongchai 2014). Despite these criticisms of the origins of this field in the Western academy, Area Studies has not disappeared from the global intellectual scene. Despite budget cuts, Area Studies programs have survived in many Western universities, such as at the University of London and at the Australian National University, and, significantly, in recent decades new Asian Area Studies research centres and teaching programs have been established in countries such as Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Japan, and China. The diversity of political positionings of Area Studies programs in different twenty-first century academies, in both the West and non-West, reveals a need for more complex models of the multiple hegemonic influences at work today. We need theories of power and hegemony as being multinodal, together with more complex models of how geopolitical power intersects with forms of knowledge. A singular emphasis on critiquing the legacies of nineteenth century European colonialism and twentieth century American neocolonialism may blind us to the need for more multidimensional analyses of power in the twenty-first century, a century already marked as an era of multiple, competing hegemonic influences emanating from the United States, Europe, China, Russia, Japan, India and elsewhere. A central method of twentieth century critical theory was to challenge hegemony by deconstructing the unequal power relations underpinning mutually defining binary categories. However, this form of critical analysis alone may not be adequate to the tasks of understanding and responding to the challenges of a multinodal world. Deconstructing the binaries of “self–other,” “straight–queer,” “man–woman,” “Black–White,” “Orient– Occident,” “believer–infidel,” remains as urgent as ever. However, in a world of multiple, competing centres of power—when older forms of European and American hegemony are competing with aspiring ­hegemons

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of China, Russia and militant Islam—the tools of critical theory need to be augmented with forms of analysis that enable us to think in terms of multiplicities as well as binaries. In studying the intersections of religion, secularity and queer critical analysis, Nikita Dhawan warns us to be wary of “unidimensional understanding[s] of operations of power” because, “[p]ower and violence do not flow only from the Western liberal states; rather they have multiple sources that are deeply entangled” (2013, p. 205). Dhawan calls for “a more complex, multidirectional politics of critique” that acknowledges and engages the fact of “the existence of other forms of violence that are not reducible to Western racism and imperialism even as they are not entirely disconnected from them” (2013, p. 217). A multinodal critique of hegemony is also needed.

The Disciplines

as Disguised

Forms of Western

Area Studies

A key starting point in developing theoretical models of the multiplicity of intersecting powers operating today is to challenge the persistent Eurocentrism of theory, including critical theory. While scholars in the disciplines, including new disciplines based on critical theory, have critiqued Area Studies for its disinterest in theory, they have often failed to acknowledge the geographical, historical and cultural locatedness and boundedness of their own theories (Jackson 2003a, c). Sanjay Seth asks, “[H]ow and why is it that we assume that modern knowledge is universal, despite its European genealogy and its historically recent provenance?” (2013, p. 138) and Vincent Houben argues, “[T]he disciplines themselves are Area Studies, since they basically describe the processes and structures of a Western world” (2013, p. 4). Despite their claims to universal status, the disciplines are geographically based forms of knowledge—effectively constituting a field of Euro-American Studies—in which the location of the site of knowledge production has been obscured as an epistemological effect of Western hegemony in modern history. As Walter Mignolo observes, “While capitalism moved from Europe to the United States, then to Japan, and now to China, epistemology apparently remains located in Europe, which is taken, simultaneously, as the nonplace (or transparently universal) locus of enunciation” (2002a, p. 938). In the conventional, sometimes termed “systematic,” disciplines, as they have been constructed in the centres of

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intellectual power in Euro-America, the West is an unmarked site of general theory, while the non-West is marked and minoritized as the locus of the particular and of empirical detail. Mignolo relates this spatialized epistemological divide between a “theoretical” West and an “empirical” non-West to the history of global capitalism and states, “Universalism, as the ideological keystone of historical capitalism, is a faith as well as an epistemology, a faith in the real phenomenon of truth and the epistemology that justifies local truth with universal values” (2002b, p. 79). The geographical limits within which the ostensibly “universal” disciplines have been constituted means that theories produced from these epistemological enterprises often fail to provide the tools needed to understand places beyond Euro-America.

Dilemmas in Challenging Euro-Amerocentrism However, structural inequalities between knowledges of the West and non-West mean that scholars engaged in thinking critically and theoretically from non-Western locations and positionalities confront major obstacles in responding to these challenges. How are we to challenge the forms of power that constitute the persistent epistemological gulf between a West implicitly marked as the site of universal knowledge and general theory, and an Asia that is always explicitly marked as local, specific and empirical? How can Asian histories and cultures become sites for the production of generalizations of global and/or universal relevance, and how are generalizations developed from Asian positionalities to assume the status of general theory? What methodological strategies should we adopt in challenging the persistent Euro-Amerocentrism of theory? Should we reformulate existing, West-derived theories by bringing in critical perspectives from Asian history and culture or, alternatively, should we develop altogether new models that generalize from the empirical distinctiveness of Asian histories and cultures? Despite its possible attractiveness, does the latter strategy perhaps risk being appropriated to essentializing nativist and nationalist agendas of “Asian ideas for Asian studies”? El-Desouky summarizes the dilemma by stating, The challenges here lie between the resistance of “the local,” particularly when voiced on unreflective nationalist and essentialist grounds, and the encroachments of hegemonic critical and theoretical discourses whose modes of knowledge production, and the conceptual languages in which

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they are cast, often gloss over intrinsic, and indeed hermeneutically fruitful, differences. (2014, p. 241)

I believe that critically engaging Western theory from Asian sites is the most productive strategic approach to challenging the Euro-Amerocentrism of theory. To avoid the risk of critiques of Euro-Amerocentrism becoming appropriated to conservative agendas of nativist “uniqueness” and isolationism, analyses and concepts that emerge from Asian sites need to remain in intellectual dialogue with broad ideas to retain the critical edge of comparative potential. In the present geopolitical setting, the most productive strategy will be one that reformulates Western critical theory by direct engagement with non-Western histories, cultures, polities and languages. As Seth argues, There are many reasons for continuing to operate with and within … modern, Western reason, the most compelling of which is that it is closely associated with a modernity that is now global, and encompasses all people, albeit in differing ways. (2013, p. 144) The genealogy of modern knowledge … is undeniably Western…. But that knowledge is now global and, with differences of degree, is the heritage of most people. (2013, p. 149)

Dhawan points to the paradoxical heritage of the West and the Enlightenment as providing tools for liberation within a setting of subordination, [T]he challenge [is one of] coming to terms with the irony that even as we critique the violent legacy of the European Enlightenment, it provides us with some of our most powerful tools…. [H]ow may the European Enlightenment be appropriated from and for the postcolonial world? (2013, p. 220)

The key issue is whether theory, whatever its origin, is open to being reformulated in genuine conversation with the non-West, and in which the non-West is an active interlocutor and equal agent in knowledge production, and theory formulation and reformulation. This strategic approach is reflected in the methodologies of many working in Asian Cultural Studies, such as the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies project, and also in Asian Queer

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Studies, such as the AsiaPacifiQueer project (Martin et al. 2008) and the Queer Asia monograph series.1 The central deconstructionist method of Queer Studies, as developed in the American academy in the 1990s, is to take the position of minoritized categories in binary hierarchies of power as intellectual fulcrums from which to reflect back upon dominant categories. Specifically, Queer Studies argues that studying homosexuality tells us as much about heterosexuality as about same-sex sexualities, and that studying transgenderism tells us as much about gender normative notions of masculinity and femininity as about those who transition across these categories. Queer Studies “queers” or challenges dominant forms of knowledge by revealing how heteronormative understandings of gender and sexuality are built upon the defining of and ineradicable relationships with the transgender and homosexual categories that are denied within normative notions of masculinity, femininity and heterosexuality. Asian Queer Studies develops upon this theoretical foundation by expanding the empirical base of analysis to Asia in order to re-think concepts such as “gender” and “sexuality” in transnational and non-Western settings. This does not necessarily lead to an abandoning of categories such as “gender” or “sexuality,” but it almost always requires their reformulation. For example, the deconstructionist methods of Queer Studies have been adapted and developed in the Sinophone academy, not by borrowing Western categories such as “gay” or “queer,” but rather by queering a key term in the discourse of the Communist Party of China, tongzhi or “comrade,” and imbuing this term with homoerotic and gender transgressive meanings (Huang 2011, pp. 15ff; Tang 2011, pp. 8–9). The methods of Queer Studies are one instance of what Mignolo calls “border thinking” (2002a, p.  942), by which he means activating the “epistemic potential” of “subaltern perspectives” (2002a, p. 948; Mignolo 2002b, p. 71). For Mignolo, border thinking draws on [a]n epistemic potential grounded in what for modern epistemology has been silence and darkness. The silence of the epistemically disinherited by and through the emancipatory claims of modernity … and the darkness to which the world was reduced in order to sustain the epistemic privileges of modernity. (2002a, p. 948)

As Allen Chun pointedly observes, “The [non-Western] other may have been silent, but only in Western discourse” (2008, p. 695).

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Area Studies under Global Capitalism: The Role of the Neoliberal University in Entrenching the Global Immobility of Theory Production A further criticism levelled against Area Studies is that this approach is outdated and reflects a pre-globalization era defined by the geopolitics of the nation state. However, this critique is based on predictions of the supposed despatialization of social life under globalization that have not in fact come to pass, or at the very least have not been fully realized. First generation globalization theory described the phenomenon as a series of processes of world cultural homogenization and Americanization (for example Waters 1995). However, this account reflected an inaccurate, Amerocentric view of the world. While homogenization is taking place in some domains of financial, social and cultural life, globalizing processes are also producing new spatialities of difference. Twenty-first century spatialities of difference may not conform to the borders of nation states, but in many cases neoliberal globalization is reinforcing geographically based forms of domination that emerged in the era of imperialism and is entrenching divides between metropolitan centres of power and marginalized groups and societies on the global periphery. This is as true of academic analysis and theory production as of human movements and migration. Neoliberal globalization is not leading to a despatialization of theory production, but rather is entrenching spatialities of knowledge as well as a global division of academic labour. As Chun wryly observes, “[I]n an age of increasing transnational flows and cultural hybridity … identities (academic ones, too) have hardened instead of softened” (2008, p. 694). However, more than theoretical responses are needed to challenge the forms of power that form the conditions of possibility of knowledge production today. We also need to be cognisant of the extra-epistemological conditions under which even critical theory is formulated and develop strategic responses that go beyond critical analysis and theory as such. Chun argues that a “hierarchical division of labour” structures the global academy, in which “a celebratory multiculturalism and emancipatory postcolonialism” in critical academic discourse “disguise[s] … inequities of the speaking position that harden existing regimes of academic practice and discourse” (2008, p. 695). Chun provides as an example of the global division of intellectual labour the fact that

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[t]he vast majority of Third World anthropologists end up studying their own society. A textbook definition of anthropology is the study of other cultures, but only if one happens to be a white European. For all others, once a local, always a local…. The same displacement that invites Third World anthropologists to study their own culture also legitimizes the epistemic authority of Western anthropologists to study other cultures. It is the same for Area Studies. (2008, p. 699)

An intellectual’s geographical location as a scholar in the twenty-first century global order—whether at a prestigious Western or a low ranked Asian university—directly influences the status of his or her ideas. The cultural capital of the West, and of diasporic intellectuals in the West, remains central to the internationally recognized capacity to speak of, analyse and define the non-West.2 We need extra-epistemological strategic responses to augment critical theoretical interventions, such as Queer Studies or border thinking, which remain at the level of analysis. While these forms of theoretical critique are important, we need to do more than analyse. It is also necessary to engage in forms of academic activism that challenge the extra-epistemological barriers that hinder and obstruct the emergence of a level playing field in the global academy. Bordered Geographies of Global Academic “Quality” under Neoliberalism Neoliberal policies of academic management are further entrenching the global division of intellectual labour that emerged as an epistemological result of European imperialism and American neoimperialism. In the neoliberal university, the formerly qualitative notion of intellectual prestige is now measured, quantified and relabeled as “academic quality.” The reputed academic quality of universities is now assigned a numerical score, and all world universities are ranked by commercial organizations that produce annual global university rankings. The worldwide imposition of neoliberal managerial policies in universities based on these measures has become a hegemonic framework that is entrenching global inequalities in academic prestige value and is working to recentre theoretical production in the West. The transnational regime of so-called academic quality assessment opposes and negates the epistemological force of critical theory, constituting an extra-epistemological form of power that patterns the production and dissemination of all forms of theory, including theory which is ­ostensibly critical of this very phenomenon. Indeed, the new

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global geography of academic quality, as measured by university rankings systems, is entrenching both Euro-American intellectual dominance and Euro-Amerocentric forms of thinking. Three of the internationally most influential university rankings systems are: (1) QS World University Rankings, published by the British company Quacquarelli Symonds; (2) the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings; and (3) Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), also known as the Shanghai Ranking, an annual list of university rankings published by Shanghai Ranking Consultancy. Since their inception, the top ten positions of the supposedly highest global quality universities in all of these now highly influential rankings systems have been located in either the United States or the United Kingdom.3 The managerialist neoliberal regime of continuous quantified measurement of performance, together with numerically scored rankings of disciplinary research quality and listings of universities’ relative status in terms of these measures are entrenching Western countries’ control over and dominance of the considerable wealth associated with the global knowledge economy. Quality assessment and performance measures privilege and reward publication with publishers in the old centres of power, overwhelmingly in the United States, the United Kingdom and Western Europe, which entrenches established patterns of academic privilege. The neoliberal assessment of even qualitative humanities research in terms of numerically ranked quantitative scores has become an increasingly dominant and insidious form of power over global knowledge production and circulation. Neoliberal assessment based on ranking of research publications according to whether they are published in so-called quality journals and monograph series is a regime of power that determines the renewal of academic contracts, whether or not tenure or promotion is awarded, and whether or not a scholar is regarded as being sufficiently “competitive” to be awarded research grants. In these assessment exercises—which entrap even the most critical academics who wish to remain employed in the university sector—the quality of research is not determined by any epistemological criterion but rather by the journal or monograph series in which it is published. The overwhelming majority of so-called quality publishing houses are located in the old metropoles of the global north, which have built readerships and networks over centuries and are now securing the financial bases of the business empires that they built across the eras of imperialism and neoimperialism. Citing the work of Andrew Oswald (2007), Suzanne Young et al. (2011) observe, “[W]ith

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such a scheme there is potential that where an academic publishes will become more important than what they have to say” (2011, p. 78). Even ostensibly postcolonial Asian governments are complicit in this neoliberal regime, as evidenced by the Chinese government’s support for the Shanghai ranking system and the intense Key Performance Indicator (KPI) regime now imposed upon the Thai academy. Governments, as well as university administrators and deans, in these Asian countries often insist that scholars in their national university systems publish with “quality” presses. There are now considerable disincentives to publishing in so-called low quality journals and with university presses from institutions that have low scores in the global rankings systems. This system is centralizing wealth in a few Western publishing houses, contributing to the monopolization of economic control of the global circulation of academic knowledge by increasing the profit margins of Euro-American publishers and undercutting the ability of Asian and other non-Western publishing houses to survive economically. In an era when the knowledge economy is an increasingly important source of wealth production, the quality assessment rankings imposed by the educational bureaucracies in both Western and non-Western countries are effectively working to monopolize Western universities’ and Western academic presses’ control of this sector of the global economy. Quality assessment exercises work in opposition to the border crossing impact of globalization in higher education. They are interventions in the free flow of academic knowledge that, rather than erasing the spatialities of knowledge, demonstrate the ways that neoliberal capitalism operates to reinforce colonial- and neocolonial-era geographical-cum-epistemological boundaries between the West as a site of the production of supposedly high value knowledge or theory and the non-West as a site of low value information or empirical data. In the era of academic quality assessment, “high” research quality and “high” university ranking have become new synonyms for presumptively “universal knowledge” and “general theory,” both overwhelmingly monopolized by the United States, the United Kingdom and Western Europe. In contrast, research marked as being of “low quality” (because of its publication in non-metropolitan journals) and universities given low scores in the global rankings have become marked as sites of “local” empirical information and data. Quality rankings and performance assessments are thus recentring the West in the international knowledge economy, both economically in terms of control

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over ­international ­academic publishing and epistemologically as the global centre for the publication and marketing of so-called quality academic knowledge or, in other words, “theory.” Neoliberal Externalities as Barriers to Theoretical Innovation: Why Critique of Eurocentrism Is Not Enough The neoliberal recentralization of intellectual authority in the old Euro-­ American metropoles has become a key contributor to the ongoing failure of social and cultural analysis to adequately explain the globalized world we inhabit. The ranking of academic journals and publishers according to supposed quality has the potential to stifle the intellectual innovation and experimentation that is a hallmark of all new fields of inquiry. In the neoliberal academy, the label of academic quality is almost always reserved for older, well-established journals and publishers, and is an intellectual status symbol that is only ever achieved after several decades of publication. New and exploratory forms of inquiry that challenge established ideas often face resistance, and scholars working in these fields may confront difficulties having their work accepted for publication in older journals and with publishers whose editorial boards are committed to the intellectual and methodological status quo. Neoliberal quality assessment exercises have the potential to entrench and formalize established fields of inquiry, namely, the disciplines. This is because they effectively punish research and publication in fields that fall outside the epistemological boundaries of the disciplinary categories that managerialist quality assessment schemes set up as the basis for quantitative measurement. While quality assessment procedures have been instituted on the argument of supposedly contributing to improving the quality of university research, they may have precisely the opposite effect of stifling the innovation that is the basis of genuine advances in thought and analysis. As Young et al. note, these schemes produce, “a set of perverse and dysfunctional reactions that threaten to undermine research quality in the long-term” as academics “realize that careers now depend on publishing in journals attributed with high rank” (Young et al. 2011, p.  78). By reducing academic quality to quantitative scores for defined disciplinary fields, quality assessment schemes entrench the epistemological borders that separate established fields of inquiry and research, and have the potential to inhibit and stifle innovation within the global academy.

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The spatialities of intellectual prestige and the epistemological divides between a “theoretical” West and an “empirical” non-West that emerged in the era of imperialism are now being reinforced by a regime of quantification that labels them as “metrics” of quality. Under the neoliberal managerialism now imposed internationally on universities, Euro-Amerocentrism has become an intellectual hierarchy of spatialized knowledge formations supported and held in place both by colonial-era ways of thinking and also by the neoliberal forms of power that now dominate the university sector. As a double phenomenon that is simultaneously epistemological and institutional, it requires a two-fold critical response that challenges both Euro-Amerocentric analyses and the practical forms of power that confer prestige upon so-called quality Euro-Amerocentric theories and concepts. Most criticisms of Euro-Amerocentrism focus on epistemological issues. For example, postcolonial analysis critiques the colonial-era power inequalities that saw the epistemological distinction between theoretical analysis and empirical description being mapped onto regions of the world, with the imperialist West as imputed locus of universal knowledge and the colonized Rest as sites of local empirical detail. However, neoliberalism now constitutes a hegemonic setting that defines the extra-­epistemological conditions within which all theory, including critical theory, is produced, marketed and distributed. While globalization, as a phenomenon of intensified border crossing, has challenged twentieth century nation-state varieties of Area Studies, the neoliberalization of the global university sector means that theory production, including the production of theories of globalization, has remained largely impervious to the otherwise decentring effects of these transnational processes. The empirical phenomena of globalization reflect accelerating mobility. However, the sites of the production of so-called quality theory about these mobilities remain insistently immobile and are overwhelmingly centred in the old imperial and neocolonial metropoles. The global geography of intellectual prestige that is being further entrenched by the now hegemonic transnational regime of so-called academic quality assessment works in opposition to and undercuts the epistemological force of critical theory. Theoretical critiques of Euro-Amerocentrism have failed to redress these institutional imbalances in global theory production. By remaining at the epistemological level of critique, they have overlooked the increasingly powerful extra-epistemological effects of the imbalances in the global geography of academic quality that condition the production of even these critical theories. Solely theoretical critiques of Euro-Amerocentrism

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fail to address the fact that the geographical location of an intellectual in the contemporary world system and, just as importantly, the location of the home offices of the journals and publishing houses in which her/his work is published, have a direct relationship to the international impact and influence of that person’s ideas. The extra-epistemological and extra-­ theoretical character of the forces that now constitute the conditions of possibility for all theoretical production, including the production of critical theory, means that strategic critical responses must also come from outside the fields of epistemology and theory as such. Strategic Responses: Researching, Collaborating and Publishing beyond Euro-America At this transitional moment in world history, when extra-epistemological factors inhibit the multidirectional mobility of theory, how can or should a critical scholar respond to the influences that exist outside of theoretical production and which envelope it? One task is to expand the epistemological bases of the intellectual positions from which generalizations are produced. This task is to produce forms of general knowledge that emerge from wider bases of information in which the patterns revealed in Asian and other non-Western histories, cultures, polities and economies have equal epistemological value to those coming from reflections on Europe and North America. The end of the Euro-American monopoly on global theory and knowledge production, and the opening up of Euro-America to intellectual competition from the former global margins, has the potential to lead to new generalizations that include both the West and the non-West. Indeed, ideas emerging from studies of the non-West are often essential in helping us better understand the West itself. This is a central idea underpinning Enrique Dussel’s (2002) notion of transmodernity and Walter Mignolo’s (2002a, b) critical epistemological method of border thinking. Collaborative research is also an important practical response to redressing the Euro-Amerocentrism of theory. As Mielke and Hornidge note, “joint research programs could be a first step in forming new and more inclusive epistemic communities which would then—in the long term— bear the potential to transform Western views” (2014, p. 33). Indeed, collaboration across the borders of national academies is essential. However, Mielke and Hornidge go on to ask, “whether serious collaboration and exchange can actually be realized on [an] equal partnership basis” (2014,

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p.  33). In a world of persistent inequalities, perhaps not. Nonetheless, one must start from an ethical foundation of collaboration. This is not only an epistemological issue of research methodology and theoretical validity. Scholars working in the academies of Asia, Europe, Australia, the United States and elsewhere live, work and conduct research under diverse regimes of power. We must not only be cognisant of ethics protocols with regard to the people whom we research, we also need to be aware of and follow appropriate ethical protocols in the cross-cultural relationships between and among the scholars from different university systems who come together to form collaborative research teams. The debates of Area Studies versus the disciplines, or of Area Studies versus critical theory, will not be resolved solely at a meta-level through analyses conducted within Euro-American universities. These issues cannot be resolved solely within the old centres of hegemonic intellectual power. The conditions of possibility for the development of genuinely global theory reside in a radically reformed geography of the forms of power that currently exist over knowledge production. As Mignolo observes, this requires more than an epistemological or theoretical response: To imagine possible futures beyond the enduring enchantments of the differential colonial accumulation of binary oppositions would imply a redressing in the direction in which the coloniality of power has been implemented in the past five hundred years. And that process is already taking place. It is not, however, a project consisting of a mere reversal of the epistemic privilege of modernity. (2002a, p. 941)

As Chun contends, we need to understand “the sources of institutional resistance” to challenging Euro-Amerocentrism (2008, p. 692), because the failure to overturn the intellectual structures of Euro-Amerocentrism cannot be attributed “to a failure of [theoretical] imagination” (Chun 2008, p.  692). Chun concludes, “We should really be deconstructing underlying institutional regimes and not simply conceptual representations” (2008, p.  696). Eurocentrism will only be toppled when emerging centres of intellectual production outside Euro-America achieve a sufficient degree of agency to reverse the historical regime of intellectual power—what Mignolo terms reversing the “epistemic privilege of modernity”—that has constructed everyone outside Euro-America as objects of Western knowledge rather than as active subjects and producers of knowledge.

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In achieving this, critical analysis of Euro-Amerocentrism is vital, but is not enough. We also need to find ways to confront the power of the Euro-American publishing industries, whose global dominance is bolstered by the institutional Euro-Amerocentrism of the neoliberal system of global university rankings and quality assessment. Critical theorists also need to engage in an academic praxis of collaborative research, publishing and conference participation that challenges the practical dimensions of Euro-Amerocentrism that are resistant and immune to solely intellectual critiques of that power. Unresolved issues in the debates of Area Studies versus the disciplines, and also of Area Studies versus critical theory, reflect the transitional status of knowledge production in the current world order. Despite decades, if not centuries, of financial and cultural globalization, we are only at the very earliest stages of moving out of an era of Euro-American intellectual hegemony to a genuinely multinodal world theoretical order. Only when knowledge production becomes genuinely global and multi-sited, and a sufficiently large number of universities and publishers outside Euro-­ America achieve acknowledged “global quality” ranking and status, will we move past the current stage of merely critiquing Euro-American hegemony into a genuinely multinodal world in which these intellectual tensions will be able to be resolved. It is not simply a question of multi-sited empirical research to overcome the limitations of single-sited studies. We also need multi-sited theory production in order to be able to fully comprehend and interpret the empirical results of multi-sited research, and for the results of that research to be found in multi-sited publications both within and outside Euro-America. Epistemological boundary crossing is potentially a powerful and transformative form of mobility in a globalizing world. The unrestricted multi-directional mobility of theory, and its reformulation by those living, working and thinking at geographical sites of intense border crossing, is a critically important form of movement with the potential for dramatic transformation. Only when theory production becomes as global as the empirical phenomena of the globalized world will we arrive at analyses that actually map the world we now inhabit. To achieve this will require more than critical theory alone. It will also require an academic praxis that genuinely confronts and challenges the Euro-Amerocentrism of the neoliberalized world academy.

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Notes 1. See www.hkupress.org. I have followed this approach in my collaborations with Rachel Harrison where we have brought analyses of Thailand’s semicolonial position in the Western-dominated world order into dialogue with Postcolonial Studies (Harrison & Jackson 2010; Jackson 2005, 2010a, b), and also in rethinking Foucault’s history of sexuality in the West in the light of the distinctive forms of power that have been hegemonic over gender in modern Thai history (Jackson 2003b, 2004a). 2. Some internationally influential theorists are based outside the West. For example, the Argentinian anthropologist Néstor García Canclini has produced internationally influential accounts of cultural hybridity from his position at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico City. For an account of Canclini’s work see Jackson (2008). 3. See: http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings-articles/ world-university-rankings/top-universities-world-201415 [Accessed 10 Oct. 2014]; http://www.timeshighereducation.co. uk/world-university-rankings/2013-14/world-ranking [Accessed 10 Oct. 2014]; http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2014. html [Accessed 10 Oct. 2014].

Bibliography Chun, A. (2008). The Postcolonial Alien in Us All: Identity in the Global Division of Intellectual Labor. Positions: Asia Critique, 16(3), 689–709. Dhawan, N. (2013). The Empire Prays Back: Religion, Secularity, and Queer Critique. Boundary 2, 40(1), 191–222. Dirlik, A. (2005). Asia Pacific Studies in an Age of Global Modernity. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 6(2), 158–170. Dussel, E. (2002). World System and “Trans”-Modernity. Nepantla: Views from South, 3(2), 221–244. El-Desouky, A. (2014). Disturbing Crossings: The Unhomely, the Unworldly and the Question of Method in Approaches to World Literature. In R. Harrison (Ed.), Disturbing Conventions: Decentering Thai Literary Studies (pp. 239– 245). London: Rowman and Littlefield. Harootunian, H. (2012). “Memories of Underdevelopment” after Area Studies. Positions: Asia Critique, 20(1), 8–35. Harrison, R., & Jackson, P. (Eds.). (2010). The Ambiguous Allure of the West: Traces of the Colonial in Thailand. Hong Kong and Ithaca: Hong Kong University Press and Cornell University Southeast Asia Program Publications.

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Houben, V. (2013). The New Area Studies and Southeast Asian History. DORISEA Working Paper 4, Göttingen. Huang, H. (2011). Queer Politics and Sexual Modernity in Taiwan. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Jackson, P. (2003a). Mapping Poststructuralism’s Borders: The Case for Poststruc­ turalist Area Studies. Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 18(1), 42–88. Jackson, P. (2003b). Performative Genders, Perverse Desires: A Bio-History of Thailand’s Same-Sex and Transgender Cultures. Intersections: Gender, History & Culture in the Asian Context, 9. Available at: http://intersec-tions.anu.edu. au/issue9/jackson.html [Accessed 17 June 2016]. Jackson, P. (2003c). Space, Theory and Hegemony: The Dual Crises of Asian Area Studies and Cultural Studies. Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 18(1), 1–41. Jackson, P. (2004a). The Performative State: Semi-Coloniality and the Tyranny of Images in Modern Thailand. Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 19(2), 219–225. Jackson, P. (2004b). The Thai Regime of Images. Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 19(2), 181–218. Jackson, P. (2005). Semicoloniality, Translation and Excess in Thai Cultural Studies. South East Asia Research, 13(1), 7–41. Jackson, P. (2008). Thai Semicolonial Hybridities: Bhabha and García Canclini in Dialogue on Power and Cultural Blending. Asian Studies Review, 32(2), 147–170. Jackson, P. (2010a). Postcolonial Theories and Thai Semicolonial Hybridities. In P. Jackson & R. Harrison (Eds.), The Ambiguous Allure of the West: Traces of the Colonial in Thailand (pp. 187–205). Hong Kong and Ithaca: Hong Kong University Press and Cornell University: Southeast Asia Program Publications. Jackson, P. (2010b). The Ambiguities of Semicolonial Power in Thailand. In P. Jackson & R. Harrison (Eds.), The Ambiguous Allure of the West: Traces of the Colonial in Thailand (pp. 37–56). Hong Kong and Ithaca: Hong Kong University Press and Cornell University Southeast Asia Program Publications. Martin, F., McLelland, M., Yue, A., & Jackson, P. (Eds.). (2008). AsiaPacifiQueer: Rethinking Gender and Sexuality in the Asia-Pacific. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Mielke, K., & Hornidge, A.-K. (2014). Crossroads Studies: From Spatial Containers to Interactions in Differentiated Spatialities. Crossroads Asia Working Paper Series 15, Bonn. Mignolo, W. (2002a). The Enduring Enchantment: (Or the Epistemic Privilege of Modernity and Where to Go from Here). The South Atlantic Quarterly, 101(4), 927–954. Mignolo, W. (2002b). The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 101(1), 57–95.

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Miyoshi, M., & Harootunian, H. (2002). Learning Places: The Afterlives of Area Studies. Durham: Duke University Press. Oswald, A. (2007). An Examination of the Reliability of Prestigious Scholarly Journals: Evidence and Implications for Decision-Makers. Economica, 74(293), 21–31. Seth, S. (2013). “Once Was Blind but Now Can See”: Modernity and the Social Sciences. International Political Sociology, 7(2), 136–151. Spivak, G. (2003). Death of a Discipline. New York: Columbia University Press. Tang, D. (2011). Conditional Spaces: Hong Kong Lesbian Desires and Everyday Life. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Thongchai, W. (2014). Foreword: Decentering Thai Studies. In R. Harrison (Ed.), Disturbing Conventions: Decentering Thai Literary Studies (pp. xiii– xxix). London: Rowman and Littlefield. Waters, M. (1995). Globalization. London: Routledge. Young, S., Peetz, D., & Marais, M. (2011). The Impact of Journal Ranking Fetishism on Australian Policy-Related Research: A Case Study. Australian Universities Review, 53(2), 77–87.

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PART II

To Be or Not to Be Is Not the Question. Rethinking Area Studies in Its Own Right

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Doing Area Studies in the Americas and Beyond: Towards Reciprocal Methodologies and the Decolonization of Knowledge Olaf Kaltmeier Area Studies on the Americas have usually been segregated along the Rio Grande borderline in North American and Latin American Studies. This academic spatial divide is repeated also on a lower scale, separating US American from Canadian Studies and differentiating the Caribbean from Central America, from the Andes, from the Cono Sur, and so on. To confront this geopolitical imagination of a mosaic of spatially segregated academic islands, inter-American approaches arose that are also related to political-cultural and economic changes in the Western hemisphere (McClennen 2005; Raab & Thies 2008; Kaltmeier 2013; Kaltmeier 2014; Raussert 2014; Mignolo 2014). Furthermore, the latinoization of the USA has changed not only demographics and cultural politics there but also academia. The establishment of Chicano/and Latino/a American Studies departments highlights that Latin American Studies is not a remote object but an urgent perspective in the midst of the USA. The US–Mexican border is the most crossed border in the world; cross-cultural media flows shape consumer cultures in the North and the South of the continent; capital interests influence geopolitical imaginaries of hemispheric integration while drug and arms trade as well as its containments are other examples of the multiple forms that can

O. Kaltmeier (*) University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany © The Author(s) 2017 K. Mielke, A.-K. Hornidge (eds.), Area Studies at the Crossroads, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59834-9_3 [email protected]

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be taken by inter-American relations. But inter-American entanglements are not only a contemporary phenomenon, as several authors have pointed out; they are intrinsically related to the basic epistemological transformation of the colonial encounter and its constantly rearticulated legacy. These processes have inspired the interdisciplinary working group at the Bielefeld Center for InterAmerican Studies (CIAS) to conceive of the Americas as a space of entanglement. For the CIAS, entanglement becomes a key concept which allows the analysis of phenomena of transfers between regions, regional intrinsic logics, deterritorialization, or transculturation. In our approach an area is not a given entity, instead it can only be described as a field of interaction and exchange that is relevant to the actors. In this sense areas have a “variable geometry” that is not limited by physical space. The constructedness of areas and their relations to others is highlighted by focusing on mutual observation, comparison, competence, interdependence, and interplays. Areas are thus imagined spaces of interaction addressed and interfered with by geopolitical strategies of institutional actors, economic interests, media, social movements, and daily life experiences. The plea for an entangled conception of the Americas has deep methodological impacts which I want to explore in this chapter. The multiplication of loci of enunciation, dialogue, and reciprocity are key concepts that I will analyze in regard to their practical application in research. I furthermore assume that in the context of epistemological violence it is a condition sine qua non to overcome the one history of the victor and to multiply historical narrations from different perspectives and loci of enunciation. In this sense, dialogical approaches cannot aim to come to a consensus, which would mean the end of dialogue, instead there must always be space for difference.

Geopolitics

of Knowledge and Area

Studies

The formation of Area Studies in Europe is closely linked to colonial projects. Counting, mapping, classifying, and representing “the other” were basic operations in the creation of power-knowledge complexes about the other and its space. Area Studies scholars Jon Goss and Terence Wesley-­ Smith pointed out that “area studies were an integral part of a modernist project that sought to remake the world in the image of the West” (2010, p. xii). The particular Western production of knowledge implied that the other did not serve only to produce the self. Instead, the self was univer-

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salized and set a standard to measure other societies. In making representations of the other, also the image of one’s own culture and space was constructed. The power of definition was in the hands of the European colonizers. This mutual operation of “othering” in the production of geocultural units was analyzed by Edward Said in his seminal work on Orientalism, as a Western discourse and construction of the Orient. Latin American scholars such as Edmundo O’Gorman and Walter Mignolo have pointed out that the basic “Orientalist” operation is at work in the construction of the Americas. While Said focused on the construction of the Orient in power-knowledge complexes in the eighteenth century, Mignolo argues that this construction of the Orient was only possible on the base of the triumph of Christian Spain in the expulsion of Moors from the Iberian Peninsula and the conquest of the Americas (Mignolo 2000, p. 61). This construction of the Americas had—as Aníbal Quijano (2000) argues—material and social impacts. Hand in hand with the economic and political conquest, a “coloniality of power” was also established, that invented new forms of exploitation based on identity politics. If we take coloniality seriously, we have to take into account the entangled (violent) history that is created through colonial expansion. Colonial expansion and the emergence of the capitalist world-system have led—as Sebastian Conrad and Shalini Randeria have argued—to a shared history. This means on the one hand a divided history with uneven power relations, exploitation-appropriation, and social inequality as well as different experiences between colonizers and colonized. And, on the other hand, it is an entangled history in a common frame of tempo-spatial references that cannot be understood by only focusing on one side or one spatial container (Randeria & Conrad 2002, p. 17). Nevertheless, power asymmetries are not fixed but subject to conjunctural changes. This is also the case for the Americas that have their origins in the European colonial expansion in the long sixteenth century, and that—especially after the end of the nineteenth century—have been shaped by inter-American entanglement. The latter creates a space of common experience in the rejection of European colonialism that is also politically divided by the imperialistic politics of the USA in the Western hemisphere. This approach of an entangled history has far-reaching methodological implications. Beyond the critique on “methodological nationalism” and “container thinking” the development of horizontal methods basing on reciprocity and dialogue are required in order to construct a common basis of understanding. David Ludden has argued that Area Studies

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challenge simple conceptions of universalism by hinting at the plurality of knowledge in global knowledge society. Thereby he makes the point that all knowledge is contextual (2003, pp. 131–135). With Walter Mignolo (2000), we can underline this perspective and make the point that the construction of situated knowledge—depending on the speaker’s locus of enunciation—itself takes place in a power-laden geopolitics of knowledge where Western knowledge has been positioned on the top of the power matrix through colonialism and imperialism. In this context, the universalist god-like view position of the Occidental academic has to be deconstructed. Since the 1970s, the male, occidental research subject has been criticized in a self-reflexive way by post-­structuralist and post-colonial researchers. Against the backdrop of academic collaboration with colonialist and imperialist research traditions, social anthropologists especially made a plea for pitiless selfcritique where the researcher turns into a privileged object of research, or in the words of Paul Rabinow: “We do not need a theory of indigenous epistemologies or a new epistemology of the other. We should be attentive to our historical practice of projecting our cultural practices onto the other” (1986, p. 241). This means, as Ilan Kapoor pointed out in his discussion on Gayatri Spivak, “one cannot do ‘fieldwork’ without first doing one’s ‘homework’” (2004, p. 641). This debate on the epistemological position of social anthropology contributed—without any doubt—to a deconstruction of the hegemonic geopolitics of knowledge. Nevertheless, one highly problematic issue of this project of the “anthropology of the anthropologist” is the fact that it remains caught in the net of self-critique without envisioning new forms of cross-cultural encounters. Paradoxically, this critical approach can contribute significantly to silencing the other and lead to the production of narcissistic auto-ethnographies. On the other hand, we can identify a second wave of epistemic decolonization that has been initiated and promoted by indigenous intellectuals. In the context of the emergence of indigenous movements and a global conjuncture of indigeneity in the 1990s there emerged indigenous research methodologies (Smith 1999; Denzin et  al. 2008; Willson and Yellow Bird 2005). Linda Tuhiwai Smith, a researcher of Maori heritage, argues that the project of “researching back” is part of a direction of thought that includes approaches who claim a “writing back” or a “talking back” (1999, p. 7).

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These indigenous methodologies are intrinsically related to indigenous social movements and their fight for recognition and redistribution. Hence, they cannot be understood as internal dynamics within the academic field. Instead they have to be conceptualized as an integral part of a broader process of decolonization. Research is not only a form to gain academic capital, but it is inseparably related to concerns of social justice, political mobilization, education, social work, and healing (Smith 1999, pp.  115–117). The last-mentioned aspect is, as Native American researcher Yellow Horse (2005) points out, particularly important for a spiritual dimension of healing colonial traumata. Indigenous methodologies are not group-related, instead they also produce and are part of flows of knowledge, as is revealed by the inter-­ American dialogue between the “red pedagogy” of the First Nations in the USA (Wilson 2009; Wilson & Yellow Bird 2005) and the “pedagogy of the suppressed” (1973) of Brazilian Paulo Freire. Indigenous methodologies carry out a basic epistemological change of perspective. Now Native Americans are no longer just objects of external research but are active research subjects. Indigenous research is hence an integral part of a broader political-cultural project of empowerment which aims at self-determination. This can have its pitfalls. Some projects are based on a strict identity politics and new ethno-centric essentialism in the sense that only indigenous people can do research on indigenous people. This can lead, as Judith Schlehe and Sita Hadayah have pointed out, to a “tendency to essentialize, romanticize and idealize local knowledge and ‘the indigenous’” (2014). Summing up, it can be said that both methodological conjunctures have contributed to a process that we have described as a decolonization of knowledge. But both movements have their limits. While the first debate on the self-critique of the researcher is focused only on Western knowledge, the second debate of indigenous methodologies has the tendency to focus only on the “indigenous.” Both methodological poles within the project of the decolonization of knowledge run the danger of falling into a “splendid isolation” which observes the own culture in an essentialist and segregated way. With this approach it is difficult to grasp cultural entanglements. This standpoint is especially problematic if we follow Edward Said, who claims: “Partly because of empire, all cultures are involved in one another; none is single and pure, all are hybrid, heterogeneous, extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithic” (1993, p. xxv).

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Reciprocal Methodologies The approach proposed here of entangled spaces and histories has far-­ reaching methodological implications. Beyond the critique on “methodological nationalism” and container thinking, the development of horizontal methods based on reciprocity and dialogue are required in order to construct a common basis of understanding. Inspired by the task of decolonizing the geopolitics of knowledge, a transdisciplinary working group of Latin American and European researches conducted by Sarah Corona Berkin and myself discussed at different occasions and places, from Bielefeld to San Cristóbal de las Casas, elements and experiences in horizontal methodologies (Kaltmeier & Corona Berkin 2012). These discussions lead to broad consensus that it is not the academic’s task to speak about the other nor to speak in an advocatory way about the other. Instead, research ethics should be inspired by the ideal of a dialogue with the other. Thus, the horizontal and reciprocal interchange becomes the starting point for the production of knowledge. As a research ethic this does not sound entirely new, but there exists an amazing lack of useful research manuals. Horizontality and dialogue should—in our approach— structure the complete research process in its different stations. In the same vein, Julia Roth has argued that a rethinking and a decolonization of Area Studies does not only mean changing “the content but also the terms of the conversation”; however, Roth advises that “the terms of the conversation are not changed by telling multiple stories, if these stories are told by the same storytellers (and regardless of their connectedness)” (2014, p. 137). To grasp the social relation between different “storytellers” the concept of reciprocity is of supreme importance. Reciprocity means rejecting market-based, utilitarian models as well as redistributive hierarchical models of knowledge production. Instead, reciprocity highlights the common interests in research and the production of social networks through the circulation of knowledge. The following methodological considerations are based on social-anthropological and ethno-historical research projects in Social and Cultural Studies; nevertheless, the general argument may be also valid for the broader field of Area Studies. The Research Topic This research begins with the definition of the research topic. A research topic does not surge from the inner self of a researcher-subject, instead it

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is the product of social interaction. First the topic often depends on the dynamics within the academic field, because the researchers try to position themselves with innovative topics in the field in order to accumulate academic capital. Philosophers of science such as Thomas Kuhn have pointed out that groundbreaking findings cannot be explained in terms of a linear accumulation of knowledge, but as scientific revolutions provoked by generational conflicts in the academic field, which in Bourdieuian terms (1996) can be described a as conflict between heretical and orthodox positionings. The academic has to navigate through the linguistic, spatial, visual, performative, and affective turns, produce new knowledge, and earn prestige and reputation without being mousetrapped by opportunisms which would mean a devaluation of his prestige and academic capital. This field-intern dynamic is reinforced considerably by the rising importance of academic funding based on entrepreneurial criteria. Public and private sponsors—from the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Federal Ministry of Eduaction and Research (BMBF) over foundations such as Thyssen, Rockefeller, or Ford to supranational organizations such as UNESCO—determine the design of research projects more than does dialogue and interchange with the “research object.” Research proposals are fraught with imaginaries about the other, generated on the basis of intertextual references. In so doing the researchers generate topics and imaginaries about the other that are not based on dialogue but on the field-intern dynamics of the academic field. This situation changes with the beginning of fieldwork, when the topic is redefined by the dialogical power of the other. Face-to-face contact brings the interest of the researcher into shocking relief with the interest of the researched, a dynamic described by Sarah Corona (2012) as “generative conflict.” This conflict does not lead automatically to convergences. A topic interesting for the academic world must not be interesting for the researched, and vice versa. To change one’s topic has implications for the positioning in the academic field, especially if it is not related according to field-intern dynamics but to the intervention of others that argue from a non-academic point of view. There is the threat of devaluation of academic capital if the orthodox gatekeepers of the field consider the new topic to be “popular” or “non-­ academic.” On the other hand, particularly academic disciplines like social anthropology demand academic authenticity which can be produced by

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the integration of the voice of the other. In this sense the definition of a topic is a complex power game beyond the dialogue with the other. Co-Presence and Dialogue In the approach proposed herein, dialogue and interchange are at the center of the production of knowledge. Social anthropologists such as Dennis Tedlock and Vincent Capranzano have argued that the possibility for dialogue and understanding is based on the “co-presence” (Fabian 1983) of researcher and the researched in the field; they share in the ethnographical situation a common time and space. In the here and now the difference of regimes of experiences becomes visible and can be negotiated (Waldenfels 1987, p. 149). In this context there is no universal measure or no categorical system to order incommensurable experiences. This opens the space for dialogue and cultural translation. However, understanding the other should not be misunderstood in the sense that it is the researcher’s task to adopt and accept all other elements. This would end up in a “going native” that is “going naïve,” and that in the end is unable to put hegemonic geopolitics of knowledge into question. In the same vein, Gayatri Spivak criticizes that Western researchers too easily distance themselves from their embeddedness in post-colonial structures by making use of post-colonial political correctness: “‘OK, sorry, we are just very good white people, therefore we do not speak for the black.’ That’s the kind of breast-beating that is left behind at the threshold and then business goes on as usual” (Spivak 1990, p. 121). This attitude has implications, and leads to a fundamental separation between the interior and the exterior and “the placement of the onus for change on the Third World subaltern (or the informant as its representative)” (Kapoor 2008). To avoid this positioning, I argue for a contextualization of the research in an entangled space and history, profoundly shaped by colonial longue durée and its renovations. Here self-reflexive actors in the West and the Global South are needed to produce dialogical knowledge for decolonization. Yvonne Riaño applied the reciprocal Andean working practices of “minga” (communal work based on reciprocity in Andean indigenous communities) to make academic research more equal and dialogical. Equity is based on the capacity of both, the “researcher” and the “researched,” to define the research process in terms of co-determination and reciprocity and to obtain mutual benefits from the research. The core of the minga method consists in the production of mutual knowledge and other benefits. For the female migrants from the Global South who took

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part in Riaño’s research, the latter consisted in: “La reflexión sobre la propia situación de integración profesional, la expansión y retroalimentación de conocimiento para todas las participantes, y la formación de redes sociales y el empuje para la acción personal” (2012, p. 147).1 Taking this into account, Mailsa Carla Pinto Passos and Rita Marisa Ribes Pereira advise that dialogue is not limited to an operation of questions and responses; instead it should be embedded in a “methodology of encounter,” which “supone que la dialogicidad no ocurre solo en la relación que se establece en un orden dado de preguntas y respuestas sino en el momento que los sujetos se encuentran para narrar sus prácticas e historias” (2012, p. 170).2 But in many cases the end of the fieldwork means also the end of reciprocal relations and interchange. In a cynical way it could be spoken of as just about the expediency of dialogue and participation during the research in order to get data. Against this use of dialogue to expropriate knowledge it is important to extend a critical reflection on methodology also into the period after fieldwork. “Sources” and Their Lecture Dialogue does not only refer to the face-to-face situation in the field. It can also be related to the examination of texts, which is of particular importance for historians not engaged in oral history. Nevertheless, in regard to texts it is crucial to overcome the notion of “source” related to cultural imperialism. As pointed out already, colonial and imperial projects are based on the accumulation of resources and knowledge. In this sense even the concept of source reveals a highly unequal relation in that the researcher has to search for and develop the source in order to make the knowledge flow. The epistemological power is located with the researcher, while the voices inherent in the source are reduced to an object. To level this epistemological power imbalance it is necessary to establish a dialogical relation towards the sources and the interactions and voices condensed therein. A privileged option to make the voices of subalterns heard are auto-­ ethnographical texts or their generation through oral history. Besides the immense importance of auto-ethnographic texts, it is necessary to resist the temptation to understand them as pure and authentic expressions of the subaltern. Mary Louise Pratt reminds us that an auto-­ ethnographic text is a text in which people undertake to describe themselves in ways that engage with representations others have made of them. […] autoethnographic texts

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are representations that the so-defined others produce in response to or in dialogue with those (Western hegemonic) texts. (Pratt 1991, p. 34)

Auto-ethnographic texts are thus tactical positionings of subalterns in (post-)colonial power relations which contain multiple intertextual references, citations, and mimicry. This polyphony confronts the researcher with a second challenge in dealing with sources and auto-ethnographic texts: its lecture. In order to make the subaltern voices in sources heard, Edward Said (1994) proposes a “contrapunctual lecture,” where the juxtaposition of imperialism and resistance leads in a dialectical manner towards a new stage of representation. In a similar way, Walter Mignolo suggests the idea of a “pluri-­ topic hermeneutics.” The core idea of this approach is to read a given text from the perspective of its main cultural influences. Echoing Said’s idea of the contrapunctual lectures, Mignolo underlines that a “double critique” means “to think from both traditions and, at the same time, from neither of them” (2000, p. 67). Thus, both approaches are reduced to a bi-polar—“double” or “contrapunctual”—mode of reading which imply a clash of two cultural traditions often conceived of in terms of a political antagonism. But in empirical research we have to deal often with multiple positionings, forms of transculturation and mimicry, as well as tactical self-positionings that cannot be reduced to one antagonism—be it cultural or political (Rufer 2012). Furthermore, we have to take into account that actors are involved in multi-sited constellations so that we have to bear in mind all kinds of actors from governmental, non-governmental actors, to cultural producers, and so on, which address different horizons of interaction from the local to the global (Kaltmeier & Thies 2012). Thereby, we have to take into account that the academic field is still a privileged site of knowledge production with high symbolic capital, but it is not the only site where knowledge is produced. Decentralizing the existing knowledge hierarchy and the search for dialogue with other sites of knowledge production is thus another challenge for dialogical Area Studies. Authority and Representation After the fieldwork period—characterized by a co-presence of researcher and researched—there begins usually a period of “mono-presence” of the researcher, which is characterized by the researcher’s author-ity to trans-

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late social interaction into textual representation. A power balance that once was negotiated between subjects changes in the way that the other becomes a textual represented object. In psychological terms, Capranzano has described the writing process as a kind of ritual “purification” which “exorcizes” the other (1977, p. 69). In political terms this can be conceived of as an act of epistemological violence which re-establishes the existing geopolitics of power between the West and the Global South. A critical self-reflection upon the author-ity—in terms of authority and authorship—of the researcher is needed. Besides the post-structuralist deconstruction of the author as a central figure of modernity, the imagination of the author as sole creator of the text has great persistence. This idea is rooted in the publication market and its forms of author-based marketing as well as in the academic field where authorship is the determining mode for the accumulation of academic prestige. Nevertheless, there are some possibilities to reduce the power of the author-as-creator idea. One option is to limit a single authorship by the recognition and promotion of polyphony. This would also mean restricting the naïve belief in the objectivity and neutrality of the academic narrative and its omniscient narrator. Here I would like to argue that the academic perspective is only one amongst others. It is shaped by the rules of the academic field and the interaction with the researched, but it has no inherent epistemological superiority over other perspectives. Nevertheless, the possibility of methodological self-reflection is one of particular advantage that should be explored more. Beyond this potential self-­reflexivity there are also several narrative strategies to limit the authority of the researcher. Sarah Corona Berkin elaborated the proposal of “writing with two hands” (Corona 2007), which consists in the juxtaposition of the text of the researcher with the text of the researched, who through this operation transforms himself or herself into researcher too. Both texts stand for themselves without a superiority of the researcher’s perspective, so that they can enter into a silent, horizontal dialogue. Public and Publication Every text is directed towards a public imagined by the author. In the case of Academic Studies, texts are written for experts in the academic field which emerged in specific power constellations in the West. “Valid” knowledge is still mostly produced in the Western publication market, which finds its highest expression in double peer-reviewed high-ranked

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US-American journals. This is still highly problematic, as according to Jacques Derrida the “doxographic discourse” is based on “academic capitalism” and a “quotation market” (Derrida 1990). Beyond this economization of the academic field, also its inner logic of distinction and the rules of accumulation of academic capital discourage the inclusion of subaltern voices in aspects like definition of the research topic and design, co-­ authorship, target group of publications, and academic hierarchies. The academic publication machine forces the author to use academic rhetoric and forms of narration, intertextual references to other works in the field, and a recognized language, which is usually the academic lingua franca: English. In this sense, the researched group or community is in most cases most certainly not the public of the publication. In the contemporary knowledge society the question of knowledge is not only related to representation. It has also a material dimension in terms of intellectual property. The critical discussions upon intellectual property rights, bio-piracy, and indigenous (medical) knowledge indicate the importance of the control of knowledge informational capitalism. In academia the debate on intellectual property rights is basically limited to plagiarism and trying to regulate the fair accumulation of academic capital. But there is no critical reflection on the massive appropriation of subaltern and local knowledge through research in post-colonial contexts. The knowledge-producers are only seen as “interviewees” or—worse— “informants,” but their contribution, authorship, and intellectual rights are mostly ignored. This is not only an individual ethical problem for an individual researcher—rather the academic field forces the researcher to assume a single authorship in order to accumulate academic capital. A real recognition of the intellectual rights of co-authors should take seriously the polyphony of academic texts. Also, the recognition of other forms of publication—beyond the monograph or the peer-reviewed article—that are directed towards the researched group could be a step towards a new, decolonizing academic ethics based on more dialogue and interchange.

An Example: Area Studies in the Academic Field The most basic, yet essential requirement of critical Area Studies in the Americas is the acknowledgement of the multiplicity and simultaneity of knowledge production in different places and various disciplines. In the collaborative research project “The Americas as Space of Entanglement” we discussed on several occasions the problematic of uneven geopolitics

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of knowledge. Thereby, we relied on the aforementioned debate on the decolonization of knowledge in social anthropology and cultural and Postcolonial Studies. We put concepts such as multiple loci of enunciation, dialogue, and reciprocity in the center of our synthesis project, which aims to create a common basis of understanding and a mutual recognition of differences in order to deepen the dialogue and to foment reciprocal networks. The five-volume Inter-American Key Topics Rethinking the Americas series seeks to provide a better understanding of the key issues in exploring the hemispheric space of interrelations and transfers in the Americas as a new perspective in Area Studies. It focuses on the multiple loci of enunciation and the dynamics of entanglement in the Americas and puts emphasis on the mutual construction of meaning and concepts. Rethinking the Americas is not concerned with the universal definition of concepts, independent of place and time. Instead, the most basic yet essential requirement of the series is the acknowledgement of the multiplicity and simultaneity of knowledge production in different places. In this sense, we want to reveal how the same term or topic can be conceptualized in different ways depending on the locus of enunciation and the particular moment in time. To know about these differences and the complex and entangled dynamics in the construction of meaning is a basic requirement for inter-American Area Studies. In regard to every single topic, we want to record the differences, juxtapose contrary and similar matters, and engage with the existing sources of knowledge. To give an example, I would like to address the problems in regard to the geopolitical imagination of the area concept “America.” From the etymological point of view the concept is derived by early modern cartographer Martin Waldseemüller from the name of the colonial explorer Amerigo Vespucci. From an indigenous perspective, in that time there existed no framework within which to conceive of the Western hemisphere as a whole. In Europe the imagination of America as an alter ego of Europe and a “New World” began to arise and shape the geopolitical imagination of a globalized world. Due to different ways of colonization and religious belief systems, Hegel and other European thinkers introduced a dialectical vision of Protestant North America and Catholic South America. From a US-American locus of enunciation emerging at the end of the nineteenth century in the context of rising US imperialism, America was geopolitically constructed to contest European expansionism and in the Cold World era to limit the influence of the Soviet Union. Alongside this expansionism there is in the USA also the tendency to equate the

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United States of America with the whole double continent of America. In academia this underlying idea is still present when American Studies or American Literature are limited to the USA, excluding Central and South America as well as the Caribbean and Canada. In contrast, Latin Americans—from Simón Bolívar and José Martí to Che Guevara and Hugo Chávez—have used the concept of América (with an accent) to foster the idea of an Ibero-American union in the process of liberation from colonial rule, and since the end nineteenth century to speak of “nuestra América,” the Latin American one, against the growing US imperialism. Despite this geopolitical divide, there is also an ongoing reflection on the imagination of the double continent, from the pleonasm of Pan-­ Americanism to recent processes of economic integration. Beyond these conceptualizations, indigenous peoples rejected the concept of America because of its colonial impact and rather choose the term abya yala to name the double continent. Here the expression of the indigenous Kuna people of Panama stands as a synecdoche for America. These aspects highlight the different meanings of America, but furthermore Rethinking the Americas is interested to reveal the circulation and appropriation of concepts in the Americas as a space of entanglement as well as the emergence of new concepts in between. In order to identify the relevant topics in each volume we worked in interdisciplinary and inter-regional editorial committees. Finally, the work of these committees was discussed in a conference of the editorial board. The whole process was inspired by the minga procedure, although we did not explicitly reflect on our personal involvement in the process. The entries are often written in co-authorship from the “North” and the “South” (or have at least a strict North–South peer review), so that in the course of the writing dialogue takes place. The idea is to put Corona Berkin’s concept of “writing with two hands” into academic practice. With this program in mind, Rethinking the Americas stresses the dimension of “inter-” as a discursive zone to capture the processes, negotiations, and power relations of knowledge production from diverse loci of enunciation. In this sense, dialogical approaches—like Rethinking the Americas—­ cannot aim to arrive at a consensus. A final definition of a concept would mean the end of dialogue. Instead, we hint at the process of knowledge production and underline that the understanding of difference might be more important that the production of “universal truth.” Within the project we had long debates on the public of the Key Topic Series. Ultimately, we decided that we want to place the series in the aca-

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demic field which meant chosing an international (first English speaking, a later Spanish version is planned) editorial. But in order to multiply the fora of dialogue we established an inter-American online platform (Social and Political Key Terms of the Americas) and are involved in a Caribbean online dictionary project. Furthermore, we are aware of the problem that the decolonization of knowledge cannot be limited to the academic field alone. To establish channels of dialogue with non-academic fields we developed, in discussion with NGOs and teachers, educational material for schools to produce debates upon “Knowledge about Global Entanglements.” The classroom materials follow guidelines developed by the notions of global learning, employing methodological forms promoting active student participation and project work to allow learners to inquire about common stereotypes and preconceived categories like, for example: First World versus Third World, development aid, paternalism, or a one-dimensional understanding of culture. In the first instance this project is limited to German schools, but we envision also producing material with and for the Americas. Also in this teaching material we argue that it is hardly possible to understand an area from the perspective of one single place of enunciation. Entangled spaces need entangled methodologies to be understood in their complex articulations. On the epistemic level these insights have been reflected in multiple ways, but what is still missing is to put them into praxis. We hope that the CIAS contributes some devices for a dialogical, reciprocal, and decolonizing knowledge production.

Notes 1. The reflection upon the own situation of professional integration, the expansion and retro-alimentation of knowledge for all participants, and the formation of social networks and an impulse for personal action (translation by the author). 2. This assumes that dialogicity occurs not only in a relation established by the order of questions and responses. Instead it occurs in the moment when subjects encounter each other in order to narrate their social practices and histories (translation by the author).

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Bibliography Corona Berkin, S. (2007). Entres voces … Fragmentos de educación “entrecultural.” Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara. Corona Berkin, S. (2012). Horizontale Methoden. Im Dialog mit Jugendlichen wixáritari in Jalisco, Mexiko. In O. Kaltmeier & S. Corona Berkin (Eds.), Methoden dekolonialisieren. Eine Werkzeugkiste zur Demokratisierung der Sozialund Kulturwissenschaften (pp. 43–58). Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot. [A Spanish version of this book has been edited simultaneously: Corona Berkin, S. & Kaltmeier, O. (Eds.). (2012). En diálogo. Metodologías horizontales en Ciencias Sociales y Culturales. Barcelona: gedisa.]. Crapanzano, V. (1977). On the Writing of Ethnography. Dialectical Anthropology, 2(1–4), 69–73. Denzin, N., Lincoln, Y., & Smith, L. (Eds.). (2008). Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Derrida, J. (1990). Some Statements and Truisms About Neologisms, Newisms, Postisms, Parasitisms and Other Small Seismisms. In D. Carroll (Ed.), The States of Theory: History, Art, and Critical Discourse (pp. 63–95). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Fabian, J. (1983). Time and the Other. How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia University Press. Kaltmeier, O., & Corona Berkin, S. (Eds.). (2012). Methoden dekolonialisieren. Eine Werkzeugkiste zur Demokratisierung der Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften. Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot. Kaltmeier, O. (2012). Methoden dekolonialisieren: Reziprozität und Dialog in der herrschenden Geopolitik des Wissens. In O. Kaltmeier & S. Corona Berkin (Eds.), Methoden dekolonialisieren. Eine Werkzeugkiste zur Demokratisierung der Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften (pp. 7–24). Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot. Kaltmeier, O. (Ed.). (2013). Transnational Americas. Envisioning Inter-American Area Studies in Globalization Processes. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. Kaltmeier, O. (2014). Inter-American Perspectives for the Rethinking of Area Studies. Forum for Inter-American Research, 7(3), 171–182. Kaltmeier, O., & Thies, S. (2012). Specters of Multiculturalism: Conceptualizing the Field of Identity Politics in the Americas. Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 7(2), 223–240. Kapoor, I. (2004). Hyper-Self-Reflexive Development? Spivak on Representing the Third World “Other.” Third World Quarterly, 25(4), 627–647. Kapoor, I. (2008). The Postcolonial Politics of Development. London: Routledge. Kuhn, T. (1996). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ludden, D. (2003). Why Area Studies? In A. Mirsepassi, A. Basu, & F. Weaver (Eds.), Localizing Knowledge in a Globalizing World (pp. 131–137). New York: Syracuse University Press.

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McClennen, S. (2005). Inter-American Studies or Imperial American Studies? Comparative American Studies, 3(4), 393–413. Mignolo, W. (2000). Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges and Border Thinking. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mignolo, W. (2014). Decolonial Reflections on Hemispheric Partitions: The “Western Hemisphere” in the Colonial Horizon of Modernity and the Irreversible Historical Shift to the “Eastern Hemisphere.” Forum for InterAmerican Research, 7(3), 41–58. Pinto Passos, M., & Ribes Pereira, R. (2012). Rassismus und Identität in Brasilien. Über Begegnungen und Freundschaften in der Forschung mit afro-brasilianischen Kindern. In O. Kaltmeier & S. Corona Berkin (Eds.), Methoden dekolonialisieren. Eine Werkzeugkiste zur Demokratisierung der Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften (pp. 116–127). Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot. Pratt, M. (1991). Arts in the Contact Zone. Profession, 91, 33–40. Quijano, A. (2000). Colonialidad del poder, eurocentrismo y América Latina. In E. Lander (Ed.), La colonialidad del saber: eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales. Perspectivas Latinoamericanas (pp. 201–246). Buenos Aires: Clacso. Raab, J., & Thies, S. (Eds.). (2008). E Pluribus Unum? National and Transnational Identities in the Americas/Identidades Nacionales y Transnacionales En Las Américas. Münster: Lit. Rabinow, P. (1986). Representations Are Social Facts: Modernity and PostModernity in Anthropology. In J. Clifford & G. Marcus (Eds.), Writing Culture (pp. 234–261). Berkeley: University of California Press. Randeria, S., & Conrad, S. (Eds.). (2002). Jenseits des Eurozentrismus. Postkoloniale Perspektiven in den Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften. Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Raussert, W. (2014). Mobilizing “America/América”: Toward Entangled Americas and a Blueprint for Inter-American “Area Studies.” Forum for InterAmerican Research, 7(3), 59–97. Riaño, Y. (2012). Die Produktion von Wissen als Minga. Ungleiche Arbeitsbeziehungen zwischen Forschenden und “Beforschten” überwinden? In O. Kaltmeier & S. Corona Berkin (Eds.), Methoden dekolonialisieren. Eine Werkzeugkiste zur Demokratisierung der Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften (pp. 77–95). Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot. Roth, J. (2014). Decolonizing American Studies: Toward a Politics of  Intersectional Entanglements. Forum for Inter-American Research, 7(3), 135–170. Rufer, M. (2012). Sprechen, zuhören, schreiben. Postkoloniale Perspektiven auf Subalternität und Horizontalität. In O. Kaltmeier & S. Corona Berkin (Eds.), Methoden dekolonialisieren. Eine Werkzeugkiste zur Demokratisierung der Sozialund Kulturwissenschaften (pp. 25–42). Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot. Said, E. (1994). Kultur und Imperialismus. Einbildungskraft und Politik im Zeitalter der Macht. Frankfurt am Main: Campus.

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Schlehe, J., & Hadaya, S. (2014). Transcultural Ethnography: Reciprocity in Indonesian-German Tandem Research. In M. Huotari, J. Rüland, & J. Schlehe (Eds.), Methodology and Research Practice in Southeast Asian Studies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Smith, L. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books. Smith, N. (2010). Remapping Area Knowledge. In T. Wesley-Smith & J. Goss (Eds.), Remaking Area Studies: Teaching and Learning across Asia and the Pacific. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Spivak, G. (1990). The Post-Colonial Critic. Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. London: Routledge. Tedlock, D. (1995). Fragen zur dialogischen Anthropologie. In E. Berg & M. Fuchs (Eds.), Kultur, soziale Praxis, Text. Die Krise der ethnographischen Repräsentation (pp. 269–287). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Waldenfels, B. (1987). Ordnung im Zwielicht. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Wesley-Smith, T., & Goss, J. (Eds.). (2010). Remaking Area Studies: Teaching and Learning across Asia and the Pacific. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Wilson, S. (2009). Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing. Wilson, W., & Yellow Bird, M. (2005). For Indigenous Eyes Only: A Decolonization Handbook. Santa Fe: Sar-Press. Yellow Horse Brave Heart, M. (2005). From Intergenerational Trauma to Intergenerational Healing [pdf]. Wellbriety, 6(6). Available at: http://www. whitebison.org/magazine/2005/volume6/wellbriety!vol6no6.pdf [Accessed 15 Apr. 2012].

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Area Studies @ Southeast Asia: Alternative Areas versus Alternatives to Areas Christoph Antweiler

Area Studies

without

Areas?

Southeast Asia being culturally extremely diverse provides a suitable laboratory and litmus test for the potentials and limits of Area Studies. This chapter is a plea for a moderate realism in Area Studies in general and a proposal to develop a theoretical core regarding the region of Southeast Asia in particular. Taking Southeast Asia as an example, this chapter aims to develop steps towards an Area Science instead of a mere Area Studies. Such an Area Science would not substitute the disciplines but complement them. The core of Area Science is a theory and methodology of socio-spatial relations. Areas may be conceived as an amalgam of material landscapes plus spatial relations plus mental concepts of spatial features. Exemplified by Southeast Asia it is argued that two concepts—network and family resemblance—are most fruitful to allow for an Area Science which portrays areas as entities with a characteristic profile but not as territorially circumscribed. In a world of trans-cultural flows the potential of Area Studies is to go beyond the current methodological nationalism as well as extreme localism or relativism (Sidaway 2013; Duara 2015). They can provide a middle

C. Antweiler (*) University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

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ground between localized studies and all too often over-generalized Global Studies. How can we make globalization theories more empirical and infuse them with a “deeper engagement with societies and cultures” (van Schendel 2012, p. 498; Gudrun Lachenmann, in this volume)? Thus, Area Studies can contribute to the project of “global ethnography,” to make accounts of globalization more ethnographic (Burawoy et al. 2000; Burawoy 2015, pp. 23–48), but retain the regional perspective and therefore not be an “ethnography unbound.” Related to this is the potential to change mainstream theory, for example to inform universal concepts of democracy with regional or localized concepts (Houben 2013). Thus, Area Studies may be a crucial remedy against panglossian globalism or empirically ungrounded cosmopolitanisms as well as an unbounded relativism (MacDonald 2004; Orta 2013; Antweiler 2015). We should mind the territorial trap—linking geographical surface automatically with an assumed unit of causes or effects—but distance and scale matter as elements of human reality. It is remarkable that disciplines and interdisciplinary fields dealing explicitly with spatial theorizing but in a critical way are almost neglected in Southeast Asian Studies. Examples are theoretical geography and interdisciplinary regional science. In many of these fields there are useful approaches bridging essentialism and constructivism (for example Jessop et  al. 2008). Approaches taking explicit note of space and distance, of proximity and vicinity are underused in Area Studies generally. An explicit area orientation would entail cognized spaces but not reduce space to imagination. To put it bluntly: Area Studies is a spatial-oriented field of research or it is nothing.

Current Alternatives

to Areas

We should conceive Southeast Asian Studies as genuine area-focused studies open to many disciplines. Thus we should neither tie it only to social science, nor exclusively to philology or Cultural Studies. If we want to discard territorial or other container concepts, we have to come up with some alternative. We should develop conceptual tools for Area Studies; metaphors like scape/landscape or rhizome may be stimulating for thought, but heuristically are not enough for truly theory-oriented scientific work. Areas may be seen as an amalgam of material/physical surfaces, spatial relations and concepts, respective imaginations of spatial features, and thus neither reduced to the former nor the latter. In regard to alternatives there are (a) concepts which allow for a more cautious versions of areas on

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the one hand and (b) real alternatives to areas as such on the other. I start with alternative areas and move to alternatives to areas. The first approach lies between the typical binary of container versus floating constructs. It is the functional region as used in current geography and human ecology. The idea is to conceive areas differently, depending on the topic or issue studied. This approach is mostly used referring to sub-national scales. A related conciliating approach is to determine circumscribed regions, but in a way different from received areas regarding their boundaries (Emmerson 1984). Referring to Asia, older examples of such conciliatory approaches are Southern Asia respectively Southeastern Asia (combining South Asia and Southeast Asia). Physical geographers and bio-geographers use Monsoon Asia and Tropical East Asia (for example Pannell 1978; Corlett 2014). More recent proposals, especially among economists, political scientists and decisionmakers, are Pacific Asia (Asia-­Pacific), Australasia and Chindia (China plus India). More specifically pertaining to trans-border spaces in South Asia and Southeast Asia are the older calls for Maphilindo (Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia), the sub-­regional notions of Sulu Archipelago, Golden Triangle and Mekong Region and the trans-regional concept of Zomia (van Schendel 2002; Lieberman 2010; Michaud & Forsyth 2011; Brass 2012). One of the most popular alternatives to areas currently is the concept of scape as coined by Appadurai (1990). Taking the idea of landscapes, Appadurai proposes several scapes as continuous flows of things and ideas, which are disjunctive. But Appadurai uses scape in a very metaphorical sense, which makes the idea quite diffuse—not to say fuzzy. In his work we do not find any clear discussion of the underlying concept of landscape (as for example geographer’s reflections on landscape). No wonder that scapes are far less translated into concrete empirical research than the idea of “networks.” If studies are carrying out empirical inquiries, for example into knowledge scapes, security scapes or sea-scapes, they use the term metaphorically. Another alternative to the use of areas is the concept of field (social field, cultural field). This concept of a field made of social relations lies behind the notion of fieldwork or field research in sociology and anthropology. Referring to cultural areas this concept was most clearly developed in the Dutch concept of “field of anthropological study” (nl. ethnologisch studieveld) developed for the Malay realm in insular Southeast Asia. Such a field of study is as a geographically circumscribed area of similar cultures,

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which borders on an adjacent (field of) cultures. The classical source characterizes such fields as: [C]ertain areas of the earth’s surface with a population whose culture appears to be sufficiently homogenous and unique to form a separate object of ethnological study, and which at the same time apparently reveals sufficient local shades of difference to make internal comparative research worthwhile. (Josselin de Jong 1935, pp. xx–xxii; emphasis added)

The idea is to find enough commonalities to form a model and sufficient differences to be able to see variation and to make comparisons meaningful. The argument is that prehistoric heritage lives on in cultures of the same origin, but the aim, for example pertaining to the Indonesian Field of Anthropological Study (Schefold 1994), is not to construct a hypothetical “ur-situation.” Comparison is used to reveal a structural core. An example pertaining to the Malay Archipelago is the existence of plural societies in otherwise quite different social formations. The idea of field of study may be seen as the field of anthropological fieldwork writ large. A strength of the field concept is that it provides a remedy against Euro- or other nostro-­ centric typologies. On the other hand, the studieveld concept comes with its own problems. The “elasticity” criterion makes no basic model possible, because it is not structurally palpable. From a historical perspective the question is how to draw time periods, and in a spatial perspective it is how to frame spatial borders, for example through historical connections (Schefold 1994, p. 366; King 2001). Another problem is the linking of the concept to quite specific assumptions of the Dutch version of anthropological structuralism which have been criticized. A different but similar concept is the archipelago, which comes closer to the network concept discussed below. A third alternative to the use of areas is the concept of figuration as employed in the Crossroads Asia project (Mielke & Hornidge 2014). Following Norbert Elias, figurations are configurations, constellations and especially interdependencies. The concept is quite open and allows the conceiving of relations of different natures and scales. An open question is what the scale implies and whether there are differences between small and large regions. What about changes due to migration? Another problem is the focus on bidirectional dependence in multiple-scaled networks. Here the problem arises that unidirectional dependencies are excluded. The strength of this concept is an explicit notion of space, whereas its weakness is its severe fuzziness.

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Southeast Asia as Constructed, Euro-Centric and Strategic: Critiques Criticized Southeast Asia is a real challenge for any Area Studies approach. Diversity is a default notion in the titles and contents of scientific works—as a bibliography consisting only of books on the region (Antweiler 2004) shows, literature from geography, sociology, anthropology and political economy concerned with the region abounds with the word “diversity” (see also Steedly 1999; Szanton 2004; Guyer 2013; Derichs 2014). The proper and popular metaphorical notions portray Southeast Asia as “Balkans of Asia,” “bridge continent,” “hybrid region,” “collage,” “jigsaw puzzle” or “shatterbelt.” If there is so much diversity, what about its unity? (Rigg 2002; Wolters 1999) What might be the cultural continuities and commonalities among societies and cultures of Southeast Asia, or what has been aptly called its “cultural matrix” (King 2001, pp. 13–18; King 2008, pp. 15–16)? Regarding cross-cutting similarities within the region, there is the question whether there may be more unity within its sub-regions, Mainland Southeast Asia (or even the sub-sub-region of Indochina) and Insular Southeast Asia (Archipelagic Southeast Asia, the Malay realm, Insulinde) than in the region as a whole (Josselin de Jong 1965; Lombard 1993; Tachimoto 1995; Ellen 2012). On the other hand, there are debates about overlaps with neighbouring areas. Including adjacent lands, like parts of Bangladesh (conventionally a part of South Asia), Taiwan or Yunnan (East Asia) or to exclude the Papuan area was discussed. Others proposed similarities between Southeast Asian cultures and those of the Pacific realm of Oceania (Uhlig 1989). Chou goes as far as saying “there are different ‘Southeast Asias’ to study” (Chou 2006, p. 130; Cynthia Chou, in this volume see also Chou & Houben 2006). In addition to this extreme diversity, the region currently has no dominant regional power and historically was a mixing zone with no hegemonic dominant civilization. From the Historical perspective, Southeast Asia was and is a zone of intensive trade in regional scope. This trade, organized in widely spun trade networks, made the region a mixing zone. The margins of Southeast Asia, leading to neighbouring Indian, Chinese and Oceanic realms, were especially important (van Schendel 2012, p. 499; Reid 2015). Contrary to the situation with India for South Asia and China pertaining to East Asia, currently there is no regional power dominating the vast realm of Southeast Asia. These circumstances taken together, Southeast Asia can be a litmus test for Area Studies (Schulte

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Nordholt & Visser 1995; Kratoska et  al. 2005; King 2008; Winzeler 2011; Rigg 2016). With all its diversity and relations to neighbouring cultural realms, Southeast Asia provides a suitable laboratory for Social and Cultural Studies (Hornidge & Antweiler 2012), especially for testing the concept of area. If we want to go beyond an unconnected bunch of country studies, for example for systematic and comparative research, we need an area or regional approach. “The task is to render space autonomous without making it a natural object” (Strandsberg 2010, p.  49). Without doing so, Southeast Asian Studies would remain an assemblage of mostly localized, nation-oriented, historically specific or otherwise particularistic accounts. And all we would have are a few very general studies often not grounded in truly regional or even comparative empirical research. Within Southeast Asian Studies there is a lot of talk about comparison but truly comparative approaches are quite seldom employed (Anderson 1998; Harootunian 2003). Linguistics and political science are the exceptions here. More generally, the current “spatial turn” in social science and in Cultural Studies often amounts to an aspatial turn. Any research for example in boundary spaces requires the notion of an area. All this in itself does not say anything about the question of how we should conceive areas or regions. The thesis is only that we have to build some concepts of space which will not dissolve the material referents altogether. Critiques raised against Southeast Asian Studies to a large degree are a derivative of the diagnosis of this Western legacy of hegemonic manners of research. The three main critiques state (a) that the region of Southeast Asia is merely constructed, (b) that this construction represents an outsider’s view and (c) that the realm of Southeast Asia is a strategic or powerrelated concept (Thum 2012). Taken together, this amounts to a view of Southeast Asian Studies as a nostro-centric and dominance-­oriented endeavor, biased in Euro-Centric, Atlanto-Centric or US-centered ways. As far as research and training institutions are concerned, this critique is well levelled. Currently, the main institutions for Southeast Asian research are centered in the USA, UK, Australia and the Netherlands. Furthermore, the output of research on the region is heavily skewed towards English texts. Some have even gone so far as to ask whether there is place for Southeast Asians in Southeast Asian Studies at all (Heryanto 2002). This situation has been criticized and there are calls for a decentering of Southeast Asian Studies. From Southeast Asia, there are calls for a decentering, an “indigenous social science” or an “Asian anthropology” (Abdullah

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& Manuati 1994; Rafael 1999; Goh Beng-Lan 2011). These alternative approaches come especially from the Malayan realm or by researchers from East Asia or Australasia (for example Yamashita and Eades 2001; Alatas 2006; Ooi Keat Gin 2009; Duara 2015). But in reality scholarship as well as academic teaching within the region itself tends to re-institute methodological nationalism; most studies sailing under the banner of “Southeast Asian Studies” are in fact still confined to specific countries (Evers & Gerke 2003). The overwhelming number of studies made by scholars having their roots in Southeast Asia are about their own country. What about the content core of these critiques? Firstly, Southeast Asia is portrayed as a constructed area or we read of the “creation of Southeast Asia” (King 2008, pp.  13–17; cf. Acharya 2012; Houben 2013; Ileto 2002). Linked to the allegation as an outsider’s paradigm is the critique of practicing an othering and being Orientalist and thus failing to study societies on their own terms. I largely agree with these points. But this often goes in line with an assumption that this construction would be entirely strategic or a Eurocentric or otherwise Orientalist fantasy (Spivak 2008). Spivak also speaks of an “imaginative geography” and proposes “to imagine pluralized Asias” (Spivak 2008, p. 2; Chou 2006). Against this, I argue that Southeast Asia as a region was and is constructed, but it is not pure imagination or a mere fantasy. It is constructed on an experiential basis thus not simply constructed, but co-constructed by combining human imagination with material reality. There are spatial clusterings of phenomena, such as social structure or kinship patterns and confluences of historical processes, like trade (for example Higham 2014; Reid 2015). I will give examples in the third section. In general, I believe that areal thinking does not happily marry with any extreme constructivist notions or a consequent form of post-structuralism—contra Curaming (2006). The allegation that these areas are merely arbitrarily constructed or artificial is as overstated as are the critiques against old school Area Studies seeing areas as containers. Whoever really postulated fixed territories with closed boundaries and a clearly distinguished inside and outside? All the old area texts mention overlaps with adjacent areas and speak of peripheral or marginal spaces. Even the classics in the culture area approach in anthropology (Malm 2013), like Wissler, Kroeber and Steward, did not think in clearly bounded and homogenous areas. Thus the objection of assumed containers fully holds for political sources and school materials till today, but far less to scientific materials.

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Another demur portrays the concept of Southeast Asia as an area as a result of strategic regional thinking in World War II and Cold War geopolitics. Yet, again, that was not done out of nothing, but based on empirical commonalities. To portray the concept as just a product of geostrategic thought is again severely reductive at best. The English term “Southeast Asia” was created before late colonial times. The concept of Southeast Asia as a cultural realm is historically older, especially in the German-speaking scientific world (“Südostasien,” Heine-Geldern 1923). This areal concept derives from an interest in the distribution of languages and material culture and has motives quite different from geopolitics or colonialism. Furthermore, Southeast Asia is conceptually also rooted in non-European traditions of science, for example in Japan and Korea (Shimizu 2005; Woo & King 2013). All the more, geopolitical concepts leave academia and cross the border into public discourse and become significantly altered laymen’s conceptualizations, for example the “Clash of Cultures” or the German “Kulturkreise.” The allegedly pure constructions, for example of a collective ASEAN identity, become part of the effective life and identity construction not only of politicians but also just plain folks (Jönsson 2010). Thus, such ideas are in themselves social realities. And these realities should matter for empirically oriented social scientists and Cultural Studies. In sum, most of the critiques are well taken on the one side but construct a straw man on the other. Regarding the alleged outsider’s source of the notion Southeast Asia (van Schendel 2012, p.  500), this is historically largely true but this critique itself argues via assumed regions. And the outsiders are not all “Western”: currently a large part of people living a Southeast Asian identity dwell outside the region, for example in Australia, England, Canada or the USA. More fundamentally, genesis and validity (Genese und Geltung) of scientific positions should not be confounded (Hill 2012). Even if the concept is an outsider’s one it may be scientifically correct or fruitful. Academic knowledge should not belong to a particular cultural group or tradition (Cribbs’s comment in van Schendel 2012, p. 504).

Recent Concepts and Their Implicit Spatiality There are several constructive answers to the abovementioned critiques. Examples are several new “studies,” for example post-Area Studies, new Area Studies, critical Area Studies, Crossroads Studies, Boundary Studies and Inter-Asian Cultural Studies. Beyond that, there are notions such as

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beyond area, differentiated spatialities, trans-regional connections, trans-­ national spaces, transient spaces, translocality, trans-boundary and borderlands. Other proposals speak of interconnected spaces, connectivity, connectivity in motion or entanglement, discursive moment or simply mobilities. But most of these propositions come with their own implicit spatial baggage. If we talk of trans-regional connections or of trans-national interaction, we refer to spatial units. The same hold for the use of transient spaces. Furthermore, the question is trans to what? The same can be said for all formulations with boundary such as Boundary Studies and trans-boundary research. Boundaries require units (to be bounded). Spatial boundaries imply areal units. Any boundary space is an area and automatically creates spatial entities and raises the question of sub-areas. Notions of borderland (Horstmann & Wadley 2006) and transgressing are doubly loaded as regards space. Formulations such “dynamic borderlands” (ABRN 2016) and especially notions such as “transgressing borderlands” (ABRN 2014, panel 15) comprise multiple spatial connotations. Other formulations try to distance themselves from old area thinking by promoting post-Area Studies, critical Area Studies or research beyond areas, but all three use the very word and thus transport an idea of area. Similar problems are encountered if we use terms such as Inter-Asian Cultural Studies (Chen 1998; Chen 2010). Like for the notion of intercultural relations, any “inter” logically needs at least two entities linked by it (also the third space) (Appadurai 1996). Any talk of entanglement should say which items or entities are entangled. Are they systems, cultures, civilizations or areas? Implicitly such formulations use similarities in two or more areas respective civilizational realms. Any talk of spatial mobility requires minimally two areal units. Cross implies mobility and a border and that requires at least two units. The notion of crossroads does not only refer to roads (implying spatial links and lacunae) but the question (a)cross which entities such a mobility is realized? Notions of connectivity and interconnected spaces or connectivity in motion imply the question of which entities are connected and whether the concrete connections themselves move or if connectivity is an overarching feature. Most of the objections on areas or more specifically container ideas are not at all specific for Area Studies but reflect classical problems in conceptualizing continuous social spaces (Lewis & Wigen 1997). Even more fundamentally, the whole critique is structurally quite similar, for instance to the objections to the concept of cultures in the plural sense.

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A Proposal: Area as Family Resemblances Plus Network Which concepts might be more helpful than the proliferation of pluralized catch-all terms like mobilities? In the following I elucidate two concepts as the most prolific ones in developing a reflected yet empirically useful science of areas. The idea of family resemblance from Wittgenstein seeks for commonalities between entities without asking for a continual sameness among them or an absolute internal unity within the encompassing unit. His idea is not linked to any gene-related conception. Wittgenstein explains family likeness through the example of games, which are similar to each other only in that they are games. “Games” are neither just a word, as represented in nominalism, nor are they examples of continual similarities, as in realism. They instead form a “family” whose members reveal overlapping similarities, but do not share universal qualities in all relevant features (Wittgenstein 1982, pp. 66–67, p. 109). This concept allows that there is not a single feature shared by all items compared. Accordingly, one is looking closely for networks of similarities in general and in detail instead of attempting or claiming to find equalities. Since it is intended to deal with specific traits, this concept of family resemblance is useful in allowing for a “unity-in-diversity” perspective in Area Studies beyond the usual and anything goes approach or a purely political programmatic (Rehbein 2013). The rationale in using family resemblance in the context of Southeast Asia would be not to start with the assumption of an area but with an open comparison of local cases. These cases may be derived from ethnographies or other case studies. Since currently there are no trials in this direction I present this as a thought experiment. We would compare data about as many human collectives available on our planet as possible. These may be localized face-to-face cultures, sub-cultures or ethnic groups. In light of the difficulty in determining clear boundaries between collectives we can take the number of languages in existence as a proxy (6000–7000). The expectation would be that if we scan these collectives for characteristics derived from a comparative reading of ethnographies made in the relevant area, the result, if plotted as a map, would roughly match the outer border of the 11 countries currently forming Southeast Asia as a political unit. In more detail, I would expect that, for example, parts of Southern China, Taiwan and Eastern South Asia would be included. We would expect that the traits in this inventory are shared by the overwhelming number of collectives in geographic Southeast Asia. We also

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would expect that some of the attributes are found in collectives outside Southeast Asia. The minimal assumption is that the traits in this list are widespread in the area. But, taking the concept of family resemblance seriously, we would assume that not even one of these features is shared by all collectives within that geographical area. Taking this empirically derived clustering—and not a preconceived area—we could then develop more detailed empirical testable hypotheses about shared attributes in the area. Such hypotheses would start from a rationale linking shared attributes in a causal way. The following list provides some speculative shared characteristics and might be a first step in such a direction (Fig. 1). A second alternative to the use of areas which I would consider as most fruitful is the concept of network (or web). Network is a structural and relational concept, the main elements being actors and relations. Actors may be individuals, collectives or institutions. Relations form a structure and may be spatial. The concept allows for spatial, motional or communicational proximity (see “air-travel proximity” versus “digital proximity,” van Schendel 2012, p. 498). It provides a simple and parsimonious model which allows but does not require mutuality (reciprocity) of relations, repetition or purposefulness (see otherwise Crossroads). Contrary to the usual • Staple diet rice and fish plus fermented fish products • Wet rice cultivation • Slash-and-burn agriculture • External economic ties strong, trade relations intensive • Power based on workforce (versus land area) • Antagonism of highland versus lowland/basin societies • Contrast coastal societies (maritime orientation) vs. inland societies • Centered polities with fluid borders (mandala, galactic polity, exemplary center) • Public demonstration of power important (titles, regalia, monuments; theater state) • Public and performative orientation of culture • Charismatic leadership (men of prowess) • Urban culture: plural (versus pluralistic) societal organization of difference • Social organization and kinship inclusive • Assimilation or integration of strangers and foreign ideas easy • Kinship bilateral or cognatic, marriage alliances important • Socioeconomic inequality positively approved/affirmed • Lineage and inherited rank only slightly emphasized • Gender relations egalitarian, comparatively high status and/or prestige of women • Tension of book religions versus local beliefs • Historical consciousness presentist • Leisure activities: betel chewing, cock fights, chess • Material culture: Tattooing, penis inserts and gong-based musical instruments

Fig. 1  Southeast Asia as an Area Formed by Family Resemblances

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ex-ante definitions of borders of regions in many area approaches, the outer borders of such a network are derived empirically ex post. This relational approach allows for an empirical determination of fringes. Thus spatial areas are conceivable as zones of intensive within-exchange. Network concepts are useful for elucidating embeddedness or disembeddedness and are also valuable for historical research, for example on pre-modern networks such as those surrounding the silk roads. A somewhat problematic aspect of any network perspective is a bias towards connectedness, thus a danger of overlooking structural wholes (Granovetter 1973). An orientation towards nodes tends to dismiss holes in the network, disconnected spaces and excluded populations. The argument that there is not one center sometimes denies the relevance of spatial imbalances or distance. If this approach will be related to space we should ask whether actors, relations and their nodes are topographically determinable, whether fixed or moving or movable. A region thus could be determined as an accumulation of actors or as higher densities of relations, that is, as a relational cluster. If movements are dominant the area could be seen as culminating trajectories in relations. Thus, exchange and migration—both aspects of mobility—may constitute a region historically. This can be shown in the case of Southeast Asia (Antweiler 2011). Networks provide a relational and very open approach useful for quite different purposes. This approach and its accompanying methodology is mostly applied in cultural anthropology and sociology but as yet is seldom used in Area Studies. The network or web concept could and should be used if socio-­spatial relations are seen as the core of areas (Derichs 2014, p.  2) and especially by projects explicitly interested in relational patterns. To conclude, to develop Southeast Asian Area Studies more scientifically I argue for the development of systematic concepts of societal spaces. Area as concept can be more than (a) a heuristic device to reduce complexity, (b) a pedagogical mean useful to organize the curriculum, (c) a means useful for political solidarity, (d) a way to secure funds against greedy neighbors, (e) a means to rescue otherwise dying disciplines or (f) a forum, a cozy zone or comfort box, where we can feel a belonging among colleagues. Surely, area can provide all these but the concept might also be a useful scientific tool. Exemplified by Southeast Asia, I have argued that network and family resemblance are the two most fruitful concepts to allow for reflected yet empirically oriented Area Studies.

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Bibliography Abdullah, T., & Manuati, Y. (1994). Towards the Promotion of Southeast Asian Studies in Southeast Asia. Jakarta: Indonesian Institute of Sciences. ABRN (Asian Borderlands Research Network). (2014). Activated Borders: Re-Openings, Ruptures and Relationships [pdf]. Available at: http://www.asianborderlands.net/sites/default/files/Program%20book%20-%20Asian%20 Borderlands%20-%20Hong%20Kong%20-%20website.pdf [Accessed 9 Feb. 2016]. ABRN (Asian Borderlands Research Network). (2016). Dynamic Borderlands: Livelihoods, Communities and Flows [pdf]. Available at: http://www.asianborderlands.net/dynamic-borderlands-livelihoods-communities-and-flows [Accessed 9 Feb. 2016]. Acharya, A. (2012). The Making of Southeast Asia. International Relations of a Region. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Alatas, S. (2006). Alternative Discourses in Asian Social Science. Responses to Eurocentrism. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Anderson, B. (1998). The Spectre of Comparisons. Nationalism, Southeast Asia and the World. London: Verso. Antweiler, C. (2004). Southeast Asia. A Bibliography on Societies and Cultures. Münster: Lit. Antweiler, C. (2011). Interkulturalität in Südostasien—Migration als Motor der Genese von Kulturräumen. In B. Barmeyer, P. Genkova, & J. Scheffer (Eds.), Interkulturelle Kommunikation und Kulturwissenschaft. Grundbegriffe, Wissenschaftsdisziplinen, Kulturräume (pp. 499–517). Passau: Verlag Karl Stutz. Antweiler, C. (2015). Cosmopolitanism and Pancultural Universals. Our Common Denominator and an Anthropologically Based Cosmopolitanism [pdf]. Journal for International and Global Studies, 7(1), 50–66. Available at: http://www. lindenwood.edu/jigs/docs/volume7Issue1/essays/50-66.pdf [Accessed 9 Feb. 2016]. Appadurai, A. (1990). Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy. Theory, Culture and Society, 7(2), 295–310. Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Brass, T. (2012). Scotts “Zomia,” or a Populist Post-Modern History of Nowhere. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 42(1), 123–133. Burawoy, M., Blum, J., George, S., Gille, Z., Gowan, T., Haney, L., Klawiter, M., Lopez, S., Ó Riain, S., & Thayer, M. (2000). Global Ethnography. Forces, Connections, and Imaginations in a Postmodern World. Berkeley: University of California Press. Burawoy, M. (2015). Public Sociology. Öffentliche Soziologie gegen Marktfundamentalismus und globale Ungleichheit. Weinheim: Beltz-Juventa.

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Chen, K. (Ed.). (1998). Trajectories. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies. London: Routledge. Chen, K. (2010). Asia as Method. Toward Deimperialization. Durham: Duke University Press. Chou, C. (2006). Reconceptualizing Southeast Asian Studies. In C. Chou & V. Houben (Eds.), Southeast Asian Studies: Debates and New Directions (pp. 123– 139). Leiden: International Institute for Asian Studies. Chou, C., & Houben, V. (Eds.). (2006). Southeast Asian Studies: Debates and New Directions. Leiden: International Institute for Asian Studies. Corlett, R. (2014). The Ecology of Tropical East Asia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Curaming, R. (2006). Towards a Poststructuralist Southeast Asian Studies? Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 21(1), 90–112. Derichs, C. (2014). Area Studies cum Disciplines: Asia and Europe from a Transdisciplinary Perspective. ASIEN, 132, 5–11. Duara, P. (2015). The Crisis of Global Modernity. Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ellen, R. (2012). Archipelagic Southeast Asia. In R. Fardon, O. Harris, T. Marchand, M. Nuttall, C. Shore, V. Strang, et al. (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Social Anthropology (pp. 422–442). Los Angeles: Sage Publications. Emmerson, D. (1984). “Southeast Asia”: What’s in a Name? Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 15(1), 1–21. Evers, H., & Gerke, S. (2003). Local and Global Knowledge. Social Science Research on Southeast Asia. South East Asian Studies Working Paper 18, Bonn. Goh, B.-L. (Ed.). (2011). Decentring and Diversifying Southeast Asian Studies: Perspectives from the Region. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Granovetter, M. (1973). The Strength of Weak Ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360–1380. Guyer, J. (2013). Regions in Anthropology. In J. Carrier & D. Gewertz (Eds.), The Handbook of Sociocultural Anthropology (pp. 393–402). London: Bloomsbury. Harootunian, H. (2003). Ghostly Comparisons. Anderson’s Telescope. In P. Cheah & J. Culler (Eds.), Grounds of Comparison. Around the Work of Benedict Anderson (pp. 171–188). New York: Routledge. Heine-Geldern, R. v. (1923). Südostasien. In G. Buschan (Ed.), Illustrierte Völkerkunde, Band II, Teil 1: Australien und Ozeanien, Asien (pp. 689–969). Stuttgart: Strecker und Schröder. Heryanto, A. (2002). Can There Be Southeast Asians in Southeast Asian Studies? Moussons: recherche en sciences humaines sur l’Asie du Sud-Est, 5, 3–30. Higham, C. (2014). Early Mainland Southeast Asia. Bangkok: River Book. Hill, J. (2012). A Post-Area Studies Approach to the Study of Hill Irrigation across the Alai—Pamir—Karakorum—Himalaya. Crossroads Asia Working Paper Series 3, Bonn.

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Hornidge, A.-K., & Antweiler, C. (Eds.). (2012). Environmental Uncertainty and Local Knowledge. Southeast Asia as a Laboratory of Global Change. Bielefeld: transcript. Horstmann, A., & Wadley, R. (2006). Centering the Margin. Agency and Narrative in Southeast Asian Borderlands. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Houben, V. (2013). The New Area Studies and Southeast Asian History. DORISEA Working Paper Series 4, Göttingen. Ileto, R. (2002). On the Historiography of Southeast Asia and the Philippines: The “Golden Age” of Southeast Asian Studies—Experiences and Reflections [pdf]. In Proceedings of Workshop on “Can We Write History? Between Postmodernism and Coarse Nationalism” (pp. 55–80). Available at: http:// www.meijigakuin.ac.jp/~iism/frontier/Proceedings/08%20Ileto%20Speech. pdf [Accessed 19 June 2015]. Jessop, B., Brenner, N., & Jones, M. (2008). Theorizing Sociospatial Relations. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26(3), 389–401. Jönsson, K. (2010). Unity-in-Diversity? Regional Identity-Building in Southeast Asia. Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, 29(2), 41–72. Josselin de Jong, J. d. (1935). De Maleische Archipel als ethnologisch studieveld. Leiden: J. Ginsberg. Josselin de Jong, P. d. (1965). An Interpretation of Agricultural Rites in Southeast Asia, with a Demonstration of the Use of Data from Both Continental and Insular Areas. The Journal of Asian Studies, 14(2), 283–291. King, V. (2001). Southeast Asia: An Anthropological Field of Study? Moussons: recherche en sciences humaines sur l’Asie du Sud-Est, 3, 3–31. King, V. (2008). The Sociology of Southeast Asia. Transformations in a Developing Region. Copenhagen: NIAS Press. Kratoska, P., Schulte-Nordholt, H., & Raben, R. (Eds.). (2005). Locating Southeast Asia. Geographies of Knowledge and Politics of Space. Singapore and Leiden: National University of Singapore Press and KITLV Press. Lewis, M., & Wigen, K. (1997). The Myth of Continents. A Critique of Metageography. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lieberman, V. (2010). A Zone of Refuge in Southeast Asia? Reconceptualizing Interior Spaces. Journal of Global History, 5(2), 333–346. Lombard, D. (1993). Rever L’Asie. Exotisme et littérature coloniale aux Indes, en Indochine et en Insulinde. Paris: Éditions de L’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). MacDonald, C. (2004). What is the Use of Area Studies? IIAS [International Institute of Asian Studies] Newsletter, 2004(35), 1, 4. Malm, T. (2013). Culture Area Approach. In R. McGee & R. Warms (Eds.), Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology: An Encyclopedia (pp. 161–164). Los Angeles: Sage Reference.

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Michaud, J., & Forsyth, T. (Eds.). (2011). Moving Mountains. Ethnicity and Livelihoods in Highland China, Vietnam, and Laos. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Mielke, K., & Hornidge, A.-K. (2014). Crossroads Studies: From Spatial Containers to Interactions in Differentiated Spatialities. Crossroads Asia Working Paper Series 15, Bonn. Ooi, K. (2009). Southeast Asian Studies in Southeast Asia. Agenda for the TwentyFirst Century. New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, 11(1), 426–446. Orta, A. (2013). Area Studies. In R. McGee & R. Warms (Eds.), Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology: An Encyclopedia (pp. 28–31). Los Angeles: Sage Reference. Pannell, C. (1978). Monsoon Asia. In D. Hoy (Ed.), Geography and Development. A World Regional Approach (pp. 548–689). New York: Macmillan. Rafael, V. (1999). Southeast Asian Studies—Where from? In I. Abraham (Ed.), Weighing the Balance: Southeast Asian Studies Ten Years After: Proceedings of Two Meetings Held in New York City on 15 November and 10 December, 1999. New York: Southeast Asian Program, Social Science Research Council (SSRC). Rehbein, B. (2013). Kaleidoskopische Dialektik. Kritische Theorie nach dem Aufstieg des globalen Südens. Wien: Universitätsverlag Konstanz. Reid, A. (2015). A History of Southeast Asia. Critical Crossroads. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Rigg, J. (2002). Southeast Asia. The Human Landscape of Modernisation and Development. London: Routledge. Rigg, J. (2016). Challenging Southeast Asian Development. The Shadow of Success. London: Routledge. Schefold, R. (1994). Cultural Anthropology, Future Tasks of Bijdragen and the Indonesian Field of Anthropological Study. Bijdragen tot de Taal, Land- en Volkenkunde, 150(4), 805–825. Schulte Nordholt, N., & Visser, L. (Eds.). (1995). Social Science in Southeast Asia. From Particularism to Universalism. Amsterdam: VU University Press. Shimizu, H. (2005). Southeast Asia as a Regional Concept in Modern Japan. In P. Kratoska, H. Schulte Nordholt, & R. Raben (Eds.), Locating Southeast Asia: Geographies of Knowledge and Politics of Space (pp. 82–112). Athens: Ohio State University Press. Sidaway, J. (2013). Geography, Globalization and the Problematic of Area Studies. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 103(4), 984–1002. Spivak, G. C. (2008). Other Asias. London: Wiley-Blackwell. Strandsberg, J. (2010). Territory, Globalization and International Relations. The Cartographic Reality of Space. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Steedly, M. (1999). The State of Culture Theory in the Anthropology of Southeast Asia. Annual Reviews of Anthropology, 28, 431–454.

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Szanton, D. (Ed.). (2004). The Politics of Knowledge. Area Studies and the Disciplines. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tachimoto, N. (1995). Global Area Studies with Special Reference to the Malay or Maritime World. Southeast Asian Studies, 33(3), 187–201. Thum, P. (2012). Southeast Asian Studies as a Form of Power. IIAS [International Institute of Asian Studies] Newsletter, 2012(62), 12–13. Uhlig, H. (1989). Überlegungen zur Abgrenzung von Kulturerdteilen. Südostasien und seine Nachbarn. In R. Heyer & M. Hommel (Eds.), Stadt- und Kulturraum. P. Schöller zum Gedenken (pp. 179–194). Paderborn: Schöningh. van Schendel, W. (2002). Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Jumping Scale in Southeast Asia. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 20(6), 647–668. van Schendel, W. (2014). Southeast Asia. An Idea Whose Time is Past? Bijdragen tot de Taal-Land- en Volkenkunde, 168(4), 497–510. Winzeler, R. (2011). The Peoples of Southeast Asia Today: Ethnography, Ethnology, and Change in a Complex Region. Lanham: Altamira Press. Wittgenstein, L. (1982). Philosophische Untersuchungen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Wolters, O. (Ed.). (1999). History, Culture, and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Woo, P., & King, V. (Eds.). (2013). The Historical Construction of Southeast Asian Studies: Korea and Beyond. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Yamashita, S., & Eades, J. (Eds.). (2001). Globalization in Southeast Asia. Local, National and Transnational Perspectives. Oxford: Berghahn Books.

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Between Ignoring and Romanticizing: The Position of Area Studies in Policy Advice Conrad Schetter On 5–6 March 2015 a workshop on policy advice in the thematic field of peace and security research took place at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP/German Institute for International and Security Affairs) in Berlin, including 30 leading German researchers, policy advisers and policymakers. The overall aim of this meeting was to discuss to what extent think tanks concerned with Peace, Conflict and Security (PCS) research can provide substantial advice to German policymakers and what kind of knowledge is required by the German Parliament, Foreign Office and so on. One interesting finding from this debate was that the particular PCS expertise of German think tanks is very often limited to general arguments and frequently lacks a sound knowledge of cultural, social and political conditions of a certain country or area, which policymakers necessarily need for implementing their policy. Consequently, the perception evolved in this workshop that experts in Area Studies are much better suited to provide substantial advice to policymakers than generalists of PCS research are able to do. This anecdotal experience highlights that expertise in Area Studies is seen as a key qualification for policy advice in the field of PCS. This chapter addresses the questions what role Area Studies play institutionally in think tanks and practically in policy advice. In what way Area Studies plays

C. Schetter (*) Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC), Bonn, Germany © The Author(s) 2017 K. Mielke, A.-K. Hornidge (eds.), Area Studies at the Crossroads, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59834-9_5 [email protected]

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a significant role in the thematic as well as strategic profile of PCS think tanks is first shown, along with how the predominant understanding of Area Studies characterizes the political culture of think tanks and policymakers. Second, I want to discuss in what way policymakers include area expertise into their decision-making processes, with the concrete example of the international intervention in Afghanistan. The chapter ends with several concluding remarks about how PCS think tanks could make a more valuable use of area knowledge and thereby overcome certain cultural and colonial imaginations which are not only persistent in Western policymaking but in many PCS think tanks as well. While I am aware that the limitations of this chapter on PCS think tanks means focusing on a small segment of Social Science-oriented policy advice only, most considerations which I will discuss here can similarly be put forward for other policy-oriented research fields such as Development, Migration, Labor or Environmental Studies.

Institutional Settings

of PCS

Think Tanks

In general, think tanks focused on PCS face the key challenge of providing policy advice to ministries, parliaments, policymakers and development agencies on the one side, and showing excellence in academic research (peer-reviewed articles and so on) on the other. Each think tank has to find and defend its own position on this particular axis between policymaking and research in accordance with its self-description as well with its dependency on certain peer groups, stakeholders and funding agencies. This is why think tanks face many peculiarities, which makes it even more difficult to provide a coherent definition of the nature of think tanks and their particular mandate: On the one hand one has to consider that think tanks operate differently in local, regional, national and international frameworks which are constitutive for their own positionality and self-­ definition. On the other hand, the political-institutional character of think tanks is very wide—ranging from political foundations and academic offshoots of ministries or of private companies, to independent, self-funded research centers.1 This makes it even more difficult to describe a general mandate for policy advice. Against this background the approaches of policy advice vary a lot, including the following mandates: 1. the preparation of concise and summarized dossiers (“state-of-the-­ art”) about a certain topic for policymakers,

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2. the legitimizing of a political decision by providing academically well-elaborated arguments or studies, 3. the lobbying/advocacy for a certain policy, 4. the provision of solutions/scenarios/guidelines for policymakers, 5. the full inclusion of policy advisers and researchers in decision-­ making processes and 6. the questioning and challenging of policymakers. This overview shows that the range of task for think tanks goes from pure contract work with a clear duty to confirm the desired results of the client, to the contrary—alienating the client by challenging his standpoints and assumptions. Such heterogeneity of strands of policy advice has to be taken into account if the alignment of PCS think tanks vis-à-vis generalized thematic knowledge and/or area expertise has to be addressed. In general, one can argue that PCS think tanks provide a differentiated picture when it comes to area expertise. Certainly there are several topics in PCS which for good reason neglect or do not need a clear reference to a particular regional or area focus. To mention just a few, there are global themes such as nuclear proliferation, arms technology, international law-­ making, diplomacy, the institutional setting of the United Nations and so on. In such cases a disciplinary background (for example law, natural sciences, technical knowledge) and a particular knowledge in technical or legal details are much more significant. However, most of the research in PCS can be situated on a mid-range, in which a mixture of thematic knowledge and area expertise is needed: Terrorism, arms control or the definition of security threats usually cannot only be sketched out in general terms, but must include certain area expertise. Finally, there is a whole set of themes within PCS where area knowledge—often combined with empirical field research—is essential. Think about the dynamics of concrete (civil) wars, violent conflicts and military interventions, but also mediations, conflict resolutions and peace making approaches, which are shaped by specific social and cultural conditions. Here, the belief usually preponderates that the “local knowledge,” based on a certain area expertise, is much more valuable than a “generalized knowledge.” In general, think tanks either chose to concentrate on a particular thematic field, with the aim to cover one exceptional niche in policy advice, or their strategy is to have multilayered interactions with policymakers what would include a well-balanced mixture of thematic and area expertise. A

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survey of large think tanks in the field of PCS (see Fig. 2) shows, that PCS think tanks follow different strategies and concepts, but overall tend to aim for the mixed approach. Most PCS think tanks combine particular thematic foci with Area Studies in their working structure. In general, within the landscape of PCS think tanks a differentiation between full matrix structures, mixed structures and thematic structures can be observed. Large institutions very often favor a full matrix structure, where research is grouped around certain countries or areas on the one side and certain thematic topics on the other. By having thematic as well as area expertise, the idea of the matrix structure is that ideally the respective think tank is able to combine in-house country/area knowledge and thematic expertise for every relevant topic. A few “giants” among think tanks such as RAND and USIP even include a country level, while others differentiate their working structure along the lines of continents/subcontinents or areas. Thus, not only through the chosen thematic fields, but also by the way certain areas are defined and which ones are chosen, the particular focus of the think tank can be sharpened.2 Only a few think tanks follow an approach of combining concrete topics with a particular area perspective. For example, several European institutes such as IFSH, SIPRI or Clingendael include a section on “European Full Matrix

Full Matrix Structure

Mixed Structure

Thematical

Structure

(Continents/sub-

(Countries)

continents)

RAND

Brookings

Clingendael

BICC

USIP

CSIS

IFSH

HSFK

DGAP

SIPRI

INEF

Structure

SWP

PRIO

Swiss Peace (GIGA)

Fig. 2  Department Structure of Think Tanks in Peace, Conflict and Security (PCS) Research

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Security Policy.” Along the same lines, SIPRI initiated a research group on “Security in Africa,” although most of the other research themes at this institute are purely focused on thematically defined fields. Finally, there are purely thematically organized think tanks such as PRIO—the largest Peace and Conflict think tank in Europe—as well as HSFK, INEF or BICC. While the area expertise is certainly not absent in these think tanks, area foci are not used as an obvious structural element. This overview demonstrates that a certain area expertise is of predominant significance for most think tanks—and often so important that the institute is structured visibly along area divisions. It seems to be important for think tanks to have in-house expertise on certain regions or countries such as Latin America, China, Africa or the Middle East. Moreover, the favored matrix structure of many think tanks mirrors to some extent the structure of the foreign offices of many countries or international organizations (such as World Bank, United Nations). For example, in Germany both the Federal Foreign Office as well as the Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development follow a matrix structure, by having country/area desks as well as thematic desks.3 However, due to the short term (up to three years) of staying in one office, in many countries policymakers and diplomats are trained as generalists and not as thematic or regional experts.4 This institutional setting, where policymakers, diplomats and practitioners are trained as generalists but not as specialists, has a strong impact on the role area expertise has to play in PCS. Based on her own experiences with UN missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Timor Leste and Afghanistan, Severine Autesserre (2014) argues that the generalized approach enables international organizations to have wider room for maneuver by shifting their staff from one location to another and from one peace mission to another. She therefore finds that UN missions usually have hardly any substantial understanding of the cultural, social and political context within which they are working. This results in uninformed ignorance, or situations where reference to certain unreflected prejudices and generalized assumptions triumph over context sensitivity. Against this stated lack of country expertise in policymaking and peace missions, area expertise constitutes an essential niche for PCS think tanks. However, a general misunderstanding in policy advice and political think tanks is that area expertise is generally seen as a static knowledge on essentialized cultural and social behavior. Thus, PCR think tanks are caught in a situation where their main emphasis lies in certain political themes and the

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provision of knowledge about a particular region and/or nation-state is of subordinated interest for policymaking. This is why a reflection about the nature of Area Studies and the quality of area expertise in PCS think tanks hardly takes place at the moment. In-house area expertise is somehow reduced to certain technical qualifications, which can be mobilized for answering immediate questions of political interest and for legitimizing that the representative of a think tank is justified to give policy advice. The qualifications can be summarized as following: –– –– –– ––

Local language skills “Having been there” Knowing/identifying key actors Understanding codes and institutions: “culture”

These qualities reflect that policymaking is in need of concrete operational information (Who are the relevant actors and networks? How do I have to behave? Which local/national characteristics does one have to be aware of?), which can be directly used in political negotiation and decision-­ making processes. Thus, what dominates is a very functional understanding of area expertise which should be available on demand to help implement certain policy processes. However, it is hardly the case that area-specific knowledge is openly discussed to reflect or influence political decisions per se. In this respect, one can argue that area expertise is merely seen as an assisting knowledge resource, which is subordinate to the overall political decision. Thus, a key critique of political decision-­ making processes is that there is a need to better include area expertise in the process prior to decisions which are envisaged. This would provide the opportunity to reflect on the inherent logics, perceptions and instruments of the policymakers from the angle of area expertise before a certain track is chosen. This shortcoming in policy advice is exemplified by the intervention in Afghanistan, as discussed in the following.

The Example

of Local

Politics in Afghanistan

Despite the fact that the discourses of donor communities and intervention agencies stress time and again the role of incorporating local knowledge, and that generally there is a strong awareness about the need to tailor political strategies to the “local” conditions in international organizations and discourses (Richmond 2014), intervention policy and practice are driven by the interests, perceptions and worldviews of the interveners

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(Mielke 2015). This manifests in particular when area expertise is ignored in the developing of the masterplan for any mission, program or project of intervention and is only requested when interventions hit the ground or face “local” resistance for the first time. Thus the task of area experts is too often to fix problems that the overarching policy was unable to envisage. “Local politics” is, therefore, an interesting field to show how politics is making use of area expertise. When intervention politics is cast in programs, projects and missions, “the local” comes to the fore in subjects such as communities, state officers, bureaucrats, policemen, commanders, militias, domestic NGOs, contractors and so forth. It is usually believed that the encounter with “the local” is the time to bring in the area specialist: Due to his assumed cultural competence he should be the one who knows how to address and formulate a certain message to the ordinary people or how to “sell” a certain project to them. In the case of the international intervention in Afghanistan (since 2001) the example of “local politics” and the inclusion of area experts demonstrate the transition from a policy of ignoring local knowledge to one of showing an excessive interest in it—without really aiming to understand local politics but rather to subsume it into an intervention strategy. Ignoring Area Expertise At the beginning of the intervention, “local politics” and respective area knowledge were nearly completely ignored by international decision-­ makers. The term “local” was discussed in a biased way: Particular local representatives—which interventionists liked to call warlords, tribal elders or drug barons—were accused of being the reason for the dysfunctionality of the Afghan state (Giustozzi 2009; Schetter & Glassner 2009). Therefore, the interventionists either tended to define Afghan society in a generalizing manner as “pre-modern,” “tribal” or “anarchic,” or they believed in the convincing power of liberal concepts such as “democracy,” “good governance” or “development” (see Johnson & Leslie 2004; Suhrke 2011). Consequently, external interventions in Afghanistan since 2001 failed or contradicted each other time and again due to ignorance or the lack of capacity to take the great diversity of local realities in Afghanistan properly into consideration. This ignorance of the role of local politics in Afghanistan has to be seen in the light of the general debate on failed states and fragile statehood which emerged in the late 1990s (Milliken 2003; Rotberg 2003). The ensuing popular debate since then has revolved

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around the evolution or decline of functional state structures, usually measured against the background of the Weberian ideal type of a bureaucratic state. This perception did not change until 2008/9, when the US-led counter-insurgency (COIN) strategy discovered the local. Against the background of this debate, the international community pursued a center-oriented state-building approach in Afghanistan since 2001. This strategy was stimulated by the idea of building the Afghan state from scratch and modernizing Afghan society through a cascade approach, starting in the capital Kabul and extending to the rural periphery.5 The international community assumed that the rest of the country would successively come under the rule of the Afghan state once the politics of the central government in the capital was heading in the right direction and the center became powerful enough (Suhrke 2011). Thus, the approach was one in which the history of the country was largely ignored, at least not reflected in the intervention politics, and the country was seen as an “empty space” in which institutions can be imitated according to external blueprints, meanwhile denying the (pre-)existence of local institutions (Mielke 2015). With this functional and even ahistorical perspective, which believed in the legitimate power of a Weberian state, the consultation of area expertise would have contradicted such a universal approach. In consequence, when the interventionists addressed the local level, they usually did so from a state-centric angle and in accordance with the logic and terminology of the Western understanding of good governance (Mielke 2015). Another reason why the local was neglected at the beginning of the intervention was the lack of knowledge on the local situations that had prevailed during the war, starting in the late 1970s. The lack of research data and the subsequent gaps in knowledge on figurations of local politics meant that the reconstruction process beyond Kabul took place in a “black box”-like situation (Schetter 2013). Nevertheless, policymakers only randomly consulted area experts on Afghanistan, ignoring the fact that they were very well organized even during the years of war.6 Against this background the international players had to develop their own understanding and concepts about the socio-economic structures in Afghanistan, the demands of the Afghan people and the appropriate design of external interventions—all under huge time pressure. Not surprisingly, most of the underlying understandings and concepts were borrowed from experiences of interventions which took place in the 1990s elsewhere (for example East Timor or Kosovo) rather than being drawn from the local realities in Afghanistan (Schetter 2014). Therefore, in the initial stage of the

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intervention, the generally preferred approach was to entrust Afghanistan to diplomats, military personnel and development aid volunteers who had already worked in other (post-)conflict states in the 1990s. Naturally, they usually applied the knowledge gained from their previous experience in conflict settings to Afghanistan. Because the intervention in Afghanistan took place under the lasting impact of the Balkan wars, it therefore seemed natural to apply patterns and models that had proved to be practical in Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina to Afghanistan as well. Analogous to the ethnic conditions in the Balkans, it was striking that at one Afghanistan Task Force meeting which I attended at the German Foreign Office in early November 2001, the question of the ethnic affiliation of Afghan “big men” was raised repeatedly, in an obsessive manner, although the attending area experts warned that ethnicity plays a very different and less absolute role in Afghan society than in the Balkans. It therefore comes as no surprise that military operations and development programs were often based on assumptions and experiences transferred from other regions and countries but which failed to call up the available area expertise. A good example of the ignoring of area expertise among the military and policymakers is the “hearts and minds” approach, on which billions were spent during the intervention. This approach was based on the assumption that the Afghan people could be convinced and won over with material incentives and better opportunities in life. But already the ideas of the spin-doctors of this program—that Afghans would irrevocably side with one party—was wishful thinking. In many regions of Afghanistan, being on good terms with all warring factions has always been considered prestigious and a useful strategy for ultimately being on the winner’s side and/or being able to mediate between competing parties. This strategic behavior of “sitting at the fence” had been well researched, especially during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s (Roy 1986; Rubin 1995). Even the highest financial and material incentives for siding with the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the Afghan government were seldom able to “buy” loyalties and could at best get them “rented.” In a way, the misguided “hearts and minds” approach emphasized the deep gulf between the interventionists and the Afghans. Romanticizing Area Expertise After the first eight years of external intervention experiments, policymakers, aid workers and the military had to confess that their intrusions

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into local politics had had unpredictable effects. Even more, they slowly realized that they were operating in a situation in which the impacts of their interventions were all too often contradicting the initial goals of the reconstruction programs. It became obvious that external interventions frequently harmed the beneficiaries rather than helped them, due to their tendency to aggravate existing conflicts and social inequalities. Because of these experiences, political observers and think tanks became aware that holistic blueprint approaches such as “nation-building” or “liberal peace” rarely worked in Afghanistan. The goal was not only illusive in normative terms, but was also not fine-tuned to distinct local settings. This is why the international community made a radical shift in 2009, confessing that area knowledge has to be considered much more in intervention strategies. The ineluctable return of the Taliban as well as the growing number and fast expansion of the so-called insurgencies could no longer be explained by interpreting the Taliban as an alien, “dark” force that only succeeded by spreading threats and fear. From now on, the US Army put considerations about local politics at the center of its conceptualization of external interventions. This could be observed ostensibly in the refreshed military strategy. After billions of US dollars had been spent to demobilize combatants of local militias, the US Army and some other NATO countries started to remilitarize the local militias in 2008—the so-­ called Afghan Local Police Force (Giustozzi & Isaqzadeh 2012). In the field of developmental aid, the international community, after spending a decade trying to introduce participatory and democratic Community Development Councils (CDCs), finally discovered “traditional” jirgas and shuras as the main bodies of local governance (Noelle-Karimi 2013). The USA and its NATO allies shifted the focus of their military operations from fighting the “War on Terror” against al-Qaeda and the Taliban towards counter-insurgency (COIN). COIN can be labeled as a “tribal turn.” Besides many military operational aspects, the main difference with conventional military intervention has been the development of a deeper understanding of local realities—at least in the conceptualization of COIN. The demonization of the local which occurred in the early years of the intervention was ultimately replaced by its romanticization (see Kilcullen 2009; Kilcullen 2010). Military anthropologists and advisers constantly referred to tribal norms (pashtunwali) and practices (for example jirga, arbakee) to explain the behavior of the insurgents in general terms. Hence, the US military’s perception of warfare in Afghanistan gradually became tribalized (Porter 2009).

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The analysis tool of the “human terrain system” became the new mantra of military operations. Hence anthropological research on Afghanistan and the overall area witnessed an unexpected and even highly disputed revival among military think tanks. Military analysts went back to the bookshelves to read the classical anthropological works on Pashtun tribes by distinguished anthropologists such as Fredrik Barth, Akbar Ahmed or Charles Lindholm to understand warfare in southern and south eastern Afghanistan. It became common practice for military operations to be supported in the field by “embedded anthropologists.” On the one hand, several scholars applauded (Kilcullen 2009; Johnson 2007) as the external intervention policy became more sensitive to local conditions by including area knowledge. On the other, the counter-insurgency approach was heavily criticized from the discipline of anthropology. Anthropologists suspected a misuse, misinterpretation and instrumentalization of anthropological knowledge by the military (Kelly et al. 2010; González 2009). The “tribal” approach the international interventionists followed from 2009 until the withdrawal of the masses of NATO and US troops in 2013 is an example that makes it abundantly clear that information is often confused with knowledge. First, within the framework of the COIN strategy, area expertise on Afghanistan was pressed into simplified formulas that corresponded to the Western worldview of Afghanistan as being “different,” “foreign” or “alien.” This entailed the enormous inherent risk of social and cultural attributes undergoing a simplification that caused the dynamics and fluidity of social processes to be overlooked (see Schetter 2013). Second, the advocates of COIN fell into the dangerous belief in the continued existence of an Afghan “inward looking society,” a term coined by the late American scholar and Afghanistan expert Louis Dupree (1973). This understanding completely ignored the fact that Afghans had been affected in the last three decades by globalization processes that consisted of civil war, refugee movements and labor migration (Monsutti 2005; Harpviken 2009). Thus, a generalization of ethnic Pashtun or even a national Afghan culture through the prism of “the tribe” misses the realities that Afghans are simultaneously influenced by pre-modern, modern and post-modern norms and values. Third, a criticism of the COIN strategy is that it placed belief in the feasibility of a clear understanding and generalizing of local politics. Ignoring strong reservations from anthropologists about generalized analyses of political processes in a particular context, the military intended to develop technological tools to turn the knowledge available on local politics into

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concrete military directives. In other words, the COIN approach aspired to establish procedures of data collection (village profiles, tribal mappings etc.) and categorization (for example tribal, sectarian affiliation) and produce analysis tools (maps, tables) to profile a society in such a way that local realities could be reduced to a degree intelligible for military operations. Thus, COIN can be criticized for ignoring the complexity of local politics as well as anthropological methods such as long-standing field research or participatory observation. In a nutshell, the tendency for COIN to “go tribal” risked producing a distorted picture of local conditions.

From “Colonializing Area Studies” to the “Subjectivity of the Local” The example of the role area knowledge has played in the intervention in Afghanistan is telling. In the operational procedures of policymakers, area experts were seen as the technical missing link, who should adopt the ambitious goals of the intervention to the local conditions at the very moment when that intervention was on the brink of failure. However, not only during the intervention in Afghanistan, but in general the role of area experts is confined to that of local fixers of humanitarian aid, development projects, military operations or peace building missions. Even more problematically, area experts were seen as the ones who should pave the way for a highly questionable military mission, which opens again the question of to what extent and on what expenses policy advice and technical advice should take place. This opens up another, highly relevant question of morality, which cannot be discussed within the scope of this chapter. The intervention in Afghanistan is just one illustrative example of the general demand for “local ownership” and “local knowledge” in ­development policy, which international institutions (World Bank, UNDP etc.) postulate publicly time and again. As a key caveat, for any kind of policy process it becomes obvious that the area expert is not seen as an advisor who should be consulted in the early stages of the decision-making process, for example for the designing of projects, programs or operations. Along the same lines, it is also not properly considered that area experts are involved in a continuous and critical reflection on the processes of military or developmental interventions.7 The treatment of Area Studies as an ancillary science, which should provide the technical knowledge for practical solutions only, follows a traditional understanding which believes that every area, every country, every local context is shaped by an essential

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set of cultural norms and social practices. Such a worldview neglects that human beings are interwoven in social figurations and flows of knowledge, which contest the idea of an inward-looking society that shares a fundamental and single set of unique cultural practices. Put differently, due to the highly dynamic processes of globalization, an essentialized culture and the locally defined “other” are hardly possible to detect anywhere in the world. One has to keep in mind that classical Area Studies as an academic subject is responsible for the invention of geopolitical thinking, which is strongly rooted in a colonial legacy (Lewis & Wigen 1997) and which believes in the full isomorphism of territory and culture. As we aimed to show in the Crossroads Asia project (see Introduction by Mielke and Hornidge, in this volume), a different pathway for thinking about research on “areas” is absolutely needed. Such a rethinking would not only have an impact on higher education and universities (Amoo-Adare, in this volume), but also on think tanks and policy advice. Therefore, my plea is that area expertise should not only be measured in indicators such as whether he/she has command of the language, understands the religious practices and so forth, but much more through the ability to contextualize and navigate social order (Mielke et al. 2011). Area expertise needs the “thick knowledge” about everyday practices, as well as the institutions, moralities and worldviews of a society. On the one hand, this kind of knowledge delves much deeper into societal structures than the accurate learning of a language and the textbook knowledge about a certain culture requires. This means a shift from understanding the “cultural interior” of a society to a sound analysis of social practices. The flow of ideas, the interconnectivity of society and the networks of individuals and collectives have to be considered, instead of practicing the purification of an essentialized, idealized culture. The role of area expertise is not to detect and decipher the “exotic other” for the Western standard of the “normal.” I argue, in the contrary direction, that the area expert should become the “advocate” for those who are not able to speak for themselves (Spivak 2010). The crux of PCS debates is that policymakers, advisors and academics are very often discussing among themselves what kind of policy is needed to change a certain situation in a country abroad. Hereby, the respective country and society are automatically seen as objects of political decision-making processes only. They are stripped of their subject status. The consensual habit of policy discussions all too swiftly agrees about a certain character of a country’s president, people, elites, party leaders and so on. What are missing in such debates are the advocates for the ones

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who are not present to articulate themselves. Area experts—who might not have the technical knowledge nor the firm vocabulary on political issues such as state-building, economic embargos, military operations and such like—might be the ones who are able to outline alternative or even progressive perspectives on the respective population. They can bring the subjectivity of the absent to the table of diplomacy and decision-making. When this approach is taken seriously, area expertise can offer an enormous potential for think tanks in PCR.  Following the current practices and logics of political decision-making, the provision of area expertise is of limited interest if a think tank has the ambition to impact policymaking directly. In line with the six key functions of policy advice set out in the beginning, I argue that area expertise should be much more prominently involved in policy processes for 1. the provision of solutions/scenarios/guidelines for policymakers, 2. the full inclusion of policy advisers and researchers into decision-­ making processes and 3. the questioning and challenging of policymakers. My argument is that think tanks which aim particularly not only to be the subsidiaries of policymakers, but to produce path-breaking ideas for decision-makers should make much more use of their area expertise to question the routinized and well-beaten tracks of policymaking. Area experts who are aware of the complexity of the ordering principles of the respective countries, locales and regions, are the ones who can challenge political perceptions and convenient routines as well as the rhetorical figures in which diplomats and policymakers are used to thinking. However, such an approach has consequences for the way think tanks view area expertise. The full consequence for the strategy of a think tank would mean that the kind of knowledge the in-house expert is able to provide would be of much more of interest and value than the ability to cover certain territorial-cultural entities. The key qualification of the area expert would amount to the ability to see the world through the prism of the organizing principles (social order) of the respective area and being able to translate the perceptions, aspirations and fears of “the locals” into meaningful and understandable messages for diplomats and political bureaucrats. However, my plea for a stronger and also different way of involving area expertise in political decision-making processes—if it should get heard—includes inherent perils. It would be going in the wrong direc-

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tion to institutionalize the area expert as the advocatus diaboli in political decision-making processes, as a new kind of political jester. Such an approach would only lead to a mimicking or to a hollow representation of the “other,” and not to a credible raising of the voices of those who are absent from discussions.

Notes 1. For an overview see the Global Think Tank Ranking of the University of Pennsylvania. http://gotothinktank.com/index/the-go-to-index-​ ranking-process/ 2. Most obvious and explicit is the matrix structure at GIGA, which understands itself as an explicit think tank of Area Studies and not primarily as a PCS institute. At GIGA, ideally each researcher consequently belongs to a continental section as well as to a thematic one. GIGA (German Institute of Global and Area Studies) emerged in 2006 out of the so-called Deutsches Übersee Institut (DÜI). 3. Over the years, one could observe different waves of regrouping and reorganizing, in which the balance between thematic and country responsibilities was negotiated time and again. See the Review Process of the German Foreign Office 2014/15 here: http://www. aussenpolitik-weiter-denken.de/de/themen.html 4. In respect to the shape of areas, Foreign Offices worldwide follow different approaches which do not just reflect the positionality of the country in world politics. Even the idea of dividing the world into continents, which is typically the case in the Western politics, is not a general guiding principle. For example, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs is organized in such a way that the sections are divided along sectarian/religious identities respectively in Sunni countries, Muslim countries and the rest of the world. 5. Here it is worth mentioning that in the eyes of many practitioners the official term “rebuilding” was rejected with the argument that institutions have not existed so far and thus are built the first time. 6. In the German-speaking academic community, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Afghanistan (AGA) (Afghanistan Research Group [ARG]) had been founded in the 1960s and consisted of more than 200 members in 2001. In the USA, the Center for Afghanistan Studies (CAS) at the University of Nebraska, founded in 1972, has a considerable knowledge base. During the Cold War, the CAS did important propaganda

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work for the US administration, especially the production of schoolbooks. In 2002, the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU), a user-oriented research NGO with its own library, was founded in Kabul. In 2003, the American Institute for Afghanistan Studies (AIAS), with which many US anthropologists are affiliated, was founded in Boston. In addition, there are various academic institutes at which intensive research on Afghanistan is being conducted. They include the London School of Economics (LSE), the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, the Graduate Institute for Development in Geneva, the Christian Michelsen Institute (CMI) in Bergen as well as the Central Asian Seminar at the Humboldt University and the Center for Development Research (ZEF) of the University of Bonn, Germany. 7. The ARG (Afghanistan Research Group), the association of German researchers working on Afghanistan, requested the German parliament and relevant ministries in September 2008 to establish a committee of experts, which should continuously reflect and advise German development and military activities in Afghanistan. There was no reaction from the political side.

Bibliography Autesserre, S. (2014). Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Intervention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dupree, L. (1973). Afghanistan. New Haven: Princeton University Press. Giustozzi, A. (2009). Empires of Mud. Wars and Warlords in Afghanistan. London: Hurst. Giustozzi, A., & Isaqzadeh, M. (2012). Afghan Police Policing Afghanistan: The Politics of the Lame Leviathan. London: Hurst. González, R. (2009). Anthropologists or “Technicians of Power”? Examining the Human Terrain System. Anthropology Today, 31(1), 34–37. Harpviken, K. (2009). Social Networks and Migration in Wartime Afghanistan. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Johnson, C., & Leslie, J. (2004). Afghanistan. The Mirage of Peace. London: Zed Books. Johnson, T. (2007). On the Edge of the Big Muddy: The Taliban Resurgence in Afghanistan. China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly, 5(2), 93–129. Kelly, J., Jauregui, B., Mitchell, S., & Walton, J. (Eds.). (2010). Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kilcullen, D. (2009). The Accidental Guerilla. Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One. London: Hurst.

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Kilcullen, D. (2010). Counterinsurgency. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lewis, M., & Wigen, K. (1997). The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageogra­ phy. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mielke, K., Schetter, C., & Wilde, A. (2011). Dimensions of Social Order: Empirical Fact, Analytical Framework and Boundary Concept. ZEF Working Paper 78, Bonn. Mielke, K. (2015). (Re-)Constructing Afghanistan? Rewriting Rural Afghans’ Lebenswelten into Recent Development and State-Making Processes. An Analysis of Local Governance and Social Order. PhD. Universität Bonn. Milliken, J. (Ed.). (2003). State Failure, Collapse & Reconstruction: Issues and Responses. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons. Monsutti, A. (2005). War and Migration: Social Networks and Economic Strategies of the Hazara of Afghanistan. London: Routledge. Noelle-Karimi, C. (2013). Jirga, Shura and Community Development Councils: Village Institutions and State Interference. In C. Schetter (Ed.), Local Politics in Afghanistan. A Century of Intervention in the Social Order (pp. 39–58). London: Hurst. Porter, P. (2009). Military Orientalism. Eastern War through Western Eyes. London: Hurst. Richmond, O. (2014). Failed Statebuilding: Intervention, the State, and the Dynamics of Peace Formation. New Haven: Yale University Press. Rotberg, R. (Ed.). (2003). State Failure and State Weakness in a Time of Terror. Washington DC: Brookings Institute Press. Roy, O. (1986). Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rubin, B. (1995). The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System. New Haven: Yale University Press. Schetter, C., & Glassner, R. (2009). Neither Functioning, nor Failing of the State! Seeing Violence in Afghanistan from Local Perspectives. In S. Collmer (Ed.), From Fragile State to Functioning State: Pathways to Democratic Transformation in Georgia, Kosovo, Moldova, and Afghanistan (pp. 141–160). Berlin: Lit/Transaction Press. Schetter, C. (Ed.). (2013). Local Politics in Afghanistan. A Century of Intervention in Social Order. London: Hurst. Schetter, C. (2014). The Unknown Unknowns: The Use of Knowledge in Western Intervention Politics. In B. Chiari (Ed.), From Venus to Mars? Provincial Reconstruction Teams and the European Military Experience in Afghanistan, 2001– 2014 (pp. 87–102). Freiburg: Rombach. Spivak, G. (2010). Can the Subaltern Speak? In R. Morris (Ed.), Can the Subaltern Speak?: Reflections on the History of an Idea (pp. 21–78). New York: Columbia University Press. Suhrke, A. (2011). When More is Less. The International Project in Afghanistan. New York: Columbia University Press.

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PART III

Knowledge Production after the Mobility Turn

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Positionality and the Relational Production of Place in the Context of Student Migration to Gilgit, Pakistan Andreas Benz The Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) region in northern Pakistan is characterized by rapidly rising education levels and increasing numbers of students striving for higher education (Benz 2013; Benz 2014a). The number of schools and colleges has grown significantly in this sparsely populated, rural, high mountain region over the last few decades and has improved local opportunities. Nonetheless, the local possibilities for “quality education” and for higher levels of education are still limited outside of the few urban and semi-urban agglomerations in the region. Particularly Gilgit, the most populous town and capital of GB, has developed into an educational hub attracting students from all over the region. With its ever growing number of private schools and colleges and the Karakorum International University (KIU), the only university of the region, it offers education at all levels at a quality which is said to be among the best available in the area. More and more young people of Gilgit-Baltistan leave their home villages in order to get higher education. In some areas virtually all of the young generation have left their valleys for the sake of education (Benz 2014b). Even though Pakistani lowland cities are preferred by those who have the means for studying there, the bulk of student migrants end up in Gilgit for their higher studies. This education-driven

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mobility of a whole generation is probably the largest population translocation the region has seen in recent years, entailing far-reaching implications for people’s identities, social situatedness and their understanding of themselves and others. Children and adolescents are transplanted from their childhood “home” place of the village into the complex urban environment of Gilgit, situating them within a completely different, unfamiliar and highly heterogeneous context. Being a migration hub, migrants and locals from different walks of life, areas, ethno-linguistic groups and sects gather in that place and are pushed into a shared arena of encounters and interactions. In this chapter, I inquire into the question of what happens to the people and the places involved in this new mobility of students. By applying a relational and actor-centered perspective on mobilities, places, interactions and positionality, it will be revealed that these dimensions are closely intertwined and interdependent. Places, therefore, cannot be conceptualized as closed and self-contained spatial entities, as suggested in conventional Area Studies. Rather, places need to be seen as highly dynamic and temporary nodes in networks of translocal flows and stillness, interconnections, interactions and power relations, which reach far beyond the geographical scope of the locale. A number of new places are created in the context of student migration, such as the new student hostels and private schools mushrooming in Gilgit. Hostels and schools all too often follow the well-established pattern of segregation along the lines of denomination and gender, which are characteristic for Gilgit in many social fields (Ali 2010; Gratz 2006; Grieser & Sökefeld 2015; Hunzai 2013; Varley 2010). In contrast, the establishment of the KIU in 2002 has created a previously unknown arena for interaction and confrontation between youth of different sects and genders from different areas of GB. The KIU main campus in Gilgit, populated by about 2300 students (approximately 60  % female) (KIU 2014), constitutes a kind of test field for new types of interactions, for which no fixed and commonly accepted norms and rules exist. In this newly established place the norms and values, the codes of conduct and interaction are subject to more testing, experimenting and innovating than in other social arenas. This potentially allows the crossing of borders and limits set firmly in other contexts, but also bears considerable potential for conflict.

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Positionality and the Relational Production of Place In this chapter, I apply a constructivist and relational perspective on space and place. In particular, I will follow Doreen Massey’s understanding of place as being a crossroads, a “meeting place” (Massey 1991, p. 28), which is produced by a certain constellation of actors meeting and (inter-)acting in power-charged social relations at a certain point or period of time in a particular locus. The constitution of a place, as a particular dimension of spatiality,1 is dependent on the mobilities and temporal stillness of actors and objects moving through or pausing there. Actors in such arenas are understood as being socially and spatially situated within larger networks of social relations whose spatial reach goes far beyond the place in focus: Instead […] of thinking of places as areas with boundaries around, they can be imagined as articulated moments in networks of social relations and understandings, but where a large proportion of those relations, experiences and understandings are constructed on a far larger scale than what we happen to define for that moment as the place itself. (Massey 1991, p. 28)

The idea of socio-spatial positionality as developed by Eric Sheppard (Sheppard 2002) provides a helpful analytical tool to conceptualize the actors’ spatial and social situatedness. Encounters in place are not merely encounters between certain actors, but encounters between whole configurations of socio-spatial positionalities, as reflected in the actors’ articulation of identity, habitus, understandings of symbols, meanings, norms and values, as well as patterns of perceiving and interpreting the surrounding world. Places provide an arena in which different actors’ norms, values and conflictive understandings of identities compete and clash and are renegotiated. The actors’ socio-spatial positionality is constantly challenged and reshaped in such encounters. Positionalities are shaped and modified in concrete places and thus positionality “takes place” in the truest sense of the word. The dynamics of the reproduction of places through the actors in place and the dynamics of these actors’ shifting positionalities are closely intertwined.

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The Places of Student Migration to Gilgit Student migration from Gojal to the town of Gilgit (Fig. 3) means for the young migrants a fundamental translocation from their familiar and intimate socio-cultural environment of the village into a very different and unfamiliar other, characterized by heterogeneity, complexity, multifaceted contradictions and—often enough—conflict.2 The societal norms and values prevalent in the village context strongly differ from those in Gilgit. The move from a rural, sparsely populated, ethno-linguistically and denominationally quite homogeneous social environment into the urban context of Gilgit and its complex socio-cultural medley is perceived by many migrants and their families as a shift from a “safe” into a rather “unsafe” environment, which, in their views, demands several precautionary and protective measures. These may comprise of spatial and social seclusion, segregation, distinction and the reassurance of one’s own identity and values. Such acts are part of the various processes of contestations and renegotiations of socio-spatial positionalities in the migration context. Gilgit, as a destination for migrants, is much more than just one place where people move

Fig. 3  Map of Pakistan and Gilgit-Baltistan

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to and (temporarily) take residence. It rather forms a patchwork of different individual places as arenas for interaction between the migrant and the “other,” in which they are socially situated in different ways. Along with other spatial moorings of their translocal networks, these places form part of the specific lifeworlds of the Gojali migrants in Gilgit. Since space and the arenas for social interaction are highly gendered in this context, the lifeworlds of young male and female student migrants in Gilgit differ considerably. In the following, some selected places in these migrants’ lifeworlds will be presented and analyzed as arenas for (inter-)action.

Home: The Village Context in Gojal The Gojal region is characterized by a relatively strong denominational, cultural and ethno-linguistic homogeneity. The overwhelming majority of the people of Gojal belong to the Nizari Ismaili denomination. The population is composed of a majority from the ethno-linguistic group of the Wakhi, speaking the Wakhi language, and of Burushaski-speaking Burusho immigrants from Central Hunza, forming a significant minority (Kreutzmann 1995; Kreutzmann 1996). The Ismailis in Gojal have strongly benefitted from the directives and initiatives of their spiritual leader, Aga Khan IV, and his predecessor, Aga Kahn III, who have pursued a policy of modernization and socio-economic development for their followers, which has been implemented through a number of religious institutions as well as by a complex mundane organizational structure under the umbrella of the Aga Khan Foundation (Hasan 2009; Ruthven 2011; Thobani 2011; Wood et al. 2006). Part of that policy is the propagation of “modern” values such as a strong orientation towards progress and development, entrepreneurial thinking, formal education, scientific and technical knowledge, Western languages as well as certain Western societal concepts, such as gender equality and participation (Harlech-Jones et al. 2003; Kreutzmann 1989, pp.  163–164; Sökefeld 1997a, pp.  135–140; Steinberg 2011). In Gojal, these policies have effected far-reaching socio-­ economic changes and developments, among them being a profound educational expansion, which turned Gojal into one of the leading areas of GB in terms of education for both men and women (Benz 2014a, pp.  157–164), a rising proportion of people pursuing highly qualified jobs, and women’s empowerment. In their narratives, Gojali migrants in Gilgit often portrayed their village home by using Gilgit as a negative contrasting foil. From their social

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situation as being student migrants in Gilgit, who go to visit their village and family mostly only for a few weeks per year in times of vacations for recreation and leisure, they perceived and described their villages as places of personal freedom and enjoyment. They saw their villages and the Gojal region as providing “a very open environment,” which is “totally different” from the social environment in Gilgit, which in contrast is perceived as “restricted environment.”3 Several social norms, which they feel obliged to follow in Gilgit, were felt as highly restrictive and severely limiting personal freedoms they were used to enjoying in Gojal. Particularly female migrants emphasized that in Gojal and in the village context, they were not used to wearing a headscarf in the public sphere; they were not restricted in their individual movements through village space and its surroundings; they were not restricted in travelling unaccompanied between places; they were used to making friends with whatever other youth they wanted; and they were used to talking and interacting with non-kin men in a self-confident and open way. They stressed that even walks without male company along the main road to neighbouring villages or to the surroundings to have a picnic were possible. The female migrants experienced that for them all these freedoms were severely curtailed or even entirely disappeared in their Gilgit migration environment. One female migrant, who had spent some years in Islamabad for studies before coming to Gilgit, considered Islamabad with its comparatively liberal and open social atmosphere to be much more similar to her Gojali home village than Gilgit.

Gilgit: The Migration Context Gilgit’s population of about 90,000 people (Karrar & Iqbal 2011, p. 18) is characterized by a high level of diversity with respect to denomination, ethno-linguistic group, region of family origin and time of migration to Gilgit. The city has a long migration record and virtually the whole population are either migrants themselves or have ancestors who migrated to Gilgit (Sökefeld 1997b). Accordingly, the city society of Gilgit is a very complex fabric composed of various, often intersecting and conflicting group identities defined along the lines of denomination, language, region of origin and imagined or real group of descent (Sökefeld 1997a, pp. 39–43), with which a plurality of different socio-cultural norms and values is associated. In the recent past, Gilgit has seen severe and violent conflicts between different identity groups, most of all sectarian conflicts

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between Sunni and Twelver Shiite populations in Gilgit and its surrounds (Ali 2010; Hunzai 2013; Kreutzmann 2008; Stöber 2007). While the GB region has a Shiite majority population, the three Muslim communities of Sunna, Twelver Shia and Ismailia have a roughly equal share in the population of Gilgit city. Identities, as part of peoples’ positionality, are used to define and articulate the “self” in contrast to the “other” and thus always entail processes of boundary making. In the attempt to create protected places for one’s “own” people and in which one’s own group’s norms and values form the authoritative normative order, social boundaries become manifest in the city space in the form of segregated residential quarters, schools and colleges, student hostels, health facilities and other institutions and infrastructural facilities (Grieser and Sökefeld 2015; Varley 2010). The creation of such segregated places within the city space of Gilgit has been justified by many Ismaili respondents by their feeling of a need for protection for their own group and family members within a difficult and dangerous social environment dominated by the non-Ismaili “others” and their differing norms and values. Segregated places, therefore, are considered protected places in contrast to the unprotected public space of the city. Gojali student migrants explained that they perceive Gilgit as being “totally different”4 from their home village with respect to what can be done and said in public space. They perceived the norms and values in place in Gilgit as “restrictive” and “intolerant”5 and felt “a lot of cultural difference”6 between the people in Gojal and those in Gilgit (cf. Kriebel 2014, p. 146). Male and females spheres are much more separated in the public space of Gilgit town than it is the case in a Gojali village. Within the Ismaili community, we are allowed to meet each other, we are allowed to interact with each other, as sisters and brothers. But in Gilgit, I think it is totally different from the village. There is Sunni, there is Shia and we are bound. The thing is that we are bound.7

In Gilgit town, the public space is highly gendered: women cannot enter and cross the main bazaar roads and the town centre of Gilgit without male company or without being in a group of women, and they have to take hidden “women’s paths” (Gratz 1998) to move through the city. Only within the denomination-­wise homogeneous residential areas can women move more freely. In public space, women have to follow a dress code which is more restrictive than in the village or in cities like Islamabad,

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in order not to attract male attention and staring eyes. Wearing a dupatta (light shawl) or chador (long cloak) and wide, discrete, inconspicuous cloth fully covering arms and legs is obligatory for women in public space (Gratz 2006, pp.  614–616). In addition, a woman in public space in Gilgit is expected to “lower her eyes, bend her head downwards, stand apart, [and …] veil parts of her face” (Gratz 1998, p. 490). One female student migrant said: “We were fashionable girls at that time [when we migrated to Gilgit] and these people [in Gilgit] were not able to accept us.” She had to learn quickly that “you should not go out with fashionable clothing” in Gilgit.8 Gojali parents often perceive Gilgit as a potentially unsafe place, where their daughters particularly need protection. To find a safe place for their daughters is a major concern for parents in the context of student migration. In many cases the (un)availability of such a safe place, be it in a relative’s home or in a student hostel, had greater influence on their decision for or against a certain place to study than the spectrum of available study options and the quality of educational institutions. Parents value not only the short geographical distance of Gilgit from Gojal and the comparatively lower education costs compared to “down-country” cities, but also the existence of local Ismaili communities and settlement quarters there, as well as the availability of safe and trustworthy hostels for their studying daughters. Male students of a certain age, in contrast, are considered largely self-­ dependent and self-responsible for handling their affairs, and are trusted and even expected to arrange themselves and get along in a “down-­ country” city, often even earning their livelihoods themselves besides doing their studies. Male student migrants at the graduate and post-­ graduate level hardly ever live in student hostels but rather share privately rented flats with other students. For female students it would be unthinkable to live in such autonomous, self-controlled flat-sharing communities in Gilgit due to normative constraints. A third option, feasible for both genders, is to join a relative’s house to live during the period of studies. Whenever a female student finds accommodation in a relative’s home, she is normally expected to contribute to the household chores in a significant way, which limits her study time. The lack of a quiet and undisturbed study environment, cramped conditions, frequent visitors and many distractions in a relative’s house are further arguments for preferring hostel accommodation, even in cases where cohabitation in a relative’s house would be an option.

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Providing Safe Havens: The Girls’ Hostel Place For parents it is a great risk to send their daughter to the city without having a male relative there who could take care of and look after her. The honor of the whole family is linked to the honor of its female members, and this honor is at risk in the context of female student migration. Therefore, the most important function of a girls’ student hostel, in the eyes of many parents, is to provide a safe haven for their daughters to live in in the distant city, an environment perceived as inhospitable and threatening. A high level of security, trustworthiness and reliability are among the most valued features of a girls’ hostel and form the basis for its reputation. This becomes emblematic in hostel names like SAFE Girls Hostel Gilgit, which is an acronym for “Support and Access for Education,” but certainly does not miss its advertising effect in evoking associations of safety and security among parents. Gojali parents—and it is mostly the parents who decide about where to “place” their unmarried daughters in a hostel—tend to place their highest confidence in hostels which are run by people of their own Ismaili sect, preferably being from their own area (Hunza, Gojal) and from their own language group (Wakhi or Burusho). Female student hostels run by Ismailis in Gilgit are mostly located in Ismaili neighbourhoods. All female student hostels run by Ismailis which I was able to visit during my field research in Sonikot and Zulfiqarabad had exclusively Ismaili boarders, with a certain bias in each hostel towards Hunza, Gojal or Ghizer regarding the region of origin of its boarders. The representatives of some of these hostels stressed in principle being open for boarders from other sects as well, but pointed out their view that sectarian diversity in the hostel would only be a source of unnecessary trouble and conflicts, which are better to be avoided. Parents are ready to pay high sums for knowing their daughters will be living in safe places during their studies. In most cases, the costs for hostel accommodation, which have been found for girls’ hostels in Gilgit to be between PKR 3500 and 4300 monthly, make up the major part of the total education costs and exceed college or university fees. In their attempt to provide the promised level of security and safety, Ismaili girls’ hostels exhibit a number of very similar physical features, organizational structures, rules and arrangements which in important ways shape the lifeworld of their boarders. The hostel space is physically hidden behind high walls and iron gates, clearly separating the protected hostel space from the exterior, public space. Behind these walls a new

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world begins not only physically with its green and clean gardens and well-­ maintained but frugal interior, but also in a normative sense. Safety and security in the context of girls’ hostels can be at least partly translated into the exercise of control over the boarders’ daily lives and activities. For this purpose, a number of rules and regulations, duties and bans are in effect in the girls’ hostel place. A strict daily schedule assigns certain activities to different times throughout the day, leaving only very few slots for leisure and recreation. Obligatory study periods in the evenings and at the weekends ensure the boarders focus on their studies. Monday to Saturday, the girls are taken by particular bus services to and from their educational institutions. Leaving the hostel for other purposes is highly restricted and only allowed in the company of a registered guardian, mostly a close male relative. The lifeworlds of these girls therefore mainly consist of two secluded places (the hostel and the school) and the secure transport (bus service) in between them. Other channels to connect with the outside world, such as TV, radio, newspapers and phone-calls are highly restricted or not available in the hostels, and the use of mobile phones and internet are fully banned. If a girl is caught with a mobile phone, she will be expelled from the hostel. In sum, these regulations aim at separating and encapsulating the protected inner world of the hostel place from the outside world. The girls and young women are cut-off from the external world in many respects. The totality of these rules is designed around the two central concerns of the migrant students’ stay in Gilgit: they shall focus on their studies and shall preserve their honor. Any disturbances of the two have to be prevented and shielded against. This is what the parents expect the hostel to provide in the first place. The female boarders, often young women of 18 years and older, are to a considerable extent incapacitated under the hostel regime and severely restricted in their personal freedoms. Nevertheless, for getting an education and for fulfilling the expectations of their parents, who often take on great efforts for enabling and financing their studies, these young women generally accept and comply with the hostel rules.

Encounters on New Ground: The Campus Place of Karakorum International University The establishment of the KIU in Gilgit in 2002 not only meant the introduction of a new type of educational institution, being the first university of Gilgit-Baltistan, but also the introduction of a new type of place in the context of education. Since the university brings together students of all sects and genders and from all areas of GB, the campus of the KIU became

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a ground for encounters between students of different backgrounds, who had been carefully segregated along their previous educational paths. All the anxiously arranged boundaries of segregation, all the elaborate efforts at creating protected places inside these boundaries, and all normative and organizational set-ups to exercise control over the female student, are thwarted by the inability to extend these regimes to the KIU campus. Interactions of the female student with male students and students from other sects are unavoidable and cannot be prevented or fully controlled. Actually, being a university, such interactions are tolerated and welcomed as long as they are limited to academic exchange and things concerned with study—but the students are expected to meet for that purpose in an open, public place on the campus, where social control can be maintained. The security personnel constantly keep an eye on students’ interactions on the campus and request mixed couples sitting separately and too far away from others to move back into a more crowded place (Kriebel 2014, p. 148). Internet access is available and mobile phones are allowed on the campus. Gojali students at the KIU, who were living in girls’ hostels and therefore were not allowed to have mobile phones, explained that they simply use their friends’ mobile phones when they are on the campus. SMS messaging and secret calls, which with great efforts are prevented in the hostel place, become easily possible in the campus place. All interviewed KIU students reported that there were a number of cases in which female students were messaging with males, partly from other sects, and who were meeting with these males, who were seen leaving the campus on the backseat of their motorbikes, and who were said to have illicit friendships and romantic relations with them. Female Ismaili students, moving across the campus in outfits they were used to wearing within their own community and in the protected hostel-school place, and talking to their male fellow students in the self-confident and open way as is the normal conduct in their own community, sent signals which were misunderstood by some non-Ismaili students. What is a normal female outfit from an Ismaili perspective, that is young women going out without a headscarf and wearing “fashionable” dresses, may be interpreted as signaling “openness” and “liberal virtue” in the eyes of Sunni and Twelver Shiite young men. Female students from the Sunni and Twelver Shiite sect wear the same kind of dress on campus which they usually wear in public spaces: chador and niqab (face veil), sometimes even burqa (a one-piece garment fully covering the face and body) . The deviating dress style of many Ismaili students has obviously encouraged some male students (and even non-­students entering the campus for that purpose) to approach Ismaili female students at KIU in search

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of friendship and possibly romantic affairs. In at least two cases, the KIU administration has, based on the recommendation of KIU’s Disciplinary Committee, expelled two female Gojali students from university and the KIU hostel, on the basis of allegations of having had illicit relationships.9 Ismaili KIU students informed me about ten more female Ismaili students from Hunza who were expelled from the KIU on similar accusations. In a climate of latent and occasionally violent sectarian conflicts in Gilgit (Hunzai 2013), the KIU administration tends to react quickly to such rumours, partly to save the university’s reputation as an honorable place where illicit relations are not tolerated, and partly in succumbing to pressure exercised by religious organizations and parties in Gilgit. The male Ismaili students perceived the attempted approaches of Sunni and Twelver Shiite male students as an inacceptable, objectionable behaviour towards “their” Ismaili girls and as a threat not only for the girls’ and their families’ honour, but for the reputation of the whole community. A male Gojali KIU student explained: [In our community] we are living in a very open environment, being Gojali, being Ismaili. Some girls are innocent, they come here for the first time and they think that we can implement that environment of the village here. But these people [Sunnis and Twelver Shiites in Gilgit] could not understand them, that this is their environment, but they think that these are girls like that, very liberal minded girls. There is a clash of ideas. […] The impact on our [Ismaili] students is very bad. They just started to target our girls, teasing10 our girls. That is why it is a very big challenge for us.11

In 2006, some Ismaili KIU students from Gojal formed a student organization (Bam-e Dunya Pluralistic Society) with the aim of preventing what they perceived as illicit interactions between female Gojali Ismaili students and male students from other sects. After violent clashes between students from this group and Sunni students from Kashrot, the organization was disbanded. In 2007, the Hunza Student Federation (HSF) was established as its follow-­up organization with the same purpose on a broader basis, together with Ismaili students from Central and Lower Hunza and from Gilgit. The Gojali students, who normally stressed their Gojali identity as being something different from the rest of Hunza, welcomed the support by Ismaili Hunzukuts in that respect. Besides providing general support for Hunza’s students in Gilgit, for example in terms of financial assistance and advice, spreading information about scholarships, advocacy in dealings with the KIU administration and helping in finding hostel accommodation, the

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organization is concerned with what they call “social issues”12 on the KIU campus. HSF members started to keep the Ismaili girls and their conduct on the KIU campus under close surveillance, advising them not to talk and make friends with males from other sects and rebuked them in cases of what they perceived as misbehaviour. One female KIU student explained: Students from our [Ismaili] community, especially from Hunza to Gojal, they always come to us and guide us in terms of that this is a different environment and you have to behave in this and that way. Like, you have to dress according to the situation, what is acceptable in Gilgit. And you should not speak with non-Ismaili guys who are not your class fellows and with whom you are not familiar. [...] In our situation, in our context, it is said that friendship [with male students from other sects] is not good.13

An HSF member described their approach in cases of perceived misbehaviour of a female Ismaili student as follows: If such a case happens, if the case is related to a social issue, the members of HSF firstly meet the girl, they guide her not to go in the wrong way. But if the girl is not following them, they use to make a phone call to her father and brother [saying] that your sister or your daughter or your wife is not able to study in this university, [and request] to take her home.14

Some female KIU students explained that they agree with these “guiding” activities of HSF members, and many of them actually are themselves members in that organization, but others were opposed to being controlled in that way.

Conclusion: Gendered Lifeworlds, Shifting Positionalities and the Relational Production of Place In this chapter, I have illustrated how places of student migration in Gilgit come into being and can be understood by the particular actors’ positionalities meeting and interacting in place and forming a dynamic relational social field in which their positionalities are renegotiated. Part of the production of place is the production and renegotiation of the norms valid in that place, for example the normative and symbolic acquisition of space, in which access to or exclusion from this place as well as the norms of social (inter-)action in this place are negotiated. Based on

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the outcomes of former interactions, normative ascriptions and the actors’ awareness and knowledge of them, every place prescribes certain types of normative behaviour for (inter-)actions—that amounts to what and how things can be done and said there. These norms are not the same for all actors, but vary depending on the actors’ socio-spatial positionality and the particular constellation of actors. The norms in place are particularly pluralistic where heterogeneous actors of different socio-spatial positionalities, identities, norms and value systems come together and (are forced to) act, react and interact with each other. From the plurality and heterogeneity of norms and values in such places and the related uncertainty about which rules in place are actually in force, potentially normative conflicts may arise. The norms in place are under constant negotiation and thus continuously reproduce the very character of the place. It is places, their norms and the interactions unfolding there which shape and reshape socio-spatial positionalities of actors. The case study showed that actors tend to categorize places in hierarchies according to the levels of safety/protection and insecurity they associate with them. In their mental maps, local actors applied multiple dimensions of spatiality, such as territory, scale and networks, to position the places of their lifeworlds and imaginations in larger contexts. The perceived level of safety and protection of a place varied with the socio-spatial positionality of the actor, and the level of control over and consent for the norms in place. Perceived dichotomies between “one’s own” versus “the others’” normative territory existed at different scalar levels ranging from schools, hostels and residential quarters up to larger areas such as valley sections or sub-districts, resulting in fine-grained and often geographically fragmented regionalizations. Place and socio-spatial positionality are closely interlinked relational processes which are embedded in translocal configurations. Every actor is situated in a multitude of places as arenas for interaction in a relational, translocal social field. Based on the actors’ situatedness in such translocal networks, events effecting shifts of their positionality in one place also impact on their positionality in others. Since places and place-based actors are positioned in translocal corresponding webs of interrelations and interdependencies, places cannot be conceptualized as closed and isolated spatial entities. The dynamics and interactions unfolding there cannot be understood by focusing on what is enclosed within arbitrarily drawn boundaries of the local. These considerations bear two major implications of certain importance for attempts at rethinking Area Studies. First, places and actors cannot be conceptualized as pre-given entities which are then

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linked by relations and interactions; rather, they are constituted and only come into being through their embeddedness in a web of interrelations. And second, the dynamics of places and place-based interactions can only be understood in the context of their and the situated actors’ positionality in translocal relational networks. The relations and linkages which go beyond a particular place are crucial for gaining a better understanding of the dynamics and interactions within a particular place and need to be more fully taken into account in research and teaching in Area Studies.

Notes 1. On the multi-dimensionality of space, see: Jessop et  al. (2008), Leitner et al. (2008). 2. The study is based on three months of field research in September/ October 2011 and October/November 2012 in Islamabad, Gilgit, Central Hunza and different villages of Gojal. A qualitative set of methods has been applied for this study, mainly based on guided interviews and group discussions with current student migrants, interviews with hostel wardens and representatives of educational institutions. 3. Interview with 27-year-old female student migrant from Shimshal on 22 September 2011 (in the following abbreviated as: 27f-­Shimshal-22.09.2011) and a 26-year-old male student migrant from Gulmit on 17 September 2011 (26m-Gulmit-17.09.2011) (identical quotes in both interviews). 4. 22m-Chupursan-17.09.2011. 5. 27f-Shimshal-22.09.2011. 6. 23f-Ghulkin-20.09.2011. 7. 26m-Gulmit-17.09.2011. 8. 27f-Shimshal-22.09.2011. 9. The Notification Letter of the KIU administration, dated 27 March 2010, is available at: http://theterrorland.blogspot. de/2010/10/ [Accessed on 13 November 2014]. 10. In the South Asian use of English, the word “teasing,” besides “annoying, bothering, mocking,” also has a second meaning with a sexual connotation: according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “eve-teasing” is used in Indo-English for “sexual harassment of a woman by a man in a public place.” Available at: www. oed.com [Accessed 13 November 2014].

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11. 12. 13. 14.

26m-Chupursan-17.09.2011. 26m-Gulmit-17.09.2011. 27f-Shsimshal-22.09.2011. 26m-Gulmit-17.09.2011.

Bibliography Ali, N. (2010). Sectarian Imaginaries: The Micropolitics of Sectarianism and StateMaking in Northern Pakistan. Current Sociology, 58(5), 738–754. Benz, A. (2013). Education and Development in the Karakorum: Educational Expansion and Its Impacts in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan. Erdkunde, 67(2), 123–136. Benz, A. (2014a). Education for Development in Northern Pakistan: Opportunities and Constraints for Rural Households. Karachi: Oxford University Press. Benz, A. (2014b). Mobility, Multi-Locality and Translocal Development: Changing Livelihoods in the Karakoram. Geographica Helvetica, 69(4), 259–270. Gratz, K. (1998). Walking on Women’s Paths in Gilgit: Gendered Space, Boundaries, and Boundary Crossing. In I. Stellrecht (Ed.), Karakorum— Hindukush—Himalaya: Dynamics of Change (Vol. 2, pp. 489–508). Köln: Köppe. Gratz, K. (2006). Verwandtschaft, Geschlecht und Raum. Aspekte weiblicher Lebenswelt in Gilgit/Nordpakistan. Köln: Köppe. Grieser, A., & Sökefeld, M. (2015). Intersections of Sectarian Dynamics and Spatial Mobility in Gilgit-Baltistan. In S. Conermann & E. Smolarz (Eds.), Mobilizing Religion: Networks and Mobility (pp. 83–110). Berlin: EB Verlag. Harlech-Jones, B., Sajid, S., & Ur-Rahman, S. (2003). The Spread of English in Two Parts of the Northern Area of Pakistan, 1980–2002: A Comparative Study of Chilas and Hunza. English World-Wide, 24(2), 163–200. Hasan, A. (2009). The Unplanned Revolution. Observations on the Process of SocioEconomic Change in Pakistan. Karachi: Oxford University Press. Hunzai, I. (2013). Conflict Dynamics in Gilgit-Baltistan (Special Report 321). Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace. Jessop, B., Brenner, N., & Jones, M. (2008). Theorizing Sociospatial Relations. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26(3), 389–401. Karrar, M., & Iqbal, A. (2011). Report on Gilgit City. Karachi: Department of Architecture and Planning, NED University of Engineering and Technology. Kiu.edu.pk. (2014). About KIU. Available at: http://www.kiu.edu.pk/about_ kiu.html [Accessed 17 Nov. 2014]. Kreutzmann, H. (1989). Hunza: Ländliche Entwicklung im Karakorum. Berlin: Reimer.

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Kreutzmann, H. (1995). Sprachenvielfalt und regionale Differenzierung von Glaubensgemeinschaften im Hindukusch-Karakorum. Zur Rolle von Minderheiten im Konfliktfeld Nordpakistans. Erdkunde, 49(2), 106–121. Kreutzmann, H. (1996). Ethnizität im Entwicklungsprozess. Die Wakhi in Hochasien. Berlin: Reimer. Kreutzmann, H. (2008). Kashmir and the Northern Areas of Pakistan: BoundaryMaking along Contested Frontiers. Erdkunde, 62(3), 201–219. Kriebel, N. (2014). Die Wahrnehmung von “Gendered Space” in Gilgit. EthnoScripts, 16(1), 141–153. Leitner, H., Sheppard, E., & Sziarto, K. (2008). The Spatialities of Contentious Politics. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 33(2), 157–172. Massey, D. (1991). A Global Sense of Place. Marxism Today, 1991(June), 24–29. Nagar, R., & Geiger, S. (2007). Reflexivity, Positionality and Identity in Feminist Fieldwork: Beyond the Impasse. In A. Tickell, T. Barnes, T. Peck, & E. Sheppard (Eds.), Politics and Practice in Economic Geography (pp. 267–278). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Ruthven, M. (2011). The Aga Khan Development Network and Institutions. In F. Daftary (Ed.), A Modern History of the Ismailis. Continuity and Change in a Muslim Community (pp. 189–220). London: I.B. Tauris. Sheppard, E. (2002). The Spaces and Times of Globalization: Place, Scale, Networks and Positionality. Economic Geography, 78(3), 307–330. Sökefeld, M. (1997a). Ein Labyrinth von Identitäten in Nordpakistan. Zwischen Landbesitz, Religion und Kaschmir-Konflikt. Köln: Köppe. Sökefeld, M. (1997b). Migration and Society in Gilgit, Northern Areas of Pakistan. Anthropos, 92(1/3), 83–90. Steinberg, J. (2011). Isma’ili Modern: Globalization and Identity in a Muslim Community. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Stöber, G. (2007). Religious Identities Provoked: The Gilgit “Textbook Controversy” and its Conflictual Context. Internationale Schulbuchforschung/ International Textbook Research, 29(4), 389–412. Thobani, S. (2011). Communities of Tradition and the Modernization of Education in South Asia: The Contribution of the Aga Khan III. In F. Daftary (Ed.), A Modern History of the Ismailis. Continuity and Change in a Muslim Community (pp. 161–185). London: I.B. Tauris. Varley, E. (2010). Targeted Doctors, Missing Patients: Obstetric Health Services and Sectarian Conflict in Northern Pakistan. Social Science and Medicine, 70(1), 61–70. Wood, G., Malik, A., & Sagheer, S. (Eds.). (2006). Valleys in Transition. Twenty Years of AKRSP’s Experience in Northern Pakistan. Karachi: Oxford University Press.

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Red Lines for Uncivilized Trade? Fixity, Mobility and Positionality on Almaty’s Changing Bazaars Henryk Alff Rumors, especially those referring to the top-down imposed “civilization” of “unsanitary” and “chaotic” bazaars in Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty, during spring 2014 spread among the self-employed traders and vendors at Barakholka like a steppe fire on a hot summer day. For Ainagul,1 a wholesale entrepreneur who had been trading for many years in bulk Chinese-made women’s fashion from her refurbished 20-foot shipping container-turned“boutique,” this June morning in 2014 brought glad tidings regarding the future of Barakholka’s remaining bazaars. Timur Kulibaev, head of the National Chamber of Entrepreneurs, presumptive proprietor of Bolashak Bazaar and son-in-law of Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbaev, had allegedly publicly called on the city authorities to stop intimidating bazaar traders by forcefully removing their trading spaces (IA Regnum 2014). This process had been initiated nine months earlier along so called “red lines” and had left thousands of self-employed traders and salespeople unemployed or in search of alternative locations for running their businesses. Instead, Kulibaev urged the authorities to find a solution that would serve the interests of all involved actors (IA Regnum 2014). While Ainagul consented with and, at the same time, somewhat doubted the authenticity of this appeal from one of the most promi-

H. Alff (*) Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography, Leipzig, Germany © The Author(s) 2017 K. Mielke, A.-K. Hornidge (eds.), Area Studies at the Crossroads, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59834-9_7 [email protected]

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nent members of Kazakhstan’s political-economic elite, she too remained optimistic of future developments around Barakholka: “Even if they would vacate Bolashak like the other bazaars nearby,” she explained defiantly, “I could continue my business given that my container is located beyond the ‘red lines’ drawn by the authorities.”2 She declared that another option would be moving trade operations with her steady wholesale customers to her nearby warehouse container. Anyway, bazaar-based trade, in her opinion, would likely survive current forceful restructuring, because it flexibly serves the needs of considerable parts of Kazakhstan’s population. This chapter looks at the tensions of fixity, mobility and positionality inherent in recent changes at Barakholka’s retail and wholesale bazaars as well as in the responses of affected actors at Almaty’s Barakholka.3 I seek to show that these bazaars, depicted as places of socio-economic fortune and responsibility, on the one hand, and civilizational demise, on the other, cannot be grasped without an understanding of both the fixing of socio-spatial and symbolic boundaries by state-driven ordering practices as well as the ever transforming (and transformative) mobility of traders, goods and ideas of entrepreneurial change. Trade actors’ reflections on the mechanisms of commercial exchange—along with historically sedimented and state-endorsed ascriptions of bazaar trade as backward—are part and parcel, I argue, of Barakholka’s contextually changing relational positionality as remote and central (see also Zhang 2014). The current article highlights the role of social relations, mobility and often interrelated boundary-making processes for the construction of places. This involves a multidimensional approach towards spatial production, similar to Benz’s work (Benz, in this volume). Hence, it exemplifies, in the case of Barakholka, how a particular place is constituted through the translocal mobility of people, goods and ideas of entrepreneurial development across much of Asia and through the fixing of both geographical and socio-spatial boundaries. Thus, it is aimed at illustrating that “place” is not a static given, but that is constantly made and reshaped through trade entrepreneurs’ social interaction across space and the making as well as renegotiation of boundaries. The present inquiry seeks to question the essentializing logic that is still prevalent in classical Area Studies, and more broadly focus on the dynamics of meaning-making from an actor perspective. Thus, it is shown in the example of Barakholka how this very place is posited in narratives of change quite flexibly depending on context and the changing socio-spatial

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situatedness of actors vis-à-vis each other. Thus, the Barakholka bazaar agglomeration is often deemed the center for dynamic entrepreneurial development in Kazakhstan by trade entrepreneurs, while it is peripheralized from a state-centered perspective as a remnant of the past, and more explicitly as a result of the lack of planning in urban development since the Soviet break-up. These perspectives, as will be outlined below, arise from a complex intermingling of concepts of modernity in the narratives of actors and in particular Soviet (socialist) and post-Soviet flexible capitalist notions of modernity. Based on empirical evidence from planning documents, media reports and 20 semi-structured interviews, as well as extensive conversation with city officials, activists of small business associations and bazaar traders during field research in May/June 2014  in addition to earlier research in 2011/12, the chapter delves into the conflictive relations and negotiations between these various actors regarding changes of Almaty’s bazaar landscape. However, by employing an agency-centered approach I also wish to illuminate how current state interventions to impose “orderly trade,” and the strategies of trade entrepreneurs to keep their business running, intersect and at times overlap and align in everyday life. In the following, I aim to explore conceptually the analytical intersections between mobility, fixity and positionality, relevant for further analysis. The chapter examines how the Barakholka bazaar agglomeration has been transformed lately through the fixing of red lines in city authorities’ ordering attempts and their contestation through the mobility of trade entrepreneurs. A further section gives attention to negotiations of remoteness and centrality towards Barakholka in the narratives of the different actors involved, which heavily impact the seemingly controversial socio-­spatial and relational production of Barakholka as a particular place.

The Fixity-Mobility-Positionality Nexus As the phenomenon of globalization since the 1990s gained increasing attention in the social sciences and humanities, a focus on worldwide flows of people, goods and ideas has forged imaginaries of increasing time–space compression and the erosion of geographical and social boundaries (Castells 1996). At the core of this tendency, born in particular from ideas of transnationalism, were assertions of universal mobility, social networks and

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communication technologies that would largely “deterritorialize” human interaction (Appadurai 1990), challenge the socio-spatial b/ordering and bounding power of nation-states and foster the production of placelessness (Clifford 1988) and “non-places” (Augè 1995). However, numerous scholars of socio-spatial theory have criticized the “devaluation of place” (Agnew 1987, 1989) and the exaggerated unidimensional, deterritorialized understanding of the world (among others Massey 1994; Jessop et al. 2008). Especially critical geographers have instead pointed to the remarkable and ubiquitous unevenness in interconnectivity and mobility in place-­ making (Harvey 1990; Cresswell 1999). These inequalities in socio-spatial relations, emerging from power asymmetries, would not only shape social interaction from the bodily to the global scale, but would also produce and perpetuate the (perceived) particularity of no-longer-distinct places (Castree 2008, p. 161). According to these views, it is in constant negotiations of the relationships and flows between various actors, anticipating hegemony or resistance over the fixing and overcoming of socio-spatial boundaries, representations and discourses, that the formation of places takes hold in everyday life (see also Alff & Benz 2014). This approach towards the production of place, being relational in character, connects the often historically sedimented, symbolic meaning attached and attributed to specific places, on the one hand, and the flexible (and reflexive) agency of contemporary actors in making sense of them in their daily life, on the other (Castree 2008, p. 163). Tina Harris in her study of trans-­Himalayan trade argues rightly that: [I]t is the interplay between apparent fixity of certain paths or boundaries and the mobility of local individuals around such restrictions that actually produce geographies and histories of trade. These geographies of trade are created from the level of commodities the traders exchange to the trade route itself, to the development of regions in Asia, and often—but not always—work against state notions of what the trade route should look like. (Harris 2013, p. 4, emphasis by Harris)

Harris points out the scalar and historical dimensions of fixity and mobility in the production of trade between India, Nepal and Tibet. Yet, while Harris puts her empirical focus on the spatial negotiation of trade routes and flows, the current chapter is concerned with the contested ­positionality of involved actors and how they contribute to produce a particular trading place through their discourses and (mobile) practices. Therefore, the concept of positionality, I wish to argue, adds another

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important layer to the fixity-mobility nexus in the (relational) production of place(s). In his take on “positionality,” the geographer Eric Sheppard draws on the materialist and feminist emphasis of “social situatedness.” Sheppard in particular puts attention on the relational aspect of positionality, being influenced by power imbalances and inequalities between actors and “continually enacted in ways that both reproduce and challenge its preexisting configurations” (Sheppard 2002, p. 318). Thus, in his understanding, a particular positionality of individuals or places does not necessarily depend on closeness or proximity in Euclidean geographic (or topographical) space, but is to a considerable degree produced and reproduced by the dynamics of discursive negotiations of connections between socio-spatially interrelated actors (Sheppard 2002, p. 322). Edwin Ardener’s (2012) classical text on “remote areas” and a recent collaborative reappraisal of his work by Erik Harms and his colleagues (2014) captures a closely related conceptual strand of thought in social anthropology on the notion of remoteness. Harms et al. outline in a similar spirit as Sheppard that “the idea of the remote can be detached from its geographical moorings and understood not simply as a spatial concept but as a sociological concept of relative association or familiarity” (Harms et al. 2014, p. 362). While “not restricted to peripheries”4 (Ardener 2012, p.  532), “remoteness” comes as a relational construct subjected among others to frequent “transformation by state agendas, majority politics, economic interests, and contested identities” (Harms et al. 2014, p. 362). It is generally associated with a historically fixed, marginalized or isolated position of individuals or places at or outside the boundaries of the social fabric and with over-determined cultural estrangement (Harms et  al. 2014, p. 365), and is thus inscribed into ordering and othering processes. Yet, the sense of remoteness may also disguise the centrality of social, economic and political processes emerging from this condition. That said, being remote often generates and enforces opportunities in everyday life and social strategies of local actors that cannot be detached from ongoing regional and global transformations. Thus, the positionality of actors and places is never fixed, but can oscillate situationally depending on the historical and contemporary context of power, imagination and articulation and their socio-spatial connectivity and mobility. In the following two empirical sections I will illustrate the mentioned entanglements and dynamics of fixity, mobility and positionality in the case of the Barakholka bazaar agglomeration.

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Mobility

and Fixity in the Transformation of Barakholka

Barakholka, located on Almaty’s northern fringes, initially evolved from an open-air market area, after a land plot was allocated by municipal authorities in 1984. Initially it was located outside the city limits and functioned on weekends only. Predominantly imported goods on high demand and short supply in the planned economy such as books, jeans and so on were traded there for inflated prices or bartered. Due to the deterioration of

Fig. 4  Location of the Study Area

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Fig. 5  Status of the Barakholka Bazaar Agglomeration in May/June 2014

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salaries in state-budgeted jobs and eased travel and trade restrictions after the break-up of the Soviet Union, private trade with small amounts of self-imported goods on short supply from China, Turkey and other countries emerged as a thriving source of income for Almaty’s urban, especially female, population. The open-air market area of Barakholka, along with numerous smaller markets that appeared in Almaty’s residential districts, became centers for private trade activities. Barakholka soon also attracted large numbers of migrants in search of jobs from rural areas across Kazakhstan and from neighboring states, such as Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan (Alff 2015, 2016) (Figs. 4 and 5). In the early to mid-1990s, a number of private investors, with close ties to local and national authorities had been able to lease large land plots in the vicinity or on the agricultural area of the nearby collective farm Zarya Vostoka (or “Dawn of the East”) (Yessenova 2006; Roberts 2002) on a long-term basis, usually for a duration of 49 years. With continuing demand for private trading spaces in Almaty over the course of the 1990s and after the millennium, as well as with rapidly increasing turnovers and employment, bazaars with basic service infrastructure were established on these and adjacent territories, giving them for supervision to trusted people that formed bazaar administrations. Starting from the late 1990s, 10-, 20- or 40-foot shipping containers were put in place in long rows and two stacks as semi-permanent structures across (and beyond) the bazaar area, with the upper container used as a warehousing and the ground-level one as a sales unit. In 2013, Barakholka boasted 28 (according to other sources 35) bazaars with an estimated 11,000 sales and warehousing container units overall (Iminov & Alibekov 2014). The Association of Trade Firms, a non-government lobby organization, put the estimated number of self-­ employed at Barakholka to at least 20,000 in 2013. The major asset for Almaty’s Barakholka, allowing it to become a thriving international trade hub, is that it is served by a concentration of wholesale and retail trade, of warehousing and transport facilities and is sited at an intersection of major overland roads to the China and Kyrgyzstan borders and to other parts of the country as well as to Western Siberia. The flow of goods follows translocal networks of individual wholesale and retail entrepreneurs which are organized in flexible, trusted arrangements with suppliers, distributors and clients, often in avoidance of official fees, taxes and fixed paper-based documentation. Flexibility, mobility and innovativeness in their way of doing business are often mentioned by trade

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entrepreneurs as major drivers for personal success and profitability under often unreliable conditions. Thus, several of my interlocutors, especially wholesalers with a considerable track record of experience in the trade business, as drivers for their success pointed to necessary skills like creativity, decisiveness and an intercultural understanding they had gained over years of cooperation with a multitude of actors (see also Alff 2015). Ainagul emphasized during extensive conversation at one of her sales points at Bolashak Bazaar that only thanks to experience she had gained from the enduring interaction with her Chinese partners in Beijing and her Urumqi-based representative would she be able to maintain the steady and cost-effective cross-border delivery of supplies for her trade business and, thus, fulfill the demand of her customers. More than that, she outlined how lasting and trustful ties to partners contributed to building a sophisticated international trade business between China and Kazakhstan: Encouraged by my partners in China, after the millennium I became involved in marketing self-designed apparel. Inspiration for models and styles for my collections I usually gather from European fashion journals. However, all the production is done by a sewing manufactory in Beijing, which is run by my Chinese partners and producers on the Central Asian market exclusively for me … I go to Beijing to supervise the manufacturing process at least three times a year before my customers arrive to Almaty during the sales season … Cooperation over the years worked smoothly. I have learnt, how to work with the Chinese, and from the Chinese.5

Ainagul’s statement, but also biographical interviews with other long-­ standing trade entrepreneurs at Barakholka, indicate that the mobility of bazaar traders and the uninterrupted flow of goods (and customers) are inportant for an understanding of how this bazaar agglomeration has evolved as a place of entrepreneurial fortunes since the Soviet break-up. This said, flexibility, pragmatism and creativity, along with private trade activities, especially with overseas partners, were widely deemed opportunistic, shameful and associated with illegality during (and soon after) the Soviet era. Yet, these values became necessary qualities for trade ­entrepreneurs after Kazakhstan’s independence as the enforcement of laws became erratic and highly inconsistent, to say the least, and widespread bribery involving state officials on various levels made wholesale trade across Asia especially become a financially risky and unpredictable means of income generation. The appraisal of entrepreneurialism goes as far as to describe bazaars in general and Almaty’s Barakholka in particular as

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“business incubators”—as Zhibek Azhybaeva, the head of Kazakhstan’s Association of Bazaars, highlighted during an interview in 2011: In the present, bazaars have developed into quintessential incubators for business development. In particular, at bazaars people find out whether trade is an attractive type of business for them, or if one has come there coincidently … It is a place for gaining essential knowledge and skills to directly cope with the realities, the opportunities and difficulties, of private business development in contemporary Kazakhstan.6

Notwithstanding that, the perceived lack of state control and regulation over Barakholka’s bazaars and their actors is the main reason for contemporary bazaar-based trade at Almaty’s Barakholka being consistently fixed in the political and public imagination as uncivilized (Ministry for Trade 2010). The powerful negative connotation with disorder attributed to bazaar-based trade in state-centered views, however, does not come from nothing. Rather, it has its historical roots in the negative image of the circulation sphere in Soviet times as unproductive and especially in private trade on bazaars as having been regarded as profiteering and therefore illegal (Alff 2015; see also Humphrey 2002). From this modernizing perspective, having been retained from the Soviet period, it is therefore hardly surprising that Almaty’s city administration since at least the late 1990s has continuously called for a “civilizing mission” to be imposed upon all of Almaty’s bazaars including Barakholka (Department for Architecture and City Planning 2010). However, given that bazaar-based trade in 1990s was officially accepted as a significant source for employment and income generation outside the stumbling state-sector, steps for the removal of markets remained reluctant over many years to avoid social unrest (Spector 2008). Only in April 2011 did Almaty city administration announce more straightforward action for the transformation of Almaty’s bazaar infrastructure. In planning documents and in frequent statements from high-­ ranking city officials, so-called red lines were particularly highlighted. Red lines were thought to delineate what would be acceptable or desirable in statist plans for future urban development in Almaty, on the one hand, and what would be considered both outdated urban structures, prone to various kinds of calamities (earthquakes, fire and so on), pollution and criminality, on the other. While these red lines were regarded by city officials as fixed and therefore clearly demarcated boundaries, for many of the interviewed trade entrepreneurs the actual location amidst the rows of double-stacked containers remained obscure.

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In the case of Barakholka, red lines were initially aimed at demarcating a strip of 65 meters to both sides of the middle of the Northern ring road, along which Barakholka straddles for several kilometers. The built-up area and structures such as the thousands of sales containers within these red lines were declared “contradictive to urban discipline”7 and therefore to be removed in order to provide space for road reconstruction. At the same time, the city authorities’ plans announced the transformation of the bazaar’s remainder into “civilized,” “multifunctional” shopping centers. The bazaar proprietors, it was declared by city officials, would be personally held responsible for their construction according to the projects they had proposed to the Department of Architecture and City Planning (Department of Architecture and City Planning 2010) Since 2013, media reports covering the continued resistance of bazaar proprietors to vacating the areas enclosed by red lines and to start the construction of shopping centers, and the lawsuits that were brought upon them by the city authorities as coercive means (Koshanov 2013), further reproduced in public the anti-modern, illegible image of bazaar-based trade. In this process, the idea of red lines became increasingly augmented with responsibility. Thus, during an interview, the head of the municipal planning company Gradostroitel i Ko, Altay Satybaldiev, declared: “trade activities at Barakholka’s bazaars morally outdated. They cross the line from how civilized trade should look like.”8 This argument was countered by several of the interviewed trade entrepreneurs at Barakholka, outlining their persistent role under current conditions in providing access to affordable goods and employment to the needy population, and therefore partly fulfilling the basic responsibilities of state institutions (Alff 2015). In this light, the ambitious plans of the city authorities to transform Almaty’s bazaars are often considered symbolic and utopian. Notwithstanding this, since the second half of 2013, city officials, supported by police squads and equipped with building cranes and bulldozers, took action to vacate vast sections of Barakholka. While some of the affected traders were informed weeks in advance about the forceful removal of their trading spaces, others were given no more than 48 hours to abandon their sales containers with little or no compensation allocated whatsoever. Entrepreneurs, such as Aruzhan, who used to sell sportswear profitably on wholesale at Alatau Bazaar until April 2014, were suddenly forced to rethink their strategies within a couple of days of being deprived of their sales points. Aruzhan bought and moved into a sales container on the newly established, yet only half-operational Kenzhekhan-II Bazaar,

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two kilometers away along the road on the site of Almaty’s former municipal landfill. She explained the decision to move her business there: When Alatau Bazaar was closed down suddenly we had no other opportunity. Every day counts in wholesale, so we could not wait. I believe turnovers will increase once the new bazaar will be open officially later this month. At least, no red lines will interfere our business here.9

Negotiating Positionality: Central and Remote In contrast to Aruzhan, for Ainagul who was not (yet) immediately affected by the removal of bazaars, relocating her business to Kenzhekhan-II or one of the other new bazaars on the city limits was not feasible. In her opinion, this would be too risky, as profitable trade depends on the constant connectedness to the flow of customers, especially of wholesale clients arriving for supplies to Barakholka from all over Kazakhstan and Western Siberia. She says: It takes not weeks or months, but years to attract clients and boost a newly established bazaar. … Notwithstanding the efforts to close it down, Barakholka still receives the bulk of buyers from all over Kazakhstan and out there [at Kenzhekhan-II] is nothing other than silence.10

From Ainagul’s perspective, established trade transactions would still function at Barakholka due to distribution schemes that have been worked out over the years and which would not only support her sales turnover and the success of her business, but also would justify Barakholka’s persistent centrality for the provision of low-income population across the country with employment opportunities and, even more important, with affordable goods: “Although prices are on the rise, we, the traders at Barakholka, still do clothe the rural people. Far from everyone in Kazakhstan can afford to do his shopping in modern shopping centers.”11 Connected to that, Ainagul and other trade entrepreneurs claimed that despite the generally higher level of retail prices for clothes in central Almaty, the quality of products sold in upmarket boutiques would not vary much from those on sale at Barakholka. They would, in fact, often come from the same origin or even from the same production facility in Eastern China. Labeling, professional marketing and high rents for retail spaces, in Ainagul’s opinion, would make up the principal price difference, and would also be the reason why international retail chains have so far struggled to compete with bazaar-based trade entrepreneurs as agents of mass consumption in Kazakhstan.12

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In the modernizing rhetoric of Almaty city authorities, Barakholka’s socio-economic centrality as a place providing labor and income to tens of thousands of self-employed trade entrepreneurs and opportunities for consumerism to Kazakhstan’s less affluent population, however, is strongly contested. According to them, the bazaar agglomeration is posited as marginal in both a socio-spatial and temporal sense, peripheralized and disconnected from the rapidly modernizing city center through its very existence. From their perspective, which is also shared by a significant proportion of Almaty’s population, Barakholka’s socio-spatial remoteness is derived not (or not only) from its geographic distance, but rather from its limited accessibility. An oft-emphasized argument in media reports for this is the burgeoning traffic problem along the whole stretch of Barakholka that increases daytime bus and taxi travel time to reach the bazaar agglomeration from uptown Almaty by up to one-and-half hours. The latter argument hints at another aspect of the socio-spatial remoteness of Barakholka as a rather rustic remnant of the past, which is suggested by state-centered visions of modernity. In fact, exaggerated and hardly truly reflected accusations of “unhygienic conditions” (antisanitariya in Russian) and chaos, notorious insecurity and illegal appropriation of land in the narratives of interviewed planning officials can be linked back to the association with bazaars as place of fraud (mesto obmana in Russian) in Soviet times and the chaotic period of post-Soviet transition in the 1990s (Humphrey 2002; Spector 2008; Alff 2015). This attribution of bazaars to the past among the broader public continues to trigger imaginations of backwardness. It further amplifies the estrangement of Barakholka from idealized images of an orderly contemporary reality and “centralized” visions of future urban development. As one of my interlocutors in Almaty’s municipality said rather incidentally: I still remember when in the mid-1990s new bazaars popped up on every corner and people rushed to make their New Year shopping in the lower part of the city. Back then, there was hardly anything on sale elsewhere in the city that could have served as a proper present. Since then, times have changed, while at Barakholka disorder and filth have stayed the same.13

The debate around centrality and remoteness, inherited in these ascriptions to Barakholka’s bazaars, at first glance seems fixed in modernist ideas of development and to be mutually exclusive. Nevertheless, they are in fact subject to a process of dynamic negotiation between different actors and they occasionally align with each other.

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Zhang Juan (2014, p.  376) in her case study of pioneering entrepreneurs in the Vietnam–China border town of Hekou outlines that “the remote transforms into a place of desire as soon as it demonstrates closeness to state agendas and promises both the state and the people its immense economic and political potentials.” The transformative logic in Zhang’s argument proves useful for grasping the dynamics of Barakholka’s positionality. Another encounter with Ainagul at her sales unit may serve as an example for that. During our conversation, Ainagul once again extensively admired the achievements of China’s rapid development since her first visit to Shanghai almost 15 years before, and how that contributed to the success of her business. During our walk for lunch along a passageway through container lines that due to pouring rain had become almost impassable for the pushing crowd of buyers, mobile caterers and porters, Ainagul, referring to the state-endorsed modernizing ambitions towards Barakholka, admitted: “Of course, it’s right and good that this chaos will soon be over. But first of all one has to provide opportunities so that people can find work.”14 Beyond the paternalistic connotation in Ainagul’s words, this narrative somewhat exemplifies the agentive attempt of actors in “bringing the remote closer to the center” (Zhang 2014, p.  377). Interviews in Barakholka’s bazaars demonstrated that skepticism prevailed towards current attempts to transform Almaty’s bazaar landscape. However, it came out frequently that trade entrepreneurs would, in fact, broadly welcome state interventions if they would actually lead to positive and sustainable change regarding employment and better working conditions. While this tendency of alignment with state-endorsed modernization matters for achieving a more favorable positionality towards hegemonic visions of change, in the case of Barakholka there also persists a somewhat contradictive tendency of the center becoming deeply engrained into the remote. Many of the trade entrepreneurs interviewed claim officials up to the ruling state elite as the actual propronents and beneficiaries of current changes at Barakholka, an accusation that was also explicated in ­statements of Almaty’s mayor Akhmetzhan Esimov15 as well as in a number of investigative media reports in the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014 (see for example Ratel.kz 2014).16 The current large-scale restructuring of Barakholka and the establishment of new bazaars such as Kenzhekhan-II at the fringes of Almaty, are therefore often regarded as part of a forceful process of shifting property among elite circles rather than as an attempt to contribute to the wellbeing of the population (Spector 2008). A dozen or so fire catastrophes that hit several of Barakholka’s bazaars between September 2013 and April 2015 are similarly seen as ruthless attempts to

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shift property between the various elite groups involved. Timur Kulibaev’s appeal from the introductory ethnographical sketch to stop the top-down imposed removal of bazaars and instead to foster a more conciliatory, participative approach to bazaar modernization, thus appears in a very different light and the reasoning behind it far from altruistic. These examples reveal that a perspective towards the seemingly “fixed poles of binary opposition” between “remote” and “central” per se offers limited insight or may be even misleading. In fact, (m)ore important are the ways that people in different social and historical contexts move between these poles, as well as the ways that people attempt to shift the parameters of this symbolic opposition in order to maximize their positional advantages within different levels of social relations and exchange. (Harms 2011, p. 7)

The case of trade entrepreneurs and other actors involved in and affected by Barakholka’s transformation shows that the negotiation of socio-spatial positionality matters not only for making sense of practice and of visions of “civilized trade,” but also for the dynamic production of Barakholka as a place.

Conclusion The current chapter has made an effort to analyze the transformation of Kazakhstan’s largest agglomeration of wholesale and retail bazaars, Barakholka, in the country’s southern metropolis Almaty. It has used the nexus of mobility, fixity and positionality as a lens for assessing the multidimensional spatial production of place. On the one hand, it was shown from an actor perspective how Almaty’s Barakholka and the meaning attributed to it is constructed and reshaped through trade entrepreneurs’ social interaction across space and the making as well as renegotiation of socio-spatial and symbolic boundaries. On the other, it has attempted to challenge the territorial essentialism in classical Area Studies by focusing on the renegotiation of positionality of actors, such as individual customers and property owners, to one another that makes Barakholka appear remote or central depending on the context. Through frequently quoted narratives advocating for state-imposed modernization of bazaar-based trade and trade entrepreneurs’ responses regarding past, ongoing and proposed change, the chapter outlined a number of ways in which processes of mobility (of trade entrepreneurs,

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commercial goods and ideas of entrepreneurial development), the fixing of socio-spatial boundaries and the socio-spatial positioning of trade actors interrelate in the production of Barakholka. Thus, the bazaar agglomeration emerged as a commercial hub shortly before and after the Soviet Union’s break-up thanks to its favorable location at the intersection of major overland roads between China, Kyrgyzstan and other parts of Kazakhstan, through the mobility (and expanding networks) of individual traders as well as the increasing flows of goods and customers. However, since 2013 more recent state-endorsed ordering efforts aiming to fix bazaar-based, largely unregulated trade activities outside the red lines of urban modernity have resulted in the movement of affected trade entrepreneurs to newly established bazaar sites outside the city, on the one hand, and other traders’ contextual resistance against and alignment with state-endorsed ordering attempts on the other. Thus, it is rather the negotiation of socio-spatial positionality or the shifting of actors between remoteness and centrality, in which bazaar-based trade, in general, and specifically Almaty’s Barakholka becomes situated. The case of Barakholka has shown that there could also be at play the contradictive tendency of the center turning remote. This is exemplified in the present inquiry by the alleged shifting of land property at Barakholka by groups within the political elite, which undermines the confidence in the far-flung modernization rhetoric of state and city authorities. The negotiation of positionality of bazaar-­based traders, therefore, becomes a continuous process of sociospatial mobility of involved actors between the remote and the central, often in the hope of personal gain or opportunities. Thus, the example of Barakholka makes the point that socio-spatial positionality is never fixed in time and space or through the state-led ordering of social space. With regard to the Area Studies debate, this study therefore illustrates the need of analyzing spatial production from an actor perspective and beyond the essentialist and state-centered logic of territory, thereby putting emphasis on the multidimensional production of place.

Notes 1. The names of all people interviewed were changed by the author for reasons of anonymity. 2. 2014, June 4. Interview, Almaty. 3. The current article is part of a larger research project within the Crossroads Asia network that inquires the transformation of

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exchange relations in the borderlands of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Xinjiang (PR China). 4. The case of Barakholka as well as the empirical example by Newell (Harms et al. 2014) and the work by Harms (2011) on the edges of Ho Chi Minh City in fact elucidate that remoteness can and does exist in urban contexts. 5. 2014, May 14. Interview, Almaty. 6. Zhibek Azhybaeva. (2011, August 15). Interview, Almaty. 7. Zhanat Aytleu. (2014, May 13). Interview, Almaty. 8. Altay Satybaldiev. (2014, May 26). Interview, Almaty. 9. 2014, May 17. Interview, Almaty. 10. 2014, May 15. Interview, Almaty. 11. 2014, May 15. Interview, Almaty. 12. 2014, May 23. Interview, Almaty. 13. Zhanat Aytleu. (2014, May 13). Interview, Almaty. 14. 2014, May 18. Interview, Almaty. 15. Numerous media reports in Kazakhstan in November 2013 quoted Esimov’s words during a press briefing in Astana threatening to announce the family names of the “real” proprietors of Barakholka’s bazaars (KTK 2013; Today 2013). 16. The highest ranking names in cadastre documents proofing the proprietorship of land plots on which Barakholka’s bazaars were constructed are Bulat Nazarbaev and Anipa Nazarbaeva, lesser-­ known brother and sister of Kazakhstan’s President of State, Nursultan Nazarbaev. Two other land proprietors at Barakholka, Muratbek and Talgat Ermegiyaev, the latter having been arrested in summer 2015 as the head of the Astana EXPO-2017 state company on embezzlement charges, are nephew and son of Amangeldy Ermegiyaev, head of one of Kazakhstan’s major construction firms and former leader of the presidential party Otan (Ratel.kz 2014).

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Jessop, B., Brenner, N., & Jones, M. (2008). Theorizing Sociospatial Relations. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26(3), 389–401. Koshanov, N. (2013). Kapitulaciya staroy “barakholki.” Available at: http://www. kursiv.kz/news/retail/Kapitulyatciya-staroj-baraholki/ [Accessed 17 Oct. 2016]. Ktk.kz. (2013). Akhmetzhan Esimov poobeshchal nazvat’ poimenno vladel’cev almatinskoy barakholki [video]. Available at: http://www.ktk.kz/ru/news/ video/2013/11/01/25110 [Accessed 31 Oct. 2014]. Massey, D. (1994). Space, Place and Gender. Oxford: Polity. Ministry for Trade RK. (2010). Programma po razvitiyu torgovli v Respublike Kazachstan na 2010–2014 gody [Government Document]. Available at: http:// adilet.zan.kz/rus/docs/P1000001143 [Accessed 18 Apr. 2016]. Ratel.kz. (2014). Komu ugrozhal akim Almaty Akhmetzhan Esimov? Available at: http://www.ratel.kz/investigations/komu_ugrojal_akim_almatyi_ahmetjan_ esimov/ [Accessed 13 Aug. 2015]. Roberts, S. (2002). “The Dawn of the East”: A Portrait of a Uyghur Community between China and Kazakhstan. In I. Bellér-Hann, C. Cesáro, R. Harris, & J. Smith Finley (Eds.), Situating the Uyghurs between China and Central Asia (pp. 203–217). Aldershot: Ashgate. Sheppard, E. (2002). The Spaces and Times of Globalization: Place, Scale, Networks and Positionality. Economic Geography, 75(3), 307–330. Spector, R. (2008). Bazaar Politics: The Fate of Marketplaces in Kazakhstan. Problems of Post-Communism, 55(6), 42–53. Today.kz. (2013). Esimov prigrozil raskryt’ “izvestnye familii” uchrediteley almatinskoy barakholki. Available at: http://today.kz/news/zhizn/2013-1101/280881-news/ [Accessed 18 Apr. 2014]. Yessenova, S. (2006). Hawkers and Containers in Zarya Vostoka: How “Bizarre” is the Post-Soviet Bazar. In N. Dannhaeuser & C. Werner (Eds.), Markets and Market Liberalization: Ethnographic Reflections (pp. 37–59). Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing. Zhang, J. (2014). Remote Proximity [Paragraph in Journal Article]. In E. Harms, S. Hussain & S. Shneiderman (Eds.), Remote and Edgy: New Takes on Old Anthropological Themes (pp. 376–378). HAU: Journal for Ethnographic Theory, 4(1), 361–381.

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Margins or Center? Konkani Sufis, India and “Arabastan” Deepra Dandekar

The study of Muslim interactions across Middle East, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent has constructed regions in India such as the Deccan in ways that have defined its cultures as either Islamic, pre-Islamic or un-­ Islamic. This last feature gains increasing political currency within present day contexts of Hindutva in Maharashtra (Western India), wherein Muslims undergo processes of minoritization. It has only been grudgingly and sporadically recognized within Transcultural Studies that regions traditionally understood and consequently defined as “Indic” or non-Islamic (since they are not viewed within the paradigmatic umbrella of being influenced by Islamic political empires), were also equally subject to intense Islamic overseas influences and contacts, such as with the Konkan coast of Maharashtra (Green 2011). Hitherto, this attention was only provided to interior parts of Maharashtra—regions such as Khuldabad and Daulatabad that scholarship primarily and predictably viewed as Islamic, due to their historic political association with Mughal and Sultanate empires, which provided Area Studies with the blueprint for what has been perceived as “Muslim South Asia.” By researching Islam and Sufi shrines on the Konkan coast of Maharashtra as the core of this chapter, the concept of a static Sultanate Muslim South Asia is therefore complicated. The chapter

D. Dandekar (*) University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany © The Author(s) 2017 K. Mielke, A.-K. Hornidge (eds.), Area Studies at the Crossroads, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59834-9_8 [email protected]

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seeks to demonstrate the manner in which movements of transoceanic Sufi Muslim trading and politically important inland Sufi Muslim communities produced a dynamic spatiality of Islamic and Sufi Konkan through mutual interaction that created a transcultural region. It is this spatiality of a dynamic Sufi Konkan that leads us to question the validity of approaching the study of Islamicate in South Asia as a clearly defined and demarcated entity associated with Mughal or Sultanate Studies, as has often been the tradition within Area Studies that teaches and researches Islam in South Asia. Konkan1 in Maharashtra, in India and the Konkani Muslims claim to be greatly influenced by Sufi saints from Arabastan (loosely the the Arabian Peninsula). My research in the Konkan reveals the coastal line through districts of Raigarh and Ratnagiri to be dotted by Sufi shrines, wherein the saints venerated are said to have migrated directly from the Arabian Peninsula via the sea route as traders in what is now considered the hoary past, in the centuries directly after the times of the Prophet. Their karamaat or miracles include helping all those who also migrated or travelled using sea routes, seeking and establishing direct contact with Arabastan (Fig. 6). Konkani Sufi Muslims discursively demarcate themselves as unique and distinguish themselves from North Indian Sufi Muslims, as they view themselves as an older and more original Islamic counterpart belonging to the Qadiri brotherhood and Shafi’i law school, in comparison to the Chistiya brotherhood and the Hanafi law school that dominate in the north. At the same time, an ethnography of Konkani Sufi shrines reveals a story of how Konkani Sufis negotiate difference and power with “Islamicate” Sufis and notions of Islamic “purity” emanating out of empires of Delhi and Lucknow in ways that present them (the Konkani Muslims and Konkani Islam) as equally powerful, regionally autochthonous and parallel in terms of their independence and authority. Those continuing within the Konkani Islamic traditions view their present-day Sufi traditions to have descended from Arabastan, leading simultaneously to the understanding of the Konkan as a fringe region for both Maharashtra and Islamicate empires on the one hand and of Arabastan on the other. Concerns of Islamic purity, acquired directly from the holy lands of the Prophet, lead them to define themselves as the descendants of Konkani Arabs (informants told me of how they were known in the past as Bayasir—of Arabic origin2) and explains the Konkan in turn to be an independent and self-­ contained Islamic region.

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Fig. 6  The Konkani Sufi Muslim’s “Crossroads” Relationship with Arabastan. Courtesy and Copyright: Helena Cermeño Mediavilla 2016

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The Konkani Sufi shrines’ simultaneous and multiple encompassment of local cults, negotiation with Islamicate saints and overseas Muslim saints construct a concept of a transcultural region, the Konkan, that includes the overseas in conjunction with the local and the politically Islamic, and which thus transcends and collapses both Islamic and Indic categories. This is especially so, since Konkani Muslim Sufis, reformists and intellectuals continue to speak, write and interpret this history of complex relationships in a spectrum of languages such as Konkani, Marathi, Urdu and English. Mobility defines the Konkan in the imaginaire of the Konkani Muslims, by mediating through their movements between Arabastan as a source of sacred power associated with the Prophet and the Sultanate regions of Northern India as a source of political power. The Konkan, therefore, is delineated as a unique region by the specificities of Muslim mobility that produce Muslim Konkan as conceptually apart from both Arabastan and the Sultanate, while drawing on both for its definition. In this chapter, I shall analyze an ethnography of popular Sufi saints from the Raigarh district of Alibagh to reveal the manner in which the Konkan acts as both a borderland and as a central meeting ground between Maharashtra, Islamicate regions of the Deccan, and Arabastan in order to encompass Hindu, Muslim and other local concepts. I argue that this “zone of acceptability” encompasses an image of home for both the migrant and the sedentary and thereby dissolves the rigidity of what is posited as a strict regional identity by ameliorating the limitations of boundaries or then by producing it with the help of multiple cultural categories that encounter each other at crossroads.

Political and Intellectual Context in Maharashtra Broadly speaking, there are two prevalent ideas in Maharashtra about the predominance of an “Indian Muslim subcontinent,” with their epicentres in North Western India and Eastern India. The first is associated with the Mughal Empire and its links with all the different local societies of North, Central and Eastern India that are understood to be an expression of Islamicate cultures (this includes the Deccan Sultanates). Somewhat closely related to this concern is the history of partition in India that views Pakistan and Bangladesh as Muslim nations that originated within these Islamicate cultures, justified by their Muslim history of Mughal rule.

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Politicians and intellectuals adhering to prominent Hindutva discourses in Maharashtra on the other hand have called upon Muslims in Maharashtra in the last 50 years to claim their Marathi roots and the Marathi language so that they can become increasingly indistinguishable from local Hindus, in order to avoid the rise of separatist Muslim regional hubs that could mimic this partition. The Hindutva agenda behind this is obviously aimed at politically producing Maharashtra outside Islamicate micro-regions within the state (which had a history of Islamic political empires), which is predominantly Indic, in terms of its discursive cultural and historical orientation, by endorsing triumphant narratives of Shivaji against the Mughals and the Peshwa against the Nizam’s expansion. Hindutva Shiv Sena politics3 in Maharashtra in the last five decades has demanded that Muslims in Maharashtra become Marathi,4 even as Marathi Hindu intellectuals have continued in their concerted efforts to view Indian Muslim religious practices with hatred and suspicion and to denounce them as un-Islamic and cloaked attempts at land-grabbing (Oak 2001). This demand to localize Muslims presents them further as a minority within Maharashtra, even though it allegedly seeks to resolve their minoritization problems by “merging” and integrating them with the mainstream Marathi Indic community as “cultural Hindus,” since it also marks them in an ambivalent category of being Muslim. By remaining both Marathi and Muslim in regions that are part Islamicate (in areas with a history of Deccan Sultanate) and part Indic (in areas outside those formally known to be Deccan Sultanate strongholds), Marathi Muslims run into the possibility of being seen as either terrorists or victims within a state that has a strong Hindutva orientation. Since the Hindutva formula is that of integration/“syncretism” and domination of weaker political groups, with the underlying threat always remaining that of the demand for partition by “indomitable” Muslims, the Shiv Sena has traditionally demonized North Indian Muslim and Bangladeshi migrants in Mumbai as betrayers, infiltrators, outsiders and terrorists, who, according to speeches delivered by the late Balasaheb Thackeray (chief Shiv Sena promo in the 1990s and early 2000s), misled “innocent Marathi Muslims” into acts of treason against the state. When Thackeray first took up the Hindutva stance against Muslims in 1984, he asked Muslims in Maharashtra to leave India for Pakistan or Bangladesh if they could not live in Maharashtra as cultural Hindus. He instead hailed the Konkani Muslims as the autochthons of Maharashtra, since they looked like Brahmins, used Marathi names and spoke Marathi

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and Konkani just like the other local Hindus within the region. Religious discrimination against Muslims therefore took place in Maharashtra more on cultural or Islamicate lines than on faith or Islamic lines, linking culture and religion with each other. And non-Islamicate Sufism that could soak up Indic culture marked the inclusive religion of Konkani Islam as a benchmark of Muslim secularism in Maharashtra. It is therefore to “Konkani” Sufi shrines and to debates about Konkani Islam that I turned for my study of what was considered Islam in Maharashtra. However, it was also here that I discovered the little scholarly attention that had been paid to Islamic cultures that were considered to be outside recognized areas of Islamicate cultures of North India and the Deccan Sultanates. As scholarship about Islamicate cultures of the Indian subcontinent remained predominantly North Indian and centred on the double discourses of the Mughals and Islam within the Muslim nations of South Asia, scholarship on Muslim culture in the rest of India predictably focused on the Islamicate cultures of the Deccan Sultanates or the Nawabs of Hyderabad that shared strong historical and cultural links with North Indian Muslim empires. It was only grudgingly accepted that to study Muslims, Muslim influence, Islam and Sufism outside these set patterns and hierarchies of Muslim South Asia or Islamicate regions and areas held traditionally within it, was to research Islam at all.5 The question of scholarly disinterest in Muslims cultures outside Islamicate/Sultanate political and historical regions was not naïve either. Though Green’s recent study (2011) of the city of Bombay (now Mumbai) mentions Konkani roots for most Muslim migrant labour in Bombay during the early 1900s, it is important to note current changes in Muslim demography within the Konkani hinterland. Though there are still many Konkani Muslim families in Mumbai today, the rural Konkani hinterland is largely depopulated of Muslims compared to the beginning of the century, as Konkani Muslims report significant migrations to Pakistan or the Gulf countries. The many Sufi Muslim shrine owners and ritual practitioners I interviewed in Konkan lamented the absence of old families. Other more modern Muslims returning from the Gulf to build houses in their Konkani villages disregarded the older tradition of Sufi shrines, since they considered the resident Konkani Sufi Muslims, who worshipped there superstitious and “Hindu-istic.” Sufi shrine caretakers on the other hand, disappointed by the disinterest and condemnation heaped upon them by the newly reformed Konkani Gulf-returned Muslims were increasingly

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depending on Hindus for repairs to shrines and told me how Hindus, even though they did not understand Sufism, constituted a sizeable chunk of worshippers at the shrines. This in turn became a vicious circle, since it only re-strengthened the “Hindu-istic” accusation by prevalent Wahhabi ideologies from the Gulf that malign Konkani Indic Sufism on Quranic grounds, while ignoring a rich and independent tradition of Sufism in Islam and the existence of a vibrant historical debate on the subject among Islamic scholars (Green 2012). It is therefore in areas such as the Konkan where scholarly disinterest in local Islam is claimed as justified on the basis of an absence of Islamicate culture, which becomes linked with Muslim migration and depopulation, as families migrate to areas where they can live within larger Islamicate communities. This, on the other hand, both contradicts and coalesces with Hindutva politics in Maharashtra that urges Muslims to merge and integrate with the local Hindu, Marathi and Indic subjectivities, producing the category of the Marathi Muslim as an ambivalent political identity and an oxymoronic category that is slowly subject to internal fragmentation. My aim in researching Sufi shrines and Islamic practices in dynamic spaces such as the Konkan coast, that have traditionally been defined by transcultural mobile Muslim communities, is to reconfigure historically static notions about areas such as Western India and Maharashtra that have been either produced as Islamicate or Indic. But instead of presenting the Konkan as marginal as a result of the above understanding, my chapter suggests how Konkani Sufis, their narratives and practices define Konkan as regionally central by attracting movements to itself from outside centres of power, such as the Arabian Peninsula and political centres of power located within the various Sultanates across India. I seek to illustrate the way in which the Konkan highlights the centrality of trans-­locality between what is understood as the otherwise static Islamic regions of the Arabian Peninsula and the Islamicate centres of power through my research in Alibagh (a prominent Konkani city, situated in the Raigarh district). I also seek to demonstrate how Konkani Sufism remains outside the pale of research on Islam, even though Mumbai has gained a representational value for a Gulf-variety of modern reformist Islam, artificially superimposed on an underbelly of Islamicate traditions that have included larger-than-life Sufi saints such as Makhdoom Ali Mahimi (Dandekar 2016) historically extended to Mumbai from the Sultanate of Gujarat.

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Ethnographical Context After beginning my ethnographic fieldwork in the Konkan, I encountered a form of Konkani Muslim-ness that not only encompassed their Arab/ trans-regional purity connection but a feeling about their larger entwined Konkani hinterland identity; a self-reflexive local, cultural and regional awareness about a collective history, its strategic superiority to Islamicate cultures from North India and other Sultanate regions (for example Pune and Ahmednagar) and finally, the unique aesthetics of combining Marathi and Muslim identity. Islam in the Konkan was a mixture of Sufi shrines and Muslim reformism (as has already been discussed). This social process was leading to a slow transformation of Sufi shrines in the Konkan that inhabited a spectrum: from being viewed as historical Muslim remnants that Sufi travellers and traders from the West (Arabastan) had left behind that are now under government control (various archaeological departments) to contested and miraculous shrines where trustee boards still struggled for control, to finally having become the private property of the Sufis’ family retainers and caretakers. The last (retainers) viewed themselves as both staunch Konkanis (as traditional and autochthonous inhabitants of the land with royally bestowed and spiritually endorsed land entitlements as part of clan tradition) and staunch Sufis (enjoying a double variety of spiritual power: the first because many were ritually initiated into Sufi brotherhoods that shared power and the second because they drew a special kind of spiritual power from the body of the shrines they tended). They reserved a special right as not just family retainers of Sufi saints but as retainers of Sufism in the land itself and became providers of information on Konkani Sufism and saints, taking personal responsibility for its perpetuation. Most of my informants spoke in Konkani although the formal texts and songs I collected from Sufi shrines continued to be in Marathi, even though Urdu remained an important language and script for many songs and small prayer booklets. However, the subject matter about the nature of Sufism in the Konkan remained concentrated on the importance of Arabia for Konkan and how the latter formed a sort of a verandah (“angan”) of Sufi traditions from Arabia in the past, since the sea was viewed as a mobile transporter of Sufi blessings that arrived directly from the land of the Prophet. The many stories about these local saints recount how they initially arrived at the coasts of Konkan from Arabia (Hadramaut/Yemen or Africa) as traders crossing the ocean in large ships and barges as peaceful travellers

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and inculcated moral lessons of regional and religious integrity, purity and faith that included divine love. These locally powerful Sufi saints interceded with Allah on behalf of the faithful and their stories describe the manner in which they resolved travails of the local community, whether rural, cosmopolitan or migrant. Even local saints with small shrines in coastal fishing villages were known to have arrived directly from “Mecca-­ Medina” or from “Bukhara” (as was seemingly evident in their names and narratives). Much of their lore demonstrates the manner in which they were provided support by plural, fragmented and overlapping sources of power: the local Nawabs of Raigarh at Murud and Janjira, the Nawabs of Sachin (who at times were supported by both the Peshwas and the British), the Marathas or then to the Habshi/Sidi dynasties (Abyssinian rulers) ruling in the Konkan.6 What, however, also became increasingly clear through my discussions about politics during fieldwork, was the way in which Konkani Muslims claimed autochthony and indigenous status within Maharashtra, based on their “Indic-Sufi” traditions, their Konkani-Marathi language/culture/ ethnic subjectivities and what gave rise to an alternative perspective on their strategic identity of Islamic purity that was associated with Arabastan and dissociated from North Indian Sultanate and Islamicate culture. This dissociation also remained politically essential for Konkani Muslims because they were seeking political autochthony in Maharashtra. By demonstrating distance from the political culture of the Muslim league and the perceived separatism of the Pakistan demand, Konkanis therefore also made an attempt to survive as Muslims in Maharashtra. Konkani Muslim intellectuals too have presented Konkani Islam and Sufism as culturally separate and unique from North Indian Islamicates in order to facilitate a discursive critique of the latter as divisive, separatist and anti-national (Dalwai 1968; Mukadam 2005, 2010). These claims and counter claims in the public sphere are what can therefore be interpreted as differing ways in which competing religious communities have laid political claim to various culture-specific spaces that have become communally polarized, by constantly creating or dissolving violent boundaries. In short, Sufi shrines are expected to be “syncretic” (absorb Hinduism) in order to be accepted as truly “secular” within modern Hindutva polity in Maharashtra, while the same absorption of Indic culture provides reasons for dismantling them among Muslim reformists, who consider Islamicate culture to be a primary marker for the existence of Islam and Muslim ­identity. And this squeezing of Sufi shrines by both Hindutva forces and

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Muslim reformists from either side makes Konkani Sufi shrines their scapegoat. For example, Muslim reformists and their anti-shrine activism is opportunistically referred to or cited by local Hindu politicians when Sufi shrines are viewed as “disturbances” to civic growth such as road-widening activities, when these shrines are conveniently considered non-Islamic to allow their demolition to be undertaken. I collected some oral narratives of Sufi shrines from around Alibagh city from Mustafa Inamdar (name changed), who was a prominent builder in the city and himself a powerful and staunch Sufi from an influential Sufi lineage and brotherhood. He had taken his position as traditional caretaker for an important family Sufi shrine situated on the outskirts of Alibagh very seriously and proceeded to describe the interconnected Sufi history of Alibagh, entwined in its shrines scattered around its precincts. Inamdar recounted how his Konkani family had been caretakers of Baba Mohammad Ali Shah’s shrine since the nineteenth century. Inamdar explained his family’s exodus from Mumbai to Alibagh after the plague outbreak of 1888, before which their clan had originated from trading roots in Arabastan. After arriving at Alibagh in the nineteenth century, the area of the saint’s shrine came into their family as property both in physical, ritual and miraculous ways and has remained there now for four generations. He described the Sufi Shah Ali Baba, also from the Qadiri Silsila, and how he was religious advisor and guru to the local eighteenth-century Maratha ruler Kanoji Angre, who was the ruler of the seas and areas of Kolaba, Khanderi, Underi and Kasa, with his headquarters at Alibagh. Angre was known to be fond of Sufis and many of his forts had shrines located within them. Shah Ali Baba, according to Inamdar, came from Medina, and Angre was known to have changed the name of Alibagh from Shribagh after him when he fought and won a war on the latter’s advice. There were many other Sufi saints living in the vicinity of Alibagh who had migrated there from elsewhere. Mohammad Ali Shah, Inamdar’s family Sufi saint, however, arrived here from Lucknow (though he was to become famous in the local regions and history of Konkan), while Siddi Farhan Shah Wali, whose hagiography was magically associated with that of Mohammad Ali Shah, was an Arab who arrived here with a group of 50 or 60 traders from Africa to trade in goods like rice and spices at ports such as Chaul and Revdanda (close to Alibagh). The stories of Siddi Farhan Shah Wali from Arabia or Africa and that of Mohammad Ali Shah from Lucknow are interestingly entwined, and Mohammad Ali Shah from

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Lucknow was also a player in the Sufi history of Alibagh and Konkan. This in turn served to make Konkan not only a verandah to Arabastan or Africa but as an important mediating zone for conflict resolution within Sultanate regions of South Asia, that in turn redeemed its purity by facilitating an interaction with Sufis from Arabastan, the holy lands of the Prophets. Transcultural ties with Arabastan in association with royal family struggles with other Sultanate and Islamicate zones such as Lucknow invoked the power of universal Sufi connections in order to become pertinent to the history of local Maratha ruling powers in oral narratives richly woven together by Inamdar. These provided transcultural Sufis with local land entitlements and “belonging” in the Konkan as inhabitants, as then their descendants also claimed political entitlements as shrine owners and ritual practitioners. The hagiographies of saints describing the political claims of Konkani Muslim Sufis in Maharashtra as autochthonous communities, which encompassed a spiritual recognition of what is discursively described as oral narratives of mobility (both inland and overseas), war, the statecraft of local chieftains and the autonomy of trade by transcultural Arab trading communities can therefore be identified within present-day contexts as narratives of Konkani Sufi Islam. When I began exploring possible antecedents for the Sufi Mohammad Ali Shah and his alleged associations with the Lucknow-i Nawabs of Oudh (and Nawab Shuja-ud Daula’s clan) during the eighteenth and nineteenth century, not only did I find him missing in terms of his Konkani Sufi avatar (a Sunni, from the Qadiri brotherhood and the Shafi’i law school) but I found a completely different Mohammad Ali Shah. Mohammad Ali Shah from Lucknow was an important Nawab of Oudh during the eighteenth and early nineteenth century (roughly the same time as the Sufi Mohammad Ali Shah), who hailed from Khurasani antecedents in Nishapur followed Shi’i Islam and was hardly a Sufi. The Sufi oral narrative of a Mohammad Ali Shah Baba from the Lucknow Nawab family, who was moreover allegedly Shuja-ud Daula’s nephew—the tale of his exodus to the Konkan in the eighteenth/nineteenth century, away from the tiring and non-spiritual bureaucracy of Islamicate life and his confrontation with his uncle outside Alibagh resulting in a grand show of miracles that was to be beheld by no less than a Maratha chief, who are impressed enough to provide Mohammad Ali Shah with an enormous estate to build his own spiritual college and lodge in Alibagh—was therefore a mirage. His hagiography is, however, still of very great strategic importance for Inamdar as a Konkani Muslim, as it created a powerful reflection of

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Islamicate culture of North India in Konkan as a bureaucratic kingdom bereft of Sufi spirituality, where religion was law. It produced the Indic space of Konkan as a creative contradiction, where spiritual depth became possible and recognizable by Hindus as well. Moreover, it was only with transcultural contact at the crossroads of Konkan, after coming in contact with the Qadiri Sufis from Arabastan and the Marathas, that the true position of power as autochthons could be achieved for the Sufi Mohammad Shah (and his descendants), a position denied him in his own home in Lucknow. It is also with the help of such a narrative that Konkani Sufis such as Inamdar seek their own entitlement in the Konkan as travellers. The hagiography of Baba Mohammad Ali Shah represents the typical Sufi crossroad: a meeting juncture that demonstrated the power of Konkan and the Konkani Muslim as a pure Sufi with antecedents in Arabastan, who was simultaneously staunchly Marathi, even if he had run away or migrated from another place due to some difficulties. Baba Mohammad’s magical recognition of the Arab Baba Siddi Farhan Shah from Africa, away from the Islamicate borders of Lucknow and the Arabian Sea, to span across Konkan, caused conviction and recognition in the heart of the Maratha Kanoji Angre, and envisaged Alibagh and Konkan as a transcendental Sufi-Muslim, Marathi-Konkani zone that subverted the North Indian and the Islamicate.

Concluding Remarks The analysis of such narratives demonstrates how Konkan can be viewed as a central and transcultural region for understanding the Islamic turbulence that took place for travelling Sufis from both Arabastan and Islamicate cultures over here, in order to transform both, as they mutually interacted at “crossroads,” to produce the Konkan as a transcultural, mobile and dynamic Sufi space. This space of the Konkan can therefore be independently conceptualized within Area Studies scholarship to transform notions of what has hitherto been understood as fixed ideas about the South Asian Islamicate that have conflated the study of Sultanate political empire with the existence of Muslim religious culture. The absence of an understanding of Muslim alternative spaces so far has led to rigid definitions of politically fuelled religion and religious establishments, which have in turn resulted in a myopic view of the past (as present politics within South Asia are projected upon it), even as empirical research as in the case of this chapter demonstrates to the contrary. The manner in which many

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Hindu Maratha chiefs provided travelling Sufis with land endowments and a potential claim of traditional belonging to Konkan becomes an example of how Konkani micro-regions could have indeed been politically conscious of their importance, centrality and enlistment within regional networks. On the other hand, the imposition of Islamicate rules as part of a modernist enforcement of political language and culture is exactly what disinherits Muslims belonging to alternative Islamic cultural zones that exist outside hegemonic categories of the Islamicate, and hence isolates them. Therefore, before epistemic blame can be shifted conveniently to those who impose too much Indic culture on Konkani Sufism, this blame must be equally shared by the Islamicate imposition on Sufism as its Muslim duty as well—if the dismantling of Sufism at crossroads is ever to become a matter for concern among South Asian-ists interested in Islam. The duty of conserving shrines at crossroads is currently the individual responsibility of shrine-carers and in the Konkan persons like Inamdar have become local leaders as shrine owners. Traditional brotherhood relationships are increasingly being replaced or added to by the miraculous and righteous powers shrine-carers/owners absorb from the shrine body; Inamdar explained how through their physical contact with the shrine’s body and the graves he and his descendants have gradually gained spiritual blessings and divine knowledge. Konkan, like every other space in South Asia, has its political genealogy of Islam that is deeply influenced by colonial scholarship and the racial discourses of Arabic descent and superiority of the Arabic Sufi among the Konkani Muslims that sets them apart from other Muslim communities, such as the fishermen from the region, who may have also converted to Islam. And even as there have been deep and far-­reaching changes within Konkani society, with an increasing number of Konkani Muslims migrating to the Gulf, Muslim communities have made enduring efforts to keep intact their moral association with these colonial genealogies that form a part of their discourse about their Arabian descent. In fact, the reformist position is a way of re-­strengthening the Arabian contact all over again, since reformist ideas in the Konkan have also been largely adopted from the Gulf and many view this as a mimicking of the older Sufi position, since it is the direction of religious descent from a superior race of Arabs from Arabastan and the land of the Prophet that has always remained of greater discursive importance for Konkani Muslims; according to some, Konkani Muslims laugh at reformists propounding the same ideas when the direction it comes from is North India.

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In terms of Area Studies then, the Konkan can best be described as an alternative space of Sufism and Islamic tradition sans Islamicate culture and empire, while at the same time it has enjoyed a history of unifying Muslims transculturally, even as Konkani Sufism undergoes political minoritization within present times due to its Indic status, although both Indic and Islamicate cultures get forced upon it due to the political and historical relationships of Muslims with the state in Maharashtra. It nevertheless retains the political power of transforming mainstream Islamic regions due to its shifting and mobile politics and communities. It is Muslim Konkan’s very mobility and fluidity that becomes strategic, as part of a third political entity that negotiates powerfully with immobile and static political powers of the Islamic and Hindutva world that provides it with an interpretive edge, as Konkani Muslims permeate and migrate across identities, subjectivities and languages in the Muslim and Marathi world. Travelling and migrating for the Konkani Muslim denotes power and it is this that finally provides him with entitlements as Konkani.

Notes 1. The Konkan (known as a “region” in Maharashtra) describes a 750 km-long rugged and coastal strip of Western India stretching from above Mumbai, covering the three states of Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka. It is geographically and ecologically separated from the “Deccan Trap” of Peninsular India, constituted by the eastern spurs of the Sahyadri Mountains. Nineteenth-century historical ­consciousness in Maharashtra has also meant that the Konkan is culturally separate from the rest of Maharashtra, since it has traditionally conflated Konkan with a caste of Chitpavan Brahmins and Hindus, and located within the Konkan the roots of Peshwai (the leadership of the Maratha Empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries), and the development of a Brahminical intellectual and warrior tradition and all that contributed to a confrontation between Hindu Brahmin Marathi Nationalism and the Nizams from the Deccan and the British. It is this relentless Hindu-Brahminical discursive representation of the Konkan as a unique geographical, ecological and cultural zone that firstly erased the Islamicate culture of Muslims in the Konkan and then produced them as ideal political examples of those who had integrated best within “Hindutva.” Paradoxically, this “integration” also left Konkani Muslims out from

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research and the attention that was provided to Muslims from the Deccan (the other side of Konkan, separated by the Sahyadri Mountains), who had never been under the same intense political pressure for “integration,” since their regions of inhabitation, Islamicate culture and North Indian Islamic contact (law schools, Sufi brotherhoods and so on) were historically located within context of the Deccan Sultanate. They were not subject to the same cultural hegemonies of discursive Hindu-Brahminism that Konkan as a post-nineteenth-century cultural, ecological and geographical territory was imagined to have. 2. Momin (2002, p. 37) also refers to the community of the Bayaasarah in to Konkan as Muslims of foreign/Arabic origin, who were known to intermarry with local women. 3. Vaibhav Purandare (2012) has made a detailed study of the political life of Thackeray and the rise of the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra. 4. Muslim Intellectuals such as Hamid Dalwai (1968) and A.K.  Mukadam (1999) have attempted in various ways to outline the local, Marathi and Konkani ethos of Muslims in Maharasthtra that can remove them from the influence of North Indian reformism. 5. For the examples of Tamil Nadu and Mumbai, see Tschacher (2014) and Green (2011). 6. Momin’s (2002) book about Muslim communities in the Konkan has made a detailed survey of shrines and their relationship with ruling powers and other political entities and events within the Konkan throughout historical times.

Bibliography Dalwai, H. (1968). Muslim Politics in Secular India. Bombay: Nachiketa Publications. Dandekar, D. (2016). Muṃbaī ke Aulīyā: The Sufi Saints Makhdoom Ali Mahimi (Mumbai) and Hajji Malang (Mumbai-Kalyan) in Songs and Hagiography. Zeitschrift für Indologie und Südasienstudien, 32/33. Green, N. (2011). Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean, 1840–1915. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Green, N. (2012). Making Space: Sufis and Settlers in Early Modern India. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Momin, M. (2002). Muslim Communities in Medieval Konkan (610–1900 A.D.). New Delhi: Sundeep Prakashan.

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Mukadam, A. (1999). Building Barriers. Communalism Combat, 1999(April). Available at: http://www.sabrang.com/cc/comold/april99/cover2.htm [Accessed 31 Oct. 2014]. Mukadam, A. (2005). Dastan Bharatiya Musalmananchi [The Saga of Indian Muslims]. Mumbai: Bombay Sarvoday Friendship Centre. Mukadam, A. (2010). Chandrakorichya Chhayet [In the Shadow of the Crescent Moon]. Pune: Sugava Prakashan. Oak, P. (2001). Taajmahal he Tejomahalay Aahe [Taj Mahal Is Actually Tejomahal]. Pune: Raviraj Prakashan. Purandare, V. (2012). Bal Thackeray and The Rise of the Shiv Sena. Delhi: Roli Books. Tschacher, T. (2014). The Challenges of Diversity: “Casting” Muslim Communities in South India. In R. Jeffrey & R. Sen (Eds.), Being Muslim in South Asia: Diversity and Daily Life (pp. 64–86). New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

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PART IV

From Local Realities to Concepts and Theorizing

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The Role of Area Studies in Theory Production: A Differentiation of Mid-Range Concepts and the Example of Social Order Katja Mielke and Andreas Wilde Social sciences and Area Studies constitute two partly intersecting fields of knowledge production and related attempts at scientific ordering. Exactly what the contribution of Area Studies to social theory development has been over the last decades is subject to debate. Most commonly, Area Studies have been discussed as inferior, serving only the compilation of empirical data that would be fed into theoretical debates of various disciplines. By design, this academic controversy about Area Studies as an under-theorized field of empirical research never allowed reflection on the performance and significance of theorizing in the social sciences and humanities in general. How does theorizing in humanities and the social science disciplines, such as political sciences, sociology, and anthropology come about; what is its status and role for knowledge production and social theory? With this chapter, we suggest that the lack of reflection on these questions inhibited an urgent cross-fertilization in disciplinary and Area Studies knowledge generation. In particular, the diversity of perspectives on the meaning and significance of social theory/ies obscured the potential universalization in social science theorizing (Alatas 2006).1 It also supported the unidimensional rejection of Area Studies knowledge in these processes. In the following, we will discuss the relevance of Area Studies as

K. Mielke (*) • A. Wilde Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC), Bonn, Germany © The Author(s) 2017 K. Mielke, A.-K. Hornidge (eds.), Area Studies at the Crossroads, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59834-9_9 [email protected]

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a potential field of theory production in the example of the Social Order concept, which combines theorizing with the analysis of empirical data generated through field and archival work (Mielke et al. 2011).2 We unfold our argument in four steps: First, we look at social science theory development and social theories to grasp the essence of field-related ways of advancing theory and knowledge production in social science disciplines. Secondly, based on the idea of theories of the middle range we introduce a differentiation of three categories of mid-range concepts and contextualize their basic assumptions and characteristics. Thirdly, we elaborate on Social Order as a potential third-type mid-range concept that has evolved from our own research on historical and contemporary local politics in geographical Central Asia.3 Finally, we conclude with a reflection on the significance of language and local hermeneutics as enabling conditions for concept development and theorizing. In this chapter, Area Studies are understood broadly, encompassing the—partly interdisciplinary designed—Regional Studies subjects institutionalized as part of the humanities at universities and academies all over the world but also all (inter-)disciplinary social science and humanities research on empirical realities outside the Euro-American regions. Social sciences and humanities here refer to the disciplines of sociology, political science, anthropology, and history. In contrast to classical Area Studies, the advocates of which often adopt hermeneutic frameworks developed by the so-called systematic disciplines but rarely contribute to theory production, disciplinary research tends to remain self-referential. So far, this dichotomy is only partly bridged by large interdisciplinary projects. As authors of this chapter, we acknowledge the idea that our conventional social sciences and humanities could also be seen as Area Studies for the particular Euro-American realm they originated in. However, even in a context where efforts at multicentric or even global theory development are made (Rehbein 2013, p.  25), the Eurocentric tradition will remain relevant as a reference point that cannot be escaped given the trajectory of the philosophy of social science and its entanglement with Northern/ European hegemony and colonialism.

From Social Theorizing

to Concept

Development

Within the scientific canon, social sciences have always been challenged to prove their scientific nature after the model of natural sciences and their disciplinary attempts to uncover causalities that could be explicitly

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tested. The positivist idea that phenomena could be observed directly, measured, replicated, and reduced to uncontested cause–effect explanations, has strongly influenced social sciences as well. For example, Auguste Comte, the founder of sociology, propagated the adequacy of scientific positivist methods for the social sciences early on. He and his followers assumed the existence of an observable, objectively determined reality that could ultimately be explained with laws similar to those found in nature. Accordingly, progress in theory production and knowledge generation for establishing truth can be derived from generalizations based on verification and falsification. Scientistic scholars sought for grand theories, that is, one or at most just a few overall frameworks that would represent a single truth and “grasp the world.” This reductionist approach of unidimensional explanation became paralleled with the hermeneutical tradition that aimed at interpreting and understanding social phenomena, for instance human actions, customs, and social practices. Contrasting methods such as measuring, replicating, and falsifying to establish “theories” or laws, the hermeneutical approach relies on interpretative narratives “to grasp the intelligibility and coherence of social action by revealing the meaning it has to those who perform it” (Carr 1983; cited in Phillips 1987, p. 106). Nevertheless, even for Max Weber, who introduced the hermeneutic philosophical approach, explanation constituted the overall motivation for scientific inquiry. For him, understanding phenomena was a fundamental precondition for the categorization of different meanings and subsequent explanation, enabled by ordering the established hermeneutic units into hierarchical structures of meaning (Weber 1922/2005). Only critical theory approaches explicitly reflect on the relationality of truth and the interdependence between researchers and research objects. Taking into account that social science is part of and generated in and by society, critical traditions reject the idea that cause–effect relations could meaningfully be established for social phenomena. Accordingly, given that humans are able to change the conditions and environment for their own behaviour and that they choose to act one way or the other because of their preference or some subjective reason and not because they are determined to do so by external forces, social sciences do not produce explanatory laws. The fact that social reality changes—even by writing and reflecting about it— means that truth is contingent and limited; different strands of social theory vary in their perspective regarding whether there are multiple truths and to the degree they are socially constructed (Knorr-Cetina 2002).

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It is important to note that this quick route through the basics of the naturalistic, hermeneutic and critical approaches in social sciences does not suggest that one paradigm has substituted another in historical sequence. On the contrary, all three schools still very much subsist in parallel. Additionally, as the popular proposition that interpretative processes underlie all quantitative knowing (and thus must occur) (Phillips 1987, p. 106–107) indicates, the schools are not mutually exclusive. Even if the naturalistic approach seems outdated, the repercussions of positivism haunt scholarly endeavours, training, and research to date. For example, political scientists are classically taught that good science can be achieved by disclosing cause–effect relations in the form of isolating one or few independent variables that determine the dependent variable. Further, large n-studies and comparative approaches are favoured over case study methods (King et al. 1994). The parallel existence of the three paradigms in social science research and, importantly, a lack of reflection on their interrelation, their complementing or competing scope of intelligibility, has resulted in considerable incoherence as to what social theory actually encompasses today and how progress in theory development is constituted. The spectrum of perspectives on social theory includes theory as a “broad framework for organizing and ordering research,” as a “collection of general concepts which are useful in directing research attention, or as a specific orientation which leads the researcher to well-known problems and issues” (Turner 1996, p. 11). In another reading, social theories link interrelated concepts that consist of statements on the nature of selected aspects of reality associated with one phenomenon, and by describing and explaining these aspects they ought to organise, simplify, analyse, and clarify them in a systematic manner. Given the diversity of conceptual approaches and schools of thought, theorizing in social sciences is limited in the sense that no single theory or concept explains a phenomenon fully; all so-called theories offer only partial insights for understanding/explaining a certain issue even if they claim otherwise. As Turner noted, we are witnessing a continuous fragmentation and diversity in social theorizing; moreover, “social theory is prone to a constant cycle of fashion and whimsicality whereby social theorists continuously reinvent the theoretical wheel” (Turner 1996, p. 12). A recently published New Social Theory Reader (Seidman and Alexander 2008) featuring sections on issues such as imperialism, power, civilization clash, health, and performance, bears ample witness of recent developments that Turner claims have confounded the already existing confusion and uncertainty as to the body of social theory and what it might achieve

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(Turner 1996, p. 11). In the same vein, Outhwaite (1996, p. 88) remarked on the “emergence of varying and dramatically opposed conceptions of the relation between social theory, empirical social science, social criticism, and social practice.” What is more, social science research and theorizing appear to be reactive to real-world phenomena, particularly those of immediate concern, such as political and social crises, newly appearing societal challenges, and so on. The latter reflects the close entanglement of social sciences, social realities, and the researchers as societal beings. Yet the plurality of perspectives resulting from the above diagnosed uncertainty of social theory and the vast differentiation of social research fields suggests that the search for a single truth and totalizing claims towards one theory has de facto been given up. Instead, especially in sociology, an emphasis was laid on theories (in the plural), which encompassed plural perspectives and paradigms. Writing about the impact of empirical research on theorizing, Robert Merton (1948) showed several ways how social theory could be expanded and developed through thorough reading of empirical data and subsequent reflection on how this impacts on social theory beyond just falsifying or verifying hypotheses. In particular, the discovery of unanticipated results (serendipity pattern) that initiate new inquiries, the recasting of theory by consideration of previously neglected data, the discovery of theoretical insights based on the invention or availability of new research procedures, and the clarification of concepts were pointed out as contributions of research that could bridge the gap between mere empiricism and the search for “grand theories.” Recognizing that empirically informed science has to rely on single aspects or limited ranges of phenomena, Merton called for the development of theories adequate to limited ranges of data, calling these “theories of the middle range.” He defines them as theories that lie between the minor but necessary working hypotheses that evolve in abundance during day-to-day research and the all-inclusive systematic efforts to develop a unified theory that will explain all the observed uniformities of social behavior, social organization and social change. (Merton 1949, p. 39)

In contrast to the reductionist naturalistic view on theorizing and to the social scientists who seek to develop theory by testing and verifying an already existing body of theory (deduction), the idea of mid-range theories as approach to theory construction seemed to ascribe empirical data

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equal significance for theory development. However, despite envisaging theories to evolve from both, “[t]he functions of theory in the initiation, design and prosecution of empirical inquiry” (Merton 1948, p. 505) and the active role of empirical research in the development of social theory (Merton 1948, p. 505–506), Merton remains occupied with explanation as the ultimate purpose of theorizing. For the purpose of our discussion, we reject the rather ambitious notion of mid-range theories. Instead, it is deemed necessary to transform the approach of mid-range theories into the more modest heuristic device of “mid-range concepts.” This is for different reasons: First, Merton’s work originates in a certain scholarly-societal context that has been outlived. He formulated his ideas in the framework of functionalist theorizing in knowledge production, which in hindsight appears quite narrow in heuristic terms. Second, Merton’s position as researcher working on North American society has not caused him to reflect on questions of validity beyond the Euro-American realm. Third, given the above reasoned impossibility to establish causal linkages in social science and humanities research, concept development is the most viable way to advance and systematize knowledge.

Differentiating Mid-Range Concepts Mid-range concepts are introduced here as an approach to conceptualize empirical phenomena from a broad range of departures in efforts for knowledge production, be it Western or non-Western, Southern or Northern, from various (inter-/post)-disciplinary and non-disciplinary viewpoints. Based on our own socialization as researchers in diverse arenas of (un-)critical Northern social theory and acknowledging the related limitations that come with our particular positionality, we suggest differentiating at least three (ideal) types of mid-range concepts. A first category includes the type of concepts that have been elaborated from empirical data with the grounded theory method (Glaser and Strauss 1967). Accordingly, the broad-based analysis of possibly all kinds of data related to any observed phenomenon leads to the incremental generation of hypotheses, the validity of which is open to further research of additional cases. Examples can be drawn primarily from anthropology, such as James Scott’s concept of “weapons of the weak” (1985), Clifford Geertz’s concept of the “theatre state” (1981), or Benedict Anderson’s concept of “imagined communities” (1983/1998). A second category of mid-­

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range concepts entails those conceptual innovations that are being derived from a kind of Mertonian approach to empirical data. This is achieved through mirroring empirical data in light of already existing concepts and theories or—as realist social theory would claim—through theory-laden as opposed to theory-determined concept development from empirical realities (Sayer 2010, p. 83). Examples include Geertz’s concept—rather a methodological approach—of “thick description” (1983/1987), Scott’s version of the “moral economy” concept (Scott 1976, 1985) based on preliminary works of Thompson (1971), and Edward Said’s notion of “Orientalism” (1978/1995). The listing of examples for only the first two ideal types of mid-range concepts indicates that the boundaries are not clear-cut (therefore we speak of “ideal” types). Geertz and Scott, two anthropologists, are mentioned in both categories. Given their own background as researchers from prestigious institutions of Northern academia, the degree to which they can actually achieve to generate grounded theory-based concepts, can be scrutinized. However, this would go back to the debate on philosophy of science and whether any research, including hermeneutic research, can escape the patterns of domination that are inscribed in any kind of scientific inquiry. While this point is especially salient in the debate on Area Studies, it constitutes a structural dilemma in any hermeneutic mode of scientific knowledge production based on qualitative research (Kühner et al. 2013, p. 9). As Alatas (2001, p. 19) has emphasized with the example of orientalism in reverse, nativistic approaches to knowledge, which elevate the native’s point of view “to the status of the criterion by which descriptions and analyses are to be judged,” are not a solution for related dilemmas. The merging of nativism with calls for non-Western theorizing and alternative discourses constitutes a rather dangerous baseline that ignores criteria for scientific knowledge generation and “good science,” such as the engagement with epistemologies and methodologies, and thus inhibits the universalization of social theory and internationalization of the social sciences (Alatas 2006; Connell 2007; Rehbein 2013). Put simply, because of the above mentioned trajectory and impact of the Eurocentric tradition as result of colonialism, knowledge production cannot be advanced with a nativist attitude by the indigenous researcher intending to completely reject academic dependency and mental captivity but at the cost of remaining in isolation. This is not to argue against the diversity and plurality of approaches, but as a reminder that alternative discourses—in

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the North and South—ought to engage in a reflection of the particular evolution, the geographical and historical contexts, of Northern social sciences and the Eurocentric tradition. If the aim is to find a common ground for discourse as a step towards the ultimate universalization of social sciences, Eurocentric traditions of knowledge production need to be qualified with non-Northern thought, historical trajectories, and cultural practices (Alatas 2001). We agree with Christoph Antweiler (in this volume) who urges that “we should develop conceptual tools for Area Studies; metaphors may be stimulating for thought but heuristically are not enough for truly scientific work.” This leads us to distinguish a third category of mid-range concepts that entails a kind of epistemological dimension. Examples can be found in the contribution of Gudrun Lachenmann (in this volume) who speaks of social space, public sphere, or interfaces as mid-range concepts. Further, the arena concept elaborated by Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan (2005) fits this category. The concepts in this category are rather epistemological lenses that facilitate a type of exploratory data generation and knowledge construction by both outside and local researchers because each lens already entails a degree of operative critique on Northern concepts and otherwise implicit Eurocentric biases in seeing the world. These third category mid-range concepts thus enable a certain cognitive mobility of the researcher applying it. Using such concepts, the researchers become more receptive to local realities and thus approach field and topic with the necessary degree of reflexivity towards local contexts. The mid-range concepts in this category do not claim to relate objects in a certain way or quality that characterize social mechanisms and their functioning. Instead, their uniqueness (as lenses) is derived from their enabling another, reflective way of seeing and approaching a certain context. Apart from these obvious advantages, their added value rests with their flexibility. Although third-type mid-range concepts have been generated in a particular spatial and social context, to which they are also confined, their scope can be extended by using and testing the validity of their basic components in other settings. Hence, these concepts have a certain potential to be applied to other areas where they can be modified and enriched according to the particularities of the context and the empirical data. In the next section, we introduce another such concept, which we call Social Order, as framework for reflective theorizing in contemporary and historical research.

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Social Order as Lens for Understanding Local Politics, Order, and Change Processes In the course of our own academic attempts to understand contemporary local politics in Afghanistan and the exercise of authority in historical Transoxania—the area between the Sir Darya and Amu Darya rivers —we were confronted with local complexities that could not be connected to dominant disciplinary narratives of ordering such as statehood, empire building, ethnicity, and tribalism. Our interviews, participant observations, and a close reading of archival sources did not conform with the view of the state as dominant norm-setting and governing institution with respect to local politics. In northern Afghanistan, communities were found to rely on to a set of diverse practices to regulate intra- and inter-community access, allocation, and distribution processes to resources in the absence of state institutions. Obviously, social order did not cease to exist even in times of civil war and protracted violent conflict. In eighteenth-century Transoxania, neither an exactly defined territory, nor a monopoly of power or a sophisticated administration—all three are regarded as essential criteria of statehood—was crucial for the exercise power. Instead, in both settings the exercise of power was negotiated among local elites depending on the scope of personalized networks and the availability of power resources more generally. Against this background, the research process was marked by a constant back and forth between conceptual pondering and the analysis of empirical data collected during fieldwork and archival work. We reviewed strands of historical and sociological institutionalism that led us to take account of norms and mental-cognitive factors (moralities). After reviewing different theories of power and authority and calibrating them with our data, we dispensed with conventional and especially Weberian theories of statehood and decided to focus on power as the universal structuring force (Popitz 2009, pp. 15–17) that underlies and generates various patterns of order and ordering frameworks in institutionalization processes. Inspired by anthropologists and their ideas of ordered anarchy (Evans-Pritchard 1968, pp. 5–6; Sigrist 1979), we included the insight that power and thus order can materialize in various forms ranging from wholly institutionalized settings (for example statehood, kingdoms) to contexts where one can find power/order but no institutionalized structures of authority or, vice versa, authority without power (Niedenzu 1990). Throughout our research, we found empirical evidence for both cases (see below). Hence,

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in contrast to the majority of sociological works, we did not conceptualize order as a gradual phenomenon implying the absence of order at one end and the achievement of order as perceived orderly relations, for example peace between individuals or states, at the other. Instead, we derived at an essentially non-normative understanding of social order as encompassing all human interaction that is structured and regulated in one normative way or the other without implying that it is guaranteed, prescribed, or maintained by an institutionalized entity (as the state is usually taken to be such an entity and the overall norm-setting and policing institution). Given that the idea of social order seemed to provide a fruitful lens to investigate politics in both the Historical and Contemporary Studies, we developed the concept of Social Order as analytical framework (Mielke et al. 2011). As an analytical lens that pays attention to the power-driven interplay of social practices and moralities, Social Order can be applied as non-­ normative heuristic lens and mid-range concept for analyzing and interpreting empirical material originating from non-state-centric units and levels of analysis. Depending on the research context, it can be expanded and supplemented with auxiliary concepts as is demonstrated in the following paragraphs. Understanding Authority and Politics in Transoxania (Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century) The status of dis/order in Transoxania more than 200 years ago can be gleaned from historical collections of Persian-language chronicles that provide first-hand information about the administration of the ruling Manghit dynasty, military campaigns, court intrigues, and royal banquets. The sort of description in the chronicles at first glance offer a view of an area sunk in in disorder and rebellion. Submitting to this viewpoint, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Transoxania seems to have been a declining kingdom, ruled by corrupt and decadent sovereigns. These deficiencies were represented as a general crisis of state, society, and economy by some authors (Bartol’d 2009; Spuler 1966) and particularly by Soviet historians. Despite recent attempts to revise this stereotypical image of Transoxanian history (von Kügelgen 2002; Holzwarth 2004), historians find it difficult to abandon established frames harking back to the colonial period, such as the Uzbek polities known as “khanates.” In a different approach, this author combined the historical-critical method with conceptual pondering on power, authority, and Social Order

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by including patron–client relations and related practices such as mediation and gift giving as auxiliary concepts. It allowed reading the chronicles as a genre, and conceiving and valuing them as a literature of their own but also as a material remnant of past stages of the institutionalization of authority in this region (Wilde 2016). The chronicles and other sources not only contain information about events, rulers, and dates, but also about processes and dynamics of the political and social order (for example the forging of alliances, gift exchange, seating maps at court, and gubernatorial appointments). However, the research had to take account of the fact that chronicle writing was interwoven with authority and therefore reflects the ways it operated, and thus represents an ordering act in itself. Thus, in transmitting historical values and knowledge the sources also provide a tool for interpretation through which the past was read and understood. It allowed focusing on practices and relationships rather than on categories such as statehood, inter-state wars, and ethnic groups or tribes. The findings of the archival research and document analysis point towards a history of interdependent power relations between rulers and followers at different scales, at the core of which lies what we perceive as principles of patronage. The latter helped capture the chroniclers’ worldviews by focusing on the semantic level of the sources, meaning the language of power manifest in a range of key terms (for example loyalty, obedience, grace, favour, protection, and support, etc.). However, Transoxanian chronicles do not provide clear-cut concepts or terms for patronage. Instead of one analytical term, they indicate a myriad of interrelated emic terms, each of which covers only certain aspects or dimensions of what is commonly conflated as patron–client relations, such as solicitude, upbringing, educating, fostering somebody’s career, protection, and quasi-adoption. These indigenous concepts allowed understanding of how the Manghits ruled since the middle of the eighteenth century and the institutionalization of their authority. During this process, their Tuqay-Timurid predecessors slowly lost the local sources of power to a range of Uzbek notables until the point when they wielded only nominal authority (without power) legitimated by descent from Chingiz Khan. Yet the reverse case could also be observed when the first Manghits exercised power through their patronage network, but had no authority to claim the royal throne and khanship because they lacked the proper genealogical legitimacy to do so. After the death of the first Manghit ruler in 1759, his personal network collapsed and his realm vanished. In the subsequent period (until the early 1770s), a state of “ordered anarchy”—called mulūk

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wa ṭaw ̄ āʾif ı ̄ it with Persian historiographical works—consolidated itself, as none of the different Uzbek leaders proved able to push the institutionalization of his power to the critical threshold of authority and establish himself at the top of the societal pyramid. It was only Shāh Murād (r. 1785–1800) who established himself as legitimized ruler by using the means of religious and cultural patronage to implement his policy of religious and moral renewal. Concerned with the late nineteenth century, the Social Order concept helped understand how the Tsarist Empire subjugated the Manghits and their neighbours in a process of its own territorial expansion. As a result, Transoxania was converted into a Russian protectorate, the logic of which followed the same principles as did royal authority before. At this point, ordering principles connected to statehood were introduced from outside but along the established mechanism of patronage and related patterns of the local social order. The close reading of archival documents through the Social Order lens likewise allowed analysis of the mechanisms of interdependence and reciprocity in the rural hinterland of Bukhara. Here, the concept allowed us to grasp the role of rural elites (patrons/middlemen and government authorities) in villages, urban neighborhoods, and along irrigation canals and their role in the negotiation of power and authority at the local level. Needless to say, there is no mention of clients and patrons in the narrative sources; instead, they speak of servants, well-wishers, followers, favourites, and intimates on the part of social inferiors and protectors, godfathers, tutors, mentors, those who secure the means for survival, benefactors, and generous lords on the side of the superiors. This, and the unequal giving and receiving of gifts in an extended “potlatch,” illustrate the usefulness of focusing on social practices and worldviews in order to learn about power gaps and hierarchies. The terminology does not entail fixed concepts that derive from a thorough reflection by the chroniclers; it is rather self-explanatory in a phenomenological sense because the terms circumscribe core elements of a natural order of things from the chroniclers’ perspective. For the historian, this means that the dynamics of the local order can only be grasped by reading between the lines, focusing on practices and relationships where they are hidden under a veneer of loyalty–favour and rule–obedience relations. Understanding Local Politics in Northeast Afghanistan Post-2001 The second study revealed that multiple ordering principles underlie the complex tapestry of overlapping arenas of social interaction

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for local resource governance in rural Afghan society. The aim of the research project was to understand local politics through investigating what drives the access, allocation, and usage of crucial livelihood resources—irrigation water, pasture land, and fuel wood—in resource user communities of six districts across three provinces (Mielke 2015). The resource user communities were taken to represent local governance arenas or fields in which organizing principles of the environmental resource realm could be detected and described as mechanisms that reflect the interplay of social practices and moralities. The latter were operationalized through using the concept of lifeworld/s as auxiliary concept to account for the cognitive dimension of sense-making. It was further assumed that the detected mechanisms could be compared and tentatively generalized within the limitations of the study to allow conclusions about the generic effects their interplay produces and, consequently, to identify peculiarities for the local social order/local politics at the time of investigation. The study of local politics with the Social Order lens allowed focusing on what determines the access and distribution of local livelihood resources—conceptualized as natural resource governance with practices, rules, and norms indicative of local social order—instead of on the gap between how things should be and how things are in the three types of rural user communities. In their everyday life, they either depended on irrigation water, pasture access, or fuel wood from the nearby mountains. By looking at the local rules and dynamics of resource distribution, access, and usage over several months of qualitative fieldwork in the respective user communities, the investigation aimed to reveal power dynamics and conclusions about the mechanisms of access, that is, individuals’ ability to benefit from the respective environmental resources in the overall rural subsistence context (Ribot & Peluso 2003). To give one example, the governance of environmental livelihood resources in rural Afghanistan from 2005 onwards was marked by the absence of statutory law after decade-long political conflict. The legal regulations for pasture and land usage as well as water allocation were in the process of being drafted by the newly instated central government. Nevertheless, not anomie or violent contestation prevailed, but a great variety of local and customary rules regulating the allocation, distribution, and usage of crucial livelihood resources, albeit unwritten, were identified. This was in marked contrast to prominent assumptions of the international

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aid community that had expected an institutional void in technical as well as social terms would exist after 25 years of war. For example, the access to irrigation water was regulated by a complex system of provisions defining the cropping area and communal work contributions for the maintenance of irrigation infrastructure in different watercourses. Furthermore, the appointment of water managers at the watercourse level, different provisions for the delegation of deputies at primary and even secondary canals, and the existence of local norms designed to offset upstream–downstream imbalances in access to irrigation water could all be observed. Similar provisions existed for the access to pastures and usage of fuel wood. It is noteworthy that besides the identification of these normative principles, which were non-statutory, the research found a large gap between the existence of these principles and their discursive and ritual reconfirmation on the one hand, and de facto allocation practices on the other. While this indicates that the popular distinction between formal and informal practices (“institutions”) does not yield analytical value in this context, another finding highlights that the analytical separation of state and society is not meaningful either. This is evident in the same study, showing the large-scale appropriation of district governments by rural elites, the role of the administration as a source of rent extraction for appointed government staff, and the prevalence of webs of personalized relationships that connect office holders to a respective constituency rather than electoral mandates based on programmes and policies. As both applications of Social Order as a mid-range concept illustrate, the notion is particularly helpful in taking account of and giving room to different types of emic normativity that we suggest can be gleaned from a focus on social practices and moralities. With the help of auxiliary concepts such as patronage, gift-giving, mediation, power (resources), and lifeworlds we were able to analyze phenomena connected to politics and understand the complexities involved. Politics was thus revealed to entail power without authority in the full institutionalization of statehood in the contemporary study on local politics, and as royal authority without power and the reverse case of a temporary “ordered anarchy” of several decades in the historical case study. It deserves emphasizing that caution is however required to do justice to emic imaginaries and categories and not to silence them by an undifferentiated application of Northern-derived terminologies and concepts.

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Reflection: Enabling Conditions for Concept Development and Area Studies Theorizing Given the uncertainty over the role and meaning of theorizing in the social sciences and humanities we have elaborated on above, mid-range concept development represents an important contribution of and for Area Studies in social theorizing and knowledge production. The elaborations on Social Order provided one example. In this chapter we have introduced a differentiation of three categories of mid-range concepts, emphasizing their different scope and implicit underlying methodologies. However, they also share common features, for example that not one of the categories matches clear-cut functional categorizations such as interpretation, exploration, or explanation, neither fully the distinction between induction, abduction, or deduction, nor the qualitative–quantitative method divide. In the context of the discussion on rethinking Area Studies, it is pertinent to reflect on the enabling conditions for mid-range concept development. As the examples in each of the three categories indicate, they all relied heavily on long-term immersion of the individual researchers in the social context or the textual sources and archives from which the data originated. This illustrates how conducting meaningful research in any local setting requires specific skills; for fieldwork-based research, this implies that the individual researchers have to be accepted in their study area and by its people (Geertz 1983/1987, pp.  308–309). The motivation for developing the Social Order approach was most significantly facilitated by the knowledge of local languages and sensitivity towards culture-­specific modes of interaction, thinking, and imagining that formed the basis for observation and inferences. In this way, the example of the Social Order concept shows that as a prerequisite for local hermeneutics, Area Studies can fulfil a crucial role in teaching cultural mediation abilities. This is achieved through providing language training and orientation knowledge that must always be enhanced by first-hand experiences from long-term and repeated interactions in nonnative socio-cultural environments. This speaks for the continuation of Area Studies curricula; however, they ought to be combined with knowledge transfer of skills and methods for reflective theorizing in any regional context.

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Notes 1. Alatas’s notion of the universalization of social science theorizing is not to be confused with grand theory construction. It refers to the project for autonomous social science traditions besides the “Western” social sciences to develop “possibilities for local, national and regional philosophies, epistemologies, and histories to become [equal] bases for knowledge” (2006, p.  194) that can enter dialogue, subsequently internationalize, and eventually contribute to a development of global social theory. 2. The paper entitled “Dimensions of Social Order. Empirical Fact, Analytical Framework and Boundary Concept” was compiled within the Research Project “Local Governance and Statehood in the Amu Darya Border Region” that was carried out from 2005 to 2011 at the Center for Development Research (ZEF) at Bonn. 3. Since we distinguish between social order as empirical status description and Social Order as analytical lens and potential third-type mid-­ range concept, we resort here to the lower case and upper capitalization to mark the difference.

Bibliography Alatas, S. (2001). Alternative Discourses in Southeast Asia. Sari, 19, 49–67. Alatas, S. (2006). Alternative Discourses in Asian Social Sciences. Responses to Eurocentrism. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Anderson, B. (1998). Die Erfindung der Nation. Zur Karriere eines folgenreichen Konzepts. Berlin: Ullstein (Original work published in 1983). Bartol’d, V. (2009). Gesammelte Werke 1: Das kulturelle Leben in Turkistan. Berlin: Schletzer. Connell, R. (2007). Southern Theory. The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science. Cambridge: Polity Press. Evans-Pritchard, E. (1968). The Nuer. A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People. Oxford: Clarendon Press (Original work published in 1940). Geertz, C. (1981). Negara. The Theatre State in 19th Century Bali. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Geertz, C. (1987). Dichte Beschreibung. Beiträge zum Verstehen kultureller Systeme. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp (Original work published in 1983). Glaser, B., & Strauss, A. (1967). The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Chicago: Aldine.

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Holzwarth, W. (2004). The Uzbek State as reflected in eighteenth century Bukharan sources. In T. Herzog & W. Holzwarth (Eds.), Nomaden und Sesshafte—Fragen, Methoden, Ergebnisse Teil 2 (Orientwissenschaftliche Hefte, 15/Mitteilungen des SFB 586 “Differenz und Integration,” 4/2) (pp. 93–129). Halle: Zentrum für Interdisziplinäre Regionalstudien (ZIRS) der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. King, G., Keohane, R., & Verba, S. (1994). Designing Social Inquiry. Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Knorr-Cetina, K. (2002). Die Fabrikation von Erkenntnis. Zur Anthropologie der Naturwissenschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp (Original work published in 1984). Kühner, A., Langer, P., & Schweder, P. (2013). Reflexive Wissensproduktion— eine Einführung. In A. Kühner, P. Langer, & P. Schweder (Eds.), Reflexive Wissensproduktion. Anregungen zu einem kritischen Methodenverständnis in qualitativer Forschung (pp. 7–20). Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Merton, R. (1948). The Bearing of Empirical Research upon the Development of Social Theory. American Sociological Review, 13(5), 505–515. Merton, R. (1949). Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: Simon and Schuster. Mielke, K. (2015). (Re-)Constructing Afghanistan? Rewriting Rural Afghans’ Lebenswelten into Recent Development and State-Making Processes. An Analysis of Local Governance and Social Order. PhD. Universität Bonn. Mielke, K., Schetter, C., & Wilde, A. (2011). Dimensions of Social Order. Empirical Fact, Analytical Framework and Boundary Concept. ZEF Working Paper 78, Bonn. Niedenzu, H.-J. (1990). Machtprozesse in herrschaftslosen Gesellschaften. Ein Beitrag zur Theorie der sozialen Evolution. Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 15(4), 3–15. Olivier de Sardan, J.-P. (2005). Anthropology and Development. Understanding Contemporary Social Change. London: Zed Books. Outhwaite, W. (1996). The Philosophy of Social Science. In B. Turner (Ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Social Theory (pp. 83–106). Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Phillips, D. (1987). Philosophy, Science and Social Inquiry. Contemporary Methodological Controversies in Social Science and Related Applied Fields of Research. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Popitz, H. (2009). Phänomene der Macht. Tübingen: Mohr (Original work published in 1992). Rehbein, B. (2013). Kaleidoskopische Dialektik. Kritische Theorie nach dem Aufstieg des globalen Südens. Konstanz: Universitätsverlag Konstanz. Ribot, J., & Peluso, N. (2003). A Theory of Access. Rural Sociology, 68(2), 153–181. Said, E. (1995). Orientalism. Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin Books (Original work published in 1978).

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Sayer, A. (2010). Method in Social Science. A Realist Approach. London: Routledge. Scott, J. (1976). The Moral Economy of the Peasant. Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press. Scott, J. (1985). Weapons of the Weak. Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press. Seidman, S., & Alexander, J. (Eds.). (2008). The New Social Theory Reader. London: Routledge. Sigrist, C. (1979). Regulierte Anarchie. Untersuchung zum Fehlen und zur Entstehung von politischer Herrschaft in segmentären Gesellschaften Afrikas. Frankfurt am Main: Syndikat. Spuler, B. (1966). Geschichte Mittelasiens seit dem Auftreten der Türken. In K. Jettmar, H. Haussig, B. Spuler, & L. Petech (Eds.), Geschichte Mittelasiens (pp. 123–292). Leiden: Brill. Thompson, E. (1971). The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the 18th Century. Past and Present, 50, 76–136. Turner, B. (1996). Introduction. In B. Turner (Ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Social Theory (pp. 1–24). Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. von Kügelgen, A. (2002). Die Legitimierung der mittelasiatischen Mangitendynastie in den Werken ihrer Historiker, 18.-19. Jahrhundert. Würzburg: Ergon Verlag. Weber, M. (2005). Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie. Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins (Original work published in 1922). Wilde, A. (2016). What is beyond the River? Power, Authority and Social Order in Transoxania (18th–19th Centuries). Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

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The Production of Knowledge in the Field of Development and Area Studies: From Systems of Ignorance to Mid-Range Concepts for Global Ethnography Gudrun Lachenmann

Production

of Knowledge for Development and Area

Studies

The epistemic community/ies doing development and Area Studies, that is the knowledge applied for social transformation of countries of the Global South, have been quite sceptical regarding the adequacy of doing comparative research between different societies, North and South, between different cultures, civilizations and regions, considering the very heterogeneous and context-specific developments. Given the long tradition of “regional” respective Area Studies, case studies in social anthropology, and fear of transfer of Eurocentric concepts in development research, different voices have highlighted the necessity of fundamental methodological reconsidering of the approaches used within a process of globalizing social science (Albrow & King 1990). This chapter wants to take up the demand for intensified exchange between Area Studies and disciplinary conceptual debates as well as for situating knowledge(s) between multiple verges. The perspective comes from interpretative, social-constructivist

G. Lachenmann (*) University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany © The Author(s) 2017 K. Mielke, A.-K. Hornidge (eds.), Area Studies at the Crossroads, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59834-9_10 [email protected]

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and sociology of knowledge with an interdisciplinary basis on development and empirical local and global research. In order to overcome the North–South divide regarding production of knowledge, one can show that flows and social spaces are horizontal and follow very complex relations, including networking and—indeed—development work which can no longer be qualified as North–South transfer, although calling it cosmopolitan would be too much given the hegemonic structure of global aid architecture and governance. Classical distinctions of Development, Regional and World-System Studies are overcome through new forms of interdisciplinarity such as migration, transnationalization and globalization theories in particular. In any case, the methodological approach for empirically “grounded theory” building (Strauss 1987) through dynamic methodologies, is overcoming “methodological nationalism” (Wimmer & Glick Schiller 2003) but at the same time making use of and adding to the knowledge accumulated in Area Studies. Thereby, systematic disciplines should continue with their specific epistemic approaches that bring together different perspectives, in this case sociology and social anthropology, and include certain approaches of political and economic analysis as in Transnationalization Studies (Faist & Glick Schiller 2010). Knowledge for development has been globalized at a very early stage in the international development community; however, there were clearly different “epistemic communities” corresponding to (classical) Area Studies researching the very different constellations and following rather different strands of (development) knowledge as well as theoretical approaches. This regards, for example, dependency theory about and from Latin America mainly by national and international political scientists; and theories and concepts of articulation of modes of production mainly about West Africa and mainly by francophone social anthropologists. Often there were not too many synergies. On the other hand, it becomes clear that comparative and Area Studies have to be reoriented with regard to methodology, taking into account the impossibility to maintain differences of units of research between ­cultural blocks, Global North or Global South and regions, brought about through the increase in global flows (Appadurai 2000) and interactions. The object and field of research in sociology and social anthropology have dissolved in the sense of translocality (Hannerz 2000; Lachenmann 2010) understood as the local within the global. Societal transformation and production of knowledge no longer occur primarily within national borders or international organizations, and

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cannot be conceptualized as North to South transfers or diffusion. This chapter aims at presenting an interactive approach based on sociology of knowledge (Luckmann 1995) applied to sociology of development focusing on negotiation of global development visions amongst global, translocal and local institutions in different countries and regions. Thus, the negotiation of meanings or translation of visions and concepts on the local level can be elaborated in translocal social spaces (for methodological debates as well as case studies see Lachenmann & Dannecker 2008). Mark Hobart (1993) has shown that although we are living in a knowledge society, there is a “growth of ignorance.” Through the ousting of local by expert knowledge, “systems of ignorance” (Lachenmann 1994) are constructed in international relations at different levels. It is assumed that the interaction of knowledge systems and social worlds can be studied at (“encounters at”) “interfaces” (Long 1992b) in order to grasp their complexity. At the same time, one can look at shifting boundaries and processes of changing identity structures, thereby deconstructing “container” concepts of community, culture and also region, overcoming the creation of systems of ignorance regarding the border regions of these “containers” as well as “translocal flows.” I suggest the use of the mid-range concept “social space” (Lachenmann 2008a; Nageeb 2004; Nageeb 2008a, b, c) implying a rather non-­ institutionalized definition of interaction that goes beyond community, place or territorial/physical space. It is clearly linked to agency, the production of (gender) specific and culturally defined meanings, and the “social construction of reality” (Berger & Luckmann 1966) and the lifeworld. Social spaces are more and more clearly structured (inter alia by gender) through these processes of globalization, regionalization and localization which bring about new methodological challenges, regarding for example the existing dominance of knowledge orders, reframing the legitimization of researchers coming from the global North and their cooperation with local researchers. Apart from spaces and arenas in which knowledge is negotiated, the vertical coherence and contextualization of social and knowledge systems by means of “interfaces”—my second relevant mid-range concept— is of utmost importance. We have to distinguish between information that comes from the bottom up and knowledge that is passed down, as well as analyze which and whose concepts are applied and what knowledge is taken up. Knowledge for development produced by local Area Studies is negotiated through interaction, whereas interventions such

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as poverty alleviation or decentralization are mostly applied top down. The question is whether there will be multiple spaces and relations that create translocal and transnational arenas in which knowledge is negotiated on the one side, or uniform knowledge platforms in which hegemonic centres control access and instrumentalize for example the cosmopolitan strata of women activists and academics that exist after the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing 1995, on the other.

Methodological Challenges I am looking at interfaces and interconnectedness between different spaces and sites of knowledge production on development (Hornidge 2012) understood as transformation. It is assumed that these interfaces are on the one hand perpetuating, partly mystifying local knowledge and institutions, and on the other hand not producing appropriate methodologies and reflective spaces for validation (Lachenmann 2008b, 2010) in the sense of growth of ignorance (Hobart 1993). We should take up the challenge and reflect on the possibility of elaborating “sociological theories of the middle range” (Merton 1968) on the basis of this translocal methodological approach (Lachenmann 2010), combining it with empirically “grounded theory” production (Strauss 1987) as well as “global ethnography” (Burawoy 2000a, b). Thereby, it can be assumed that systems of ignorance created through universally applied concepts and theories can be overcome as (local) knowledge from Area Studies will be integrated in global knowledge. [Empirical] “Research plays an active role: it performs at least four major functions which help shape the development of theory. It initiates, it reformulates, it deflects and clarifies theory” (Merton 1968, p.157; cited in Mackert & Steinbicker 2013, p. 56). There is clearly no question any more of transfer of knowledge, patterns of modernity and so on, but theorization of development and transformation has to be based on these localization processes which should be at the centre of new approaches to development and Area Studies. We cannot just look at the diffusion or travelling of concepts and institutional arrangements in different policy domains without analyzing the contexts and solutions to problems in the respective situations. This forces us to apply different perspectives, crosscutting unquestioned analytical concepts such as formal and informal, market and subsistence, public and private, household and economy, and challenge methodological approaches by doing global ethnography.

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Within a transformative approach we have to look at dynamic processes taking place, asking where are the arenas, and who are the societal forces able to bring about this change. At the same time, we have to challenge concepts of “impact” and “target groups” in favour of negotiating meaning through interaction and agency. Thereby, we are overcoming the micro-­macro divide; mainly by bringing structure/agency together in a dynamic, process-oriented, relational approach, starting from the perspective of social actors and social and cultural meaning, elaborating on processes of “social construction of reality” (Berger & Luckmann 1966) and “structuration” (Giddens 1984) of spaces and societies, looking at changes going on, and indeed conceiving mid-range concepts for (empirically grounded) theory building. New epistemological and methodological issues have been brought to the fore through a heightened reflexivity in social science and development policy, which is asked to take into consideration cultural diversity with regard to society and regions, and especially when participatory planning, development and research, as well as attention to “local” or “indigenous” knowledge are claimed. Here, methodological considerations about the validity and contextualization of the data as well as the social and cultural embeddedness of policies are in order. However, reflection is often missing on the implications and possible pitfalls of too many ready-­ made demands for authenticity and consideration of local knowledge and “voices” of actors and “target groups,” respectively beneficiaries of development policy or even “ownership,” such as the “poor” and “women.” The danger of essentialism and technocracy looms very large (Shiva 1994; Lachenmann 2004). When studying development and transformation, Area Studies can overcome systems of ignorance by feeding in local and translocal knowledge on the mid-level. Knowledge and agency are intimately linked; agency comes through knowledgeable actors, whose everyday as well as special (for example also regional) knowledge has to be looked at from the actors’ lifeworld perspective, thereby making reflexivity possible. Encounters at the interface of different knowledge systems can be studied through an analysis of different logics of agency, social worlds and codes. Power relations come to the fore as one observes their empirical implications. Knowledge systems cannot be seen as closed units, as knowledge is always produced in interactive processes and therefore hybridized (Nederveen Pieterse 2001) in spaces whose boundaries are permanently shifting and becoming translocal. Development knowledge is glocalized par excellence, as the debate on

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gender can illustrate. Many women projects, for example aiming to import technology for food processing, conserving seeds (Padmanabhan 2011) or upgrading the quality of traditional art and crafts, failed because no serious attempts were made at integrating global environmental knowledge into the local modernization process, such as environmental knowledge in Vietnam (Ehlert 2012). Interfaces of knowledge systems produced in social spaces are a useful mid-range concept to guide empirical research on which to ground theoretical considerations by studying “encounters at the interface” and “battlefields of knowledge.” This implies an “actor-oriented approach for the analysis of social change and development intervention,” exposing “the socially constructed and continuously negotiated nature of intervention processes” that “provide accounts of the life-worlds, strategies, and rationalities of actors in different social arenas” (Long et al. 1992, pp. ix, i; Long 1992c, p. 4). When looking at localizing global concepts of development, it becomes clear that many of these concepts have been brought as postulates to the international arena by “Third World” women activists. There is an international epistemic community of women’s activists and researchers who have found their way to (certainly not very open) spaces of negotiation, in which different regional movements and persons were indeed very influential, but which now might have been appropriated in a cosmopolitan way, such as the concept of empowerment by UN organizations brought in by DAWN (Development Alternatives for Women in a New Era). With (theories of) globalization the former type of Area or “Regional” Studies lost its legitimacy to a certain extent, either leading to strengthening of Global Development Studies, or theories differentiating according to disciplines, with ethnology and social anthropology partly losing ground and legitimacy. Sociology has always had to legitimate itself within Area Studies—as the study of foreign countries—as ethnology was supposed to be the relevant discipline for non-industrialized countries (Bierschenk 2014). However, it became clear that knowledge about regional specificities and field research is absolutely indispensable within the global context. Area Studies became re-legitimized following different approaches with regard to the specialized stock of knowledge, as studying globalization necessarily needs an empirical and theoretical basis. New debates about different methodological approaches started to build certain epistemic communities of researchers, of which Crossroads Asia is one. These different approaches can be linked to theories of transnationalism, various theo-

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ries of globalization, of Migration Studies including networking, circular migration (Dannecker 2003; Gerharz 2014), multiple (Eisenstadt 1999) or entangled modernities (Randeria 2002) and so on, often combined with concepts of transnational spaces (Faist 1998). It is necessary to work more on the methodology to connect Area and Global Studies, and especially the empirical approach of contextualized (extended) case studies using grounded theory. Here, the approach of global ethnography (2000) is very pertinent. It has been further developed (Lachenmann 2008a) with the intention to overcome methodological nationalism, finding new forms of comparison (Kaschuba 2003) either on regional or on sub-national level. This methodology implies complex new designs and thereby makes it possible to develop mid-range theories based on classical qualitative empirical research. Concepts elaborated from empirical findings are, for example, typologies of organizations, trajectories of activists, (restructuring) of public sphere, (changing) gender/social orders and so on (Nageeb 2008c, a).

Bureaucratic Knowledge Management and Lack of a Critical Public Sphere: Constitution of “Systems of Ignorance” Knowledge is negotiated in multiple spaces, with networks creating translocal and transnational arenas while, however, hegemonic centres produce uniform knowledge platforms and capture cosmopolitan consultants, activists and academics. Instead of a supposedly participatory approach with actors or “stakeholders” and their particular knowledge, we should look at agency and structuration created by movements and (epistemic) communities. Instead of the socio-technocratic application of participatory methods, or vulnerability discourse on local needs or poverty, we should look at the hegemonic interpretations and their local/ regional negotiations. In many organizations, learning processes from own activities are not possible, as no feedback or critique is admitted. It is not just a matter of management and diffusion; there is no reflexivity and flexibility with “authoritarian modes of (bureaucratic) governance” Mbembe 1988 that still prevail, with organizational structures discouraging and hindering creativity. The ­problem of knowledge artefacts (for example blueprints, surveys; Hyden 1990) seems to be revitalized. There is unproductive interdependency between bureaucracy as providing formal knowledge and the national consultancy,

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as well as “erosion of knowledge” in academia due to consultancy and not feeding results into academic teaching and research (Mkandawire 1998), as well as the public sphere. The most important issue is whether there is an (officially recognized) critical public sphere—constituted by different knowledge arenas—into which knowledge from independent research, activist positions of civil society, NGOs and expert and development knowledge as well as policy results are fed and debated together with political actors and media (for struggles of “Sisters in Islam” in Malaysia, see Othman 1998; Othman & Petaling 2005). Empirical research done by national researchers rarely seems to be fed into public debate. In some situations, access to data on development policies is said not to be given to local researchers and critical research based on qualitative methodology is considered not to be welcome by authorities. This hinders learning processes at all levels of society and especially in development policy (Goetz 1994; Lachenmann 2009)—a typical system of ignorance. Looking at Area Studies, the point can be made that while they highlight certain systems of knowledge—covering the political and cultural centres of regions—they at the same time produce systems of ignorance, “Zomias” (van Schendel 2002) as borderlands, the “peripheries of peripheries.” Area Studies are therefore highly political, actively and passively. This has to be borne in mind when thinking about any regional border and the cultural connotations for which it stands. “Impact studies” of development and social policies do not usually pay much attention to the new interactions and knowledge networks. These phenomena can be analyzed as systems of ignorance, that is addressing the subject in a way which automatically leads to “nihilation” (as in social constructivism) of certain social spheres, structures and knowledge. Transnational relations in migration, new forms of shadow economy (Ferguson 2006) and the “social embeddedness” (Granovetter 1985; Lachenmann & Dannecker 2001) of all so-called informal forms of economy, have only recently started to draw attention. Following generally accepted conceptualizations in development, relations or interface/interaction between subsistence/market, reproductive/ productive sectors beyond the household are not studied. This “female economy” takes place at the meso-level—linking the micro and macro levels, for example, through gendered fields of economic activity. This is in tune with the call of critical macroeconomists apropos the relationship between reproductive economy and the productive sectors, as we

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look at markets providing livelihoods and the necessities of subsistence economy, while often segregated by gender and region, or entitlements and institutions. This approach blurs conventional distinctions between the formal and informal sector but presupposes an upgrading of typically female economic fields and a realistic consideration of opportunities channelled through bureaucratic and authoritarian governing bodies or patrimonial structures. Modes of accumulation between the formal and informal sector often pass through gender relations (for example Nairobi; Laaser 2001), with a generally high level of personal mobility along with highly personalized economic transactions. The concept of the “trader dilemma” (Evers & Schrader 1994) has been decisive for understanding regional and transregional trading networks in and from Asia. In general, the analysis of multiple economic fields of activity illustrates their complex character in the areas located between reproduction and transnational trade, such as the long distance transcontinental trade carried out by Ghanaian female traders (Amponsem 1996). The trading networks in this (“informal” or “ethnic”) trade are clearly structured on a gender basis—often based on women’s as well as family networks. The gendered structure of knowledge has been rendered invisible and neglected, and so have translocal “informal” social relations. (A recent gender publication by Klugman et al. (2014) is entitled “Voice and Agency.”) The problem is not that tradition is “re-invented”—as seems to be the case in the social and cultural turn of development—but that overlapping concepts of institutions, entitlements, their historicity and so on are not taken into account while they still inform local world view and agency. This can refer to social institutions which would provide social security, access to land and resources, all kinds of rights and entitlements, loss of social/gendered spaces and rights, loss of gendered representations, for example in recently established local councils, and so on. International mainstream expert knowledge prevails on local knowledge and social reality as information about one’s own society is barely accessible. To give but one example, the participation offered by donors for elaborating certain policies (for example agenda 21; poverty alleviation) is top down, so that the dominant discourse is adhered to, often through consultants, while no learning from real world experience is p ­ ossible. One could argue that fora are provided through NGOs and social movements among others, but here arise questions about the validity and the social and political legitimacy of the knowledge produced. NGOs (or consultants

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following participatory approaches) often do not bring in a critical (social or interdisciplinary) research community. International agencies’ efforts to promote knowledge exchange for NGOs are certainly interesting, but do they take account of those that have been organized at grassroots level, without caring about official recognition?

Linking Area and Development Studies to “Global Ethnography” and Empirically Grounded Theory Building When looking at development, and studying countries and regions of the Global South, the dilemma is that too many aspects are implicitly assumed on the one hand, or essentialized on the other. The transfer of concepts in standardized studies (such as “household” and so on), which is often the case in development and Area Studies, carries the risk of becoming blind to the social reality and different contexts. The qualitative approach elaborated here tries to counteract this tendency, especially since it can be observed that dualism has reappeared worldwide—opposing, for example, Islamic and Western societies. The methodology suggested here for what could be called translocality in Area Studies (Lachenmann 2008a, 2010) was developed with the aim to bring different recent approaches to new forms of field research together, linking up to internationally debated concepts of “multi-sited” (Marcus 1998) and “global ethnography” (Burawoy et al. 2000). The innovative contributions made by Michael Burawoy et al. (2000, pp. x, ix) and his research group of sociologists in California are referring to global power structures and how to take them into account in new power constellations, in what they term in the title of their book Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections, and Imaginations in a Postmodern World. Their explicit aim is to link critical ideas of globalization theories (considered to be of “too high abstraction”) and political economy with what they had called “ethnography unbound,” asking whether their “extended case method … (was) flexible enough to link everyday life to transnational flows of population, discourse, commodities and power.” They want to overcome the restrictedness of the ethnographic site, as well as the onesided study of “external forces” (Burawoy 2000b, pp.  4f), striving at a “historically grounded, theoretically driven, macro ethnography” (p. 24). This position can be enriched by a mid-range theoretical perspective of translocality (Hannerz 2000), combining it with systematizing struc-

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turation, in the sense of empirically grounding globalization theory, and with systematic contextualization. This, according to Burawoy (2000b, pp. 27, 17), implies “systematically incorporating historical and geographical context,” pulling together “questions of power and reflexivity” as well as “extensions of observations over time and space.” Globalization can be looked at by its building up from below, making use of knowledge accumulated by Area Studies and examining glocalization and localization. Here, the paradigm of translocality refers to the interactive construction of social reality, the local in the global. Area Studies will certainly follow these methodological linking processes on different levels and for different phenomena like migration and transnational migratory spaces, mobility in general, all kinds of “transregional” connectivity, analyzed at the interfaces where knowledge and meaning are negotiated. Recent examples would be research projects such as the one on Chinese women’s historical migration to Singapore (Low 2015), or Transregional Studies on establishing long-term connections through migrants from Lebanon (Peleikis 2003) and India in West, East or Southern Africa, and the study of “Doing IT in the Philippines” (Akpedonu 2006) looking at (informal) professional ties between Philippino IT professionals and their former student comrades having migrated to this economy in the USA. In the design of multiregional research (Lachenmann & Dannecker 2008) it was useful to follow certain dimensions and elaborate typologies including common global frames of reference for localization, such as women rights (Sieveking 2008a). Thereby, relevant global and regional concepts are taken up and interrogated as to how they are made sense of locally and how they move back to the global sphere through transnational epistemic communities (for example at women’s conferences), crosscutting national and regional boundaries, such as with some activists and feminist scholars who have started to use self-descriptions such as “Islamic” and “African feminists,” which would imply an inner debate in global female networking, but which does not exclude non-Muslims. Shortcomings of case studies can be overcome by systematizing contextualization and bringing in globality and translocality through an interface approach studying power constellations and adding dense and complex concepts, such as trajectories, which cut across communities, places, levels, time, space and social worlds. Over and above biographic research, this applies to people whose personal history and career in different knowledge spaces, institutions and organizations can be followed based on the narrative approach.

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Grounded theories are elaborated, including modes of how the public sphere is constituted inter alia by “translocalizing networks, issues and bodies” (Spiegel 2010) as well as “gendered modes of political action” (Strulik 2013). Different forms of globality come into play, as for example with the rise of religious fundamentalism leading to cooperation of different local organizations, such as the critical feminist organization Sisters in Islam (SIS) in Malaysia, who have acquired a special form of translocal knowledge and capacity by interacting with regional groups and other women’s groups, activists and researchers. And then there are “travelling activists” (apart from “travelling concepts”), who during their personal and professional trajectories constitute the place where others can join in and where feedback occurs. Theoretical sampling allows for contrasting cases. Grounded theory generates theses which will enter into consecutive comparisons and can be fed into further research. Global concepts of development are studied as to how they are made sense of locally and how they move back to the global and regional sphere, such as Southeast Asia regional conferences (for example, CEDAW—Convention against all forms of Discrimination against Women), and through participant observation (Spiegel 2008a, pp. 172ff, 2010). This Conference was of special importance for women groups who struggled against reservations from Government especially concerning Shana eaw. Typologies can cut across different country or Area Studies at institutional and intermediary levels and constellations, as well as in dimensions, discourses, relevant contexts and so on, in order to generalize the analysis and also to make comparisons, even if do not necessarily on the national level. Thereby, different concepts of gender/social equality and types of gender construct can be looked at with regard to occupying public spaces and doing economic activities, concepts of poverty and wealth and societal obligations, types of NGOs and their closeness to the state, and types of intensity of inward/outward-looking social legitimacy of gender policies. Also female versions of representing Islam can be found, including local or popular ones, as well as discourses regarding gender and development, and intensity and type of transnational networking. The case of Malaysia shows women’s and feminist organizations and networks to be struggling very hard in the complex national context based on political ethnicity and national Islam. Their power of negotiation and conquered space seems not to refer to the development model per se, but they enter an inner Islamic debate on situated interpretations of Islam apropos women’s rights and other global policy concepts, seriously challenging hegemonic religious authorities and the state, as well as Islamic

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practices (Spiegel 2008b). This can be theorized as “authority of knowledge,” looking at their public forms of interpreting Islam with regard to women’s rights. Thus, a process of “restructuring the public sphere” can be analyzed here as well as a “pluralism of Islams” (Nageeb 2008a). It is interesting to see how global concepts and discourses accrue different meanings when contextualized in the local societies (Spiegel 2008a, p. 112). Developments taking place in transnational women’s organizations and their positioning in the international arena make the linking of Area Studies possible. Regional interactions take place through very different knowledge communities (Nageeb 2008b, c). So, reference to different Islams was found, along with claims of everyday Islam against global homogenization and fundamentalisms, and different feminisms as regards regional and political diversity. In both the methodological as well empirical sense the approach of looking at interfaces between different female social spaces and cross-cutting national boundaries, but also looking for diversity and battles within national and transnational spheres, has proven very fruitful. As the Empirical Studies referred to have shown, struggling for a social space of access to and production of knowledge, as well as entering and restructuring the public sphere, confronts authoritarian states not committed to gender empowerment and, to an extent, religious authorities. Gender proves to be fundamental when it goes about seeking rights and social equality in negotiating development. In times of de-territorialization, transnationalism and global/local relations, Area Studies face methodological challenges which I argue could be overcome by referring to new approaches in development research. Globalized knowledge arenas are constituted where glocalization of knowledge takes place, for example typically in regional spaces. When studying the constitution of social spaces where knowledge acquisition and production occurs, we find evidence of an immense diversity within and amongst the countries at all levels. Development taken as a form of knowledge production through negotiation in translocal spaces, therefore, can be regarded as central for overcoming systems of ignorance in development as well as in Area Studies. The transformation in the understanding of relevant global concepts while travelling down and back up again to the global sphere needs to be carefully monitored. An important feature of knowledge developed by activists is supposed to be its crosscutting of spheres of scientific research, political action and everyday life (Mueller 2005; Nageeb 2008a; Sieveking 2008a).

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Bibliography Albrow, M., & King, E. (Eds.). (1990). Globalization, Knowledge and Society: Readings from International Sociology. London: Sage Publications. Amponsem, G. (1996). Global Trading and Business Networks among Ghanaians: An Interface of the Local and the Global. PhD. Universität Bielefeld. Appadurai, A. (2000). Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination. Public Culture, 12(1), 1–19. Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The Social Construction of Reality. New York: Anchor Books. Bierschenk, T. (2014). From the Anthropology of Development to the Anthropo­ logy of Global Engineering. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 139(1), 73–98. Burawoy, M. (2000a). Grounding Globalization. In M. Burawoy, Burawoy, M., Blum, J., George, S., Gille, Z., Gowan, T., Haney, L., Klawiter, M., Lopez, S., Ó Riain, S., & Thayer, M., Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections, and Imaginations in a Postmodern World (pp. 337–350). Berkeley: University of California Press. Burawoy, M. (2000b). Introduction: Reaching for the Global. In Burawoy, M., Blum, J., George, S., Gille, Z., Gowan, T., Haney, L., et al., Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections, and Imaginations in a Postmodern World (pp. 1–40). Berkeley: University of California Press. Burawoy, M., Blum, J., George, S., Gille, Z., Gowan, T., Haney, L., et al. (2000). Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections, and Imaginations in a Postmodern World. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dannecker, P. (2003). The Meaning and the Rationalities Underlying Labor Migration from Bangladesh to Malaysia. Bangi: IKMAS [Institute for Malaysian and International Studies/Institut Kajian Malaysia dan Antarabangsa] Working Paper. Ehlert, J. (2012). Beautiful Floods. Environmental Knowledge and Agrarian Change in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. Berlin: Lit. Eisenstadt, S. (1999). Multiple Modernities in the Age of Globalization. In C. Honegger, S. Hradil, & F. Traxler (Eds.), Grenzenlose Gesellschaft? (pp. 37–50). Opladen: Leske und Budrich. Evers, H.-D., & Schrader, H. (Eds.). (1994). The Moral Economy of Trade. Ethnicity and Developing Markets. London: Routledge. Faist, T. (1998). Transnational Social Spaces out of International Migration: Evolution, Significance and Future Prospects. Archives Européennes de Sociologie, 39(2), 213–247. Faist, T., & Glick Schiller, N. (Eds.). (2010). Migration, Development, and Trans­ nationalization. A Critical Stance. New York: Berghahn Books. Ferguson, J. (2006). Global Shadows. Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Durham: Duke University Press.

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Gerharz, E. (2014). The Politics of Reconstruction and Development in Sri Lanka. Transnational Commitments to Social Change. Abingdon: Routledge. Giddens, A. (1984). The Constitution of Society. Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press. Goetz, A. (1994). From Feminist Knowledge to Data for Development: The Bureaucratic Management of Information on Women and Development. IDS Bulletin, 25(2), 27–36. Granovetter, M. (1985). Economic Action and Social Structure—The Problem of Embeddedness. American Journal of Sociology, 91(3), 481–510. Hannerz, U. (2000). Transnational Research. In H. Russel Bernard (Ed.), Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology (pp. 235–256). Walnut Creek: Altamira Press. Hornidge, A.-K. (2012). “Knowledge” in Development Discourse. A Critical Review. In A.-K. Hornidge & C. Antweiler (Eds.), Environmental Uncertainty and Local Knowledge. Southeast Asia as a Laboratory of Global Change. Bielefeld: transcript. Hobart, M. (1993). Introduction: The Growth of Ignorance? In M. Hobart (Ed.), An Anthropological Critique of Development. The Growth of Ignorance (pp. 1–30). London: Routledge. Hyden, G. (1990). The Changing Context of Institutional Development in SubSaharan Africa. In The World Bank (Ed.), The Long Term Perspective Study of Sub-Saharan Africa, Institutional and Sociopolitical Issues (Vol. 3, pp. 43–59). Washington DC: The World Bank Publications. Kaschuba, W. (2003). Anmerkungen zum Gesellschaftsvergleich aus ethnologischer Perspektive. In H. Kaelble & J. Schriewer (Eds.), Vergleich und Transfer. Komparatistik in den Sozial-, Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften (pp.  341– 350). Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Klugman, J., Hanmer, L., Twigg, S., McCleary-Sills, J., Hasan, T., & Bonilla, J. (2014). Voice and Agency. Empowering Women and Girls for Shared Prosperity: Main Report (The World Bank Report). Washington DC: The World Bank Publications. Laaser, M. (2001). Unternehmerinnen in Nairobi: Das Aushandeln alter und neuer Handlungsspielräume. In G. Lachenmann & P. Dannecker (Eds.), Die geschlechtsspezifische Einbettung der Ökonomie. Prozesse der Entwicklung und Transformation (pp. 159–178). Münster: Lit. Lachenmann, G. (1994). Systeme des Nichtwissens. Alltagsverstand und Expertenbewusstsein im Kulturvergleich. In R. Hitzler, A. Honer, & C. Maeder (Eds.), Expertenwissen. Die institutionalisierte Kompetenz zur Konstruktion von Wirklichkeit (pp. 285–305). Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Lachenmann, G. (2004). Researching Local Knowledge for Development: Current Issues. In N. Schareika & T. Bierschenk (Eds.), Lokales Wissen—sozial­ wissenschaftliche Perspektiven (pp. 123–148). Münster: Lit. Lachenmann, G. (2008a). Researching Translocal Gendered Spaces: Methodological Challenges. In G. Lachenmann & P. Dannecker (Eds.), Negotiating Development

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in Muslim Societies: Gendered Spaces and Translocal Connections (pp. 13–36). Lanham: Lexington. Lachenmann, G. (2008b). Transnationalisation, Translocal Spaces, Gender and Development—Methodological Challenges. In R. Anghel, E. Gerharz, G. Rescher, & M. Salzbrunn (Eds.), The Making of World Society. Perspectives from Transnational Research (pp. 51–75). Bielefeld: transcript. Lachenmann, G. (2009). Engendering Knowledge in Organisations. Negotiating Development in Local and Translocal Social Spaces. Working Papers in Development Sociology and Social Anthropology 362, University of Bielefeld. Lachenmann, G. (2010). Globalisation in the Making: Translocal Gendered Spaces in Muslim Societies. In U. Freitag & A. von Oppen (Eds.), Translocality. The Study of Globalising Processes from a Southern Perspective (pp. 335–367). Leiden: Brill. Lachenmann, G., & Dannecker, P. (Eds.). (2001). Die geschlechtsspezifische Einbettung der Ökonomie. Prozesse der Entwicklung und Transformation. Münster: Lit. Lachenmann, G., & Dannecker, P. (Eds.). (2008). Negotiating Development in Muslim Societies: Gendered Spaces and Translocal Connections. Lanham: Lexington. Long, N. (1992a). Conclusion. In N. Long & A. Long (Eds.), Battlefields of Knowledge. The Interlocking of Theory and Practice in Social Research and Development (pp. 268–277). London: Routledge. Long, N. (1992b). From Paradigm Lost to Paradigm Regained? The Case for an Actor-Oriented Sociology of Development. In N. Long & A. Long (Eds.), Battlefields of Knowledge. The Interlocking of Theory and Practice in Social Research and Development (pp. 16–46). London: Routledge. Long, N. (1992c). Introduction. In N. Long & A. Long (Eds.), Battlefields of Knowledge. The Interlocking of Theory and Practice in Social Research and Development (pp. 3–15). London: Routledge. Low, K. (2015). Remembering the Samsui Women. Migration and Social Memory in Singapore and China. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Luckmann, T. (1995). Interaction Planning and Intersubjective Adjustment of Perspectives by Communicative Genres. In E. Goody (Ed.), Social Intelligence and Interaction. Expressions and Implications of the Social Bias in Human Intelligence (pp. 175–186). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mackert, J. & Steinbicker, J. (2013). Zur Aktualität von Robert K.  Merton. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien. Marcus, G. (1998). Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography. In G. Marcus (Ed.), Ethnography through Thick and Thin (pp. 79–104). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mbembe, A. (1988). Etat, violence et accumulation, leçon d’Afrique noire. Foi et Développement, 164/165, 1–8. Merton, R. (1968). Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: Free Press.

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Mkandawire, T. (1998). Notes on Consultancy and Research in Africa. Centre for Development Research Working Paper 98.13, Copenhagen. Mueller, C. (2005). Local Knowledge and Gender in Ghana. Bielefeld: transcript. Nageeb, S. (2004). New Spaces and Old Frontiers, Women, Social Space and Islamization in Sudan. Lanham: Lexington. Nageeb, S. (2008a). Diversified Development: Constituting Translocal Spaces through Agency. In G. Lachenmann & P. Dannecker (Eds.), Negotiating Development in Muslim Societies : Gendered Spaces and Translocal Connections (pp. 223–266). Lanham: Lexington. Nageeb, S. (2008b). Negotiating Peace and Rights in Sudan: Networking for the Agenda of “Violence against Women.” In G. Lachenmann & P. Dannecker (Eds.), Negotiating Development in Muslim Societies: Gendered Spaces and Translocal Connections (pp. 193–222). Lanham: Lexington. Nageeb, S. (2008c). Women’s Organisations and Their Agendas in Sudan. Interfaces in Different Arenas. In G. Lachenmann & P. Dannecker (Eds.), Negotiating Development in Muslim Societies : Gendered Spaces and Translocal Connection (pp. 93–122). Lanham: Lexington. Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2001). Development Theory. Deconstructions/ Reconstructions. London: Sage Publications. Othman, N. (1998). Islamization and Modernization in Malaysia: A Competing Cultural Reassertion and Women’s Identity in a Changing Society. In R. Wilford & R. Miller (Eds.), Women, Ethnicity and Nationalism (pp. 170–193). London: Routledge. Othman, N., & Petaling, J. (Eds.). (2005). Muslim Women and the Challenge of Islamic Extremism. Kuala Lumpur: Sisters in Islam. Padmanabhan, M. (2011). Women and Men as Conservers, Users, and Managers. A Feminist Social-Ecological Approach. Journal of Socio-Economics, 40(6), 968–976. Peleikis, A. (2003). Lebanese in Motion: Gender and the Making of Translocal Village. Bielefeld: transcript. Randeria, S. (2002). Entangled Histories of Uneven Modernities: Civil Society, Caste Solidarities and Legal Pluralism in Post-Colonial India. In Y. Elkana, Y. Krastev, E. Macamo, & S. Randeria (Eds.), Unraveling Ties: From Social Cohesion to New Practices of Connectedness (pp. 285–311). Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Saloma-Akpedonu, C. (2006). Possible Worlds in Impossible Spaces. Knowledge, Globality, Gender and Information Technology in the Philippines. Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Shiva, V. (1994). The Seed and the Earth: Biotechnology and the Colonisation of Regeneration. In V. Shiva (Ed.), Close to Home. Women Reconnect Ecology, Health and Development (pp. 128–143). London: Earthscan Publications.

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Sieveking, N. (2008a). Negotiating Women’s Rights from Multiple Perspectives: The Campaign for the Reform of the Family Law in Senegal. In G. Lachenmann & P. Dannecker (Eds.), Negotiating Development in Muslim Societies: Gendered Spaces and Translocal Connections (pp. 145–170). Lanham: Lexington. Sieveking, N. (2008b). Women’s Organisations Creating Social Space in Senegal. In G. Lachenmann & P. Dannecker (Eds.), Negotiating Development in Muslim Societies: Gendered Spaces and Translocal Connections (pp. 37–66). Lanham: Lexington. Spiegel, A. (2008a). Negotiating Women’s Rights in a Translocal Space. Women’s Organisations and Networking in Malaysia. In G. Lachenmann & P. Dannecker (Eds.), Negotiating Development in Muslim Societies: Gendered Spaces and Translocal Connections (pp. 171–193). Lanham: Lexington. Spiegel, A. (2008b). Women’s Organisations and Social Transformation in Malaysia. Between Social Work and Legal Reforms. In G. Lachenmann & P. Dannecker (Eds.), Negotiating Development in Muslim Societies : Gendered Spaces and Translocal Connections (pp. 67–92). Lanham: Lexington. Spiegel, A. (2010). Contested Public Spheres. Female Activism and Identity Politics in Malaysia. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Strauss, A. (1987). Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Strulik, S. (2013). Politics Embedded. Women’s Quota and Local Democracy. Negotiating Gender Relations in North India. Berlin: Lit. van Schendel, W. (2002). Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Jumping Scale in Southeast Asia. Environment and Planning: Society and Space, 20(6), 647–668. Wimmer, A., & Glick Schiller, N. (2003). Methodological Nationalism, the Social Sciences, and the Study of Migration: An Essay in Historical Epistemology. International Migration Review, 37(3), 576–610.

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New Area Studies, Translation and  Mid-­Range Concepts Vincent Houben

The State

of Area

Studies Revisited

Since the 1990s and with increasing momentum in the early 2000s, the usefulness of Area Studies has been the subject of intense international academic debate. In a post-Cold War context marked by relentless globalization and the borderless flows of goods and people, the division of the world into clearly delineated regions or areas did not seem to make much sense anymore, neither in the ontological nor epistemological senses. This debate first started in the United States of America before sweeping through Europe, Australia and Latin America, to finally reach Asia and Africa. The debate arrived at different locations on the basis of their relative distance from the still mainly Western centres of academic knowledge production. In a first wave of fundamental critique, their situation was phrased in terms of an afterlife. Meanwhile, however, the field is in the process of being revived or remade. The relative position of Area Studies towards other disciplines and new transdisciplinary studies has been discussed with a renewed intensity in recent years. In 2000, Harry Harootunian, a historian of modern Japan, published a head-on critique of Area Studies in the USA at a moment when the Ford Foundation had started to invest in the revival of the field. He defined V. Houben (*) Humboldt University Berlin, Berlin, Germany

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the area as a “simulacrum of a substanceless something” mistaken for a totality. He also lamented the conservative posture of US area experts who refused to cross geopolitical boundaries to adopt new theories in an increasingly globalized world. He accused Area Studies of still being driven by their service to state and business, of being caught within the prescriptive parameters of modernization theory, of primarily using a national lens, and of refusing to develop their own theories and methods. More seriously, he claimed its hermeneutics were based on emphatically studying “natives” and applying what appeared in fact to be a racist epistemology due to its translation of local phenomena to fit Western ontologies. Thus, according to Harootunian, Area Studies were like a dinosaur no longer in tune with the contemporary world: As a model, Area Studies have produced a theory of knowledge based on the authority and authenticity of native experience in a world where the native is no longer on the outside, as once imagined, but, rather, is subjected to the same political-economic processes and structures that all of us encounter in our everyday lives, everywhere and anywhere. (Harootunian 2000, p. 41)

The primary alternatives to Area Studies were Cultural and Postcolonial Studies, although they also carry fundamental problems with them. Cultural Studies have rightly turned from theories of knowledge to theories of power but, in doing so, practise excessive Foucauldianism. Postcolonial Studies are still productive in critiquing Eurocentrism but failed, however, to see beyond the colonial encounter, becoming trapped in endless deconstruction (Harootunian 2000, pp. 46–51). The post-Cold War era witnessed a downturn in Area Studies, a field which, according to its critics, should be abandoned altogether and replaced with new interdisciplinary fields of study. In contrast to this expectation, however, the second decade of the twenty-first century witnessed the revival of Area Studies as a project to understand the current globalized world. Arif Dirlik critically examined the alternatives, noting that alternative spatializations of the world were as politically charged as their predecessors. Acknowledging the problematic features of Area Studies, its recognition of the importance of local textual traditions and its regular transgression of boundaries of all kinds has to be seen as being progressive rather than conservative. The five alternatives to Area Studies—Civilizational Studies, Indigenous Studies, Asia-Pacific Studies, Asianized Asian Studies, Oceanic and Diaspora Studies—constitute a particular genre of knowledge production and each possess their own weaknesses. Civilizational as well as

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Indigenous Studies reify cultural boundaries instead of overcoming them; Asia-Pacific and Asianized Asian Studies carry the danger of indigenism; Oceanic Studies, including Indian Ocean Studies, overemphasize transmaritime interactions; Diaspora Studies replace area with movement but tend to overlook place and are in danger of once again racializing the movements of people. Therefore, Area Studies has not come to an end, but as a field of study it can no longer claim the monopoly over the contemporary and crucial field of place-based analysis (Dirlik 2010). The triangulation of revived or so-called new Area Studies should not only be judged within the context of the emergence of alternative approaches, but also in relation to the decentring of the disciplines. In recent years, one can observe an increasing number of publications exploring the connections between Area Studies and disciplinary as well as new transdisciplinary fields of study. On the disciplinary front, political science (Derichs 2014), history (Houben 2013) and geography (Sidaway 2012) have been set in relation to Area Studies, as have Cultural Studies (Chow 2002) and comparative political theory (Goto-Jones 2011). Area Studies and its above-mentioned successors still remain at the periphery of academia because the disciplines continue to avidly defend their epistemic cores as well as their oligopoly of academic knowledge production. Claudia Derichs recently evaluated the position of the social sciences, and political science in particular, in relation to Area Studies. She sees three major discursive trends addressing this relation, either conciliatory or more critical, the latter in the format of new Area Studies and the post-­ Area Studies approach. Conciliation promotes the mutual benefit of combining Area Studies with the disciplines, new Area Studies try instead to decentre knowledge production and post-Area Studies concentrate on socio-spatial relations. The concept of “unwritten constitutions” of political rule (Birsl & Salzborn 2014) for the study of comparative politics is then used in order to test the merits and/or limitations of these three approaches. The conciliatory one, which is theory-based but nevertheless allows for cultural and spatial factors to come in, is the most productive, whereas the other two are much more difficult to reconcile with a discipline-­based approach to the area (Derichs 2014). Vincent Houben explored the realm of “area history” as a connecting space of inquiry between the discipline of history and Area Studies. Instead of seeing both of them in contrasting terms, history and Area Studies in fact share many characteristics: both deal with temporal and spatial formations other than their own. This crossover into a different

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context demands a kind of explanation which is less based on rational choice than it is on “Verstehen” (“understanding” through a combination of emic and etic perspectives). Verstehen builds on a cognition of the Other that rejects essentialism. The new fields of global, transnational and comparative history offer great potential to bring “area” into the study of history (Houben 2013). Rey Chow has explored the theoretical basis of Cultural Studies and compared it with the foundations of Area Studies. Cultural Studies, which include studies of the non-West, are driven by a critique of Orientalism and foreclose that the “non-white non-West” has its own cultures. It also focuses on intersectionality to consider hierarchical discrimination that goes beyond race, to include factors such as class and gender. Cultural Studies scholars also try to take up minority discourses in order to uncover alternative subject formations. Therefore, Cultural Studies has the potential to become a viable alternative to Area Studies in the study of non-­ Western cultures. Nevertheless, the field is also in danger of essentializing the notion of culture, masking the violence of cultural politics within indigenous culture and overly globalizing culture and its relation to power (Chow 2002). The study of comparative political thought (CPT), an endeavour halfway between political science and Area Studies, has been reviewed by Chris Goto-Jones. Instead of positing the West against the rest, CPT tries to develop an inclusive understanding of the political across spatial and cultural discontinuities in reaction to the diversity of the current globalized world. Whereas Area Studies used to privilege spatial distance to emphasize distinctness, CPT focuses on conceptions of the political and enters into inclusive comparison as a method. In order to find suitable units of comparison, Euro-America is no longer set against the Other. Any juxtaposition that can be encapsulated within a single system of understanding is feasible. Instead of limiting itself to the use of existing concepts from political theory in Europe, new frontier-like concepts are explored using different degrees of comparitivity, a spectrum of proximities between things that are different and similar at the same time. Comparison should be pursued globally, moving beyond intra-European comparison to include the comparison of and between non-Europe and European areas (Goto-Jones 2011). Voices from the discipline of geography deserve particular attention here, since ultimately the notion of area, irrespective of the way it is defined, is linked to the concept of space, which in turn is of central importance to

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the field of geography. Thus, as is the case for history, there seems to be a natural overlap between geography and Area Studies. James Sidaway, a geographer from the National University of Singapore, recently took stock of geography’s conjunction with Area Studies, as both have been criticized for being Orientalist and embedded in Western imperialism, which in turn led to their decline in recent years. Geographers have, however, lately been very busy with developing alternatives to traditionalist specialist knowledge on places and regions. Basically, three new perspectives have emerged, focusing respectively on post-Orientalist geographies, on comparison and on perspective. In addition to the concept of metageography, a set of spatial structures through which people know the world, new geographies of “trans-areas,” in the form of oceans or mountainous areas such as Zomia, have been discovered. Secondly, Benedict Anderson’s idea of the inverted telescope and the shift from “trait” to “process” geographies as observed by Willem van Schendel have opened up the field of geography to comparison. Thirdly, the issue of vantage points and scales of resolution has attracted an increasing amount of attention in geographical research. Via these new approaches, Sidaway concludes, place-bounded research in conjunction with grounded knowledge has regained prominence and needs to be pursued further (Sidaway 2012). The work of Neil Smith, an anthropologist and geographer at Rutgers University, also carries the current debate on theories of space and areas further. His ideas seem to be an important stepping-stone to developing a convincing theory and methodology of new Area Studies, as will be outlined in more detail below. According to Smith, the contemporary globalized world is going through a number of fundamental shifts—a restructuring of geographical space and of geographical scale, as well as the increase in flows, which cut across existing local, regional, national and transnational boundaries. In order to adequately capture these shifts a new global geography is needed, which is based on a relative or relational definition of space. Rather than viewing the global world as being borderless, Smith suggests that places and territories still matter since they are both constituted by and the result of concrete social processes. An allencompassing restructuring of spatial and scalar arrangements is occurring, which make local transformations an integral part of global transformation. Even more important, however, is the production of spatial difference and continuous processes of rescaling. In the words of Smith: “the production of scale provides a framework, a technology for organizing spatial differences, for identifying places as distinct from each other; it provides a metric

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for drawing social, political and economic boundaries in the landscape” (Smith 2010, p.  31). Based upon this significant observation, he argues that the definition or categorization of areas needs to take this production of space and scale into account: “an appropriate ­categorization of areas would presumably account for the very real processes that are transforming both the areas themselves and their overall significance” (Smith 2010). So instead of concentrating on flows, the area is brought back into the equation as the central organizing principle of “area knowledge” and may constitute the basis for a new, potent methodology and theory to understand the contemporary globalized world. It is along these lines that, according to me, new Area Studies need to be considered.

Outlining New Area Studies Area Studies aim at a deep understanding of “situated difference,” which in sum consists of a complex set of correlations on human societies, distinguishing between them on the basis of location. It assumes that the world cannot be explained as a whole but must be split up into smaller parts in order to be opened up to comparative scientific analysis. In 2012 the Leiden Institute of Area Studies adopted a convincing vision on its field of study (Leiden Institute of Area Studies 2012): Area studies is an approach to knowledge that starts from the study of places in the human world from antiquity to the present, through the relevant source languages, with central regard for issues of positionality. It is a dynamic synthesis of area expertise and disciplines in the humanities and social science, relying on sensitivity to and critical reflection on the situatedness of scholarship, and foregrounding the areas studied as not just sources of data, but also sources of theory and method that challenge disciplinary claims to universality. It should be inherently interdisciplinary, by testing the boundaries of the disciplines; and actively but carefully comparative, by treating the why, how, and what of comparison as anything but self-evident.

Four features come to the fore here, the first two being descriptive and the last two prescriptive. Area Studies is an approach that adopts a particular perspective on places, trying to bring area and discipline-based knowledge together. As a field of studies, it works methodologically with local languages and engages in interdisciplinary comparison. Area Studies scholars reflect on their positionality and situatedness and, finally, Area Studies challenge the universality claims of the disciplines. Each of these points

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merits extensive comment but here the relationship between Area Studies and the disciplines and the issue of perspective is taken as the point of departure to arrive at a slightly different definition of “new Area Studies.” Bearing this in mind, a formal description of new Area Studies as a field of study can be summarized in the following diagram (Fig. 7). The diagram presented here shows that new Area Studies essentially consists of a double-layered hermeneutic circular “motor,” of which the core revolves around a combination of theme and area and the mantle, which governs the core, constitutes itself through a correlation between perspective and epistemology. In practising Area Studies, the researcher has to proceed consciously and in a systematic manner, addressing basically four main, apparently simple questions: what or who?, where?, how? and why?

Fig. 7  Hermeneutic Circle of New Area Studies

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At the core of the new Area Studies endeavour is a combination of theme and area, which constantly needs to be calibrated anew whilst doing research. The research theme is open since Area Studies addresses in principle all aspects of human experience and is not restricted to one particular dimension of reality. The determination of the area depends on its relevance for the research theme chosen and can have any size, location or temporality. Area consists of a deliberate choice of a particular time–space configuration that is initially decided upon and then gradually proves itself to be relevant for the research theme. Space is made up of a carefully chosen correlation of place and scale, stretching across the local, translocal, regional, transregional, national, transnational and the global. Time is not necessarily linear and can be lengthy or brief. In Area Studies, time primarily gives chronological depth to space, allowing for the inclusion of the dynamics of historical change into the research theme. In sum, area is a flexible heuristic instrument to allow for place-based analysis and is thus not tied anymore to the areas of traditional Area Studies. The study of a theme within an area is bound to the adoption of a particular perspective and striving for a particular kind of knowledge—the outer layer of the diagram presented above. Simply, new Area Studies aim at adopting a “view from within” and try to produce knowledge that fits the area but does not necessarily need to be generalized in the manner disciplines tend to do. This statement on the combination of an area perspective and area epistemology requires further elaboration. The question of perspective is vital to any scientific pursuit and here Area Studies differ from disciplines. Disciplines have taken an outside-­ inward perspective with regard to their subject matter, applying circumscribed as well as validated theories and methods in order to do proper object analysis. In contrast, Area Studies have attempted an inside-­outward perspective, since they start with the realities as well as representations of humans in a particular place. Not only the approach but the very purpose of scientific inquiry in the ideal typical disciplines as opposed to ideal typical Area Studies is different. Disciplines try to establish universally valid knowledge within a particular field of study. Thus, political scientists study power, sociologists society, historians the past, geographers space and all involved in these disciplines try to come up with thematically focused concepts and theories of maximal reach. Practitioners of Area Studies try to understand as many aspects of a particular space as possible, thus producing multidimensional knowledge of an intentionally restricted reach. Whereas disciplines look for the universal within variety, Area Studies want to highlight variation within global universality.

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A further refinement is necessary to understand where individual disciplines are located in relation to Area Studies. One could imagine a scale, with universal-abstract on the one end and particular-concrete on the other end. Starting out from the universality end there exists a sequential range of positions according to field of study, starting from political science and economics on the universality end towards sociology, then to history, next to anthropology and ending with Area Studies at the particularistic end. Viewed in this manner, disciplines and Area Studies situate themselves differently but are still connected through an epistemological chain. Often there exists a particular mix of universalism and particularism in all of them, since not all political scientists, sociologists or Area Studies experts are the same. Some area experts allow for more disciplinary theory than others and some disciplinarians include more area-related specificity than others. In fact, hardcore disciplinarians, whilst pretending to be universalists, tend to disguise the fact that they basically write on the West (or on the rest from the viewpoint of the West) and are therefore areanists themselves. But those studying the rest have until now remained a rather exotic minority, since the great modernist narrative of progress has been driving the academic agenda and huge resources have been spent on what appears to be a Western program of self-validation that is still continued in spite of increasing calls to reverse or decentre the gaze. A number of intermediary conclusions can be drawn from the discussion so far. First, I think one should not be preoccupied with a solid construction of area. Essentializing or totalizing the area has been proven to be implausible, although any choice of area is far from innocent. Area means something other than a particular physical-geographical space or a sum of national territorial units with firm boundaries. Every Area Studies research endeavour needs to define its own area in the sense of a configuration of places, scales or distance relationships tied to a particular theme. Second, studying people in other places than our own (their histories, their activities and ways of being) implies the adoption of a specific perspective, which enables us to see from the inner to the outward and therefore overcome the thought logic and language of modernity, which makes us blind to conjunctures of globalization which have been there for a long time but which have until recently escaped our attention. Here the frontiers of established knowledge can be crossed over and here new Area Studies have a decisive role to play.

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Third, Area Studies can be considered as a counter-project against hegemonic Western epistemologies of the world, since they take particularistic dimensions of human existence as their point of departure. This, however, goes far beyond the post-colonial agenda of turning back or reversing the gaze and also goes beyond the post-structuralist agenda of deconstructing the big concepts of social science. It means taking up lived experiences from all around the world in order to expand our understanding of humanity, without a priori determining a centre or a periphery. Harootunian called this “everydayness” (Harootunian 2000, p. 55). This does not mean denying the history and contemporary dimensions of power difference and inequality. What is important, however, is to stretch Area Studies to their global ramifications. Fourth, Area Studies need to develop their own brand of theoretical concepts more forcefully, based on a systematic appreciation of what new Area Studies have to offer. It is this issue to which the last part of this chapter is devoted.

Towards Situational Analysis, Translation and  Mid-­Range Concepts It has by now become sufficiently clear that Area Studies essentially engage in thematic place-based analysis and thereby adopt a tripartite multi-dimensional approach that includes area, an inside-to-outside perspective, and a mixed generalist-specific epistemology. Area in its specific geographically demarcated format has been replaced by flexible definitions of spatial figurations, allowing for permeability and movement but without doing away with area that is of real or imagined attachment to places on several scales. Area is linked both to place (being in situ, which produces a particular perspective on the world) and scale (a relational, interconnected spatial structure which ranges from the local to the global). Trans-area, in the sense of capturing cross-border mobilities, can be an important dimension of area but the idea of post-area, as argued by some, misses the point since it is in danger of marginalizing or even erasing place altogether. On the other hand, van Schendel’s references to new formats of spatial relations go beyond the ontologically given and merit further consideration. His “jumping scales” include flows, borderlands as ­ connecting zones, as well as unfamiliar spatial forms (lattices, archipelagos, hollow rings, patchworks) (van Schendel 2005, pp. 292–296).

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The primary goal of the new Area Studies approach is thus not theoretical grounding, but rather, spatial grounding because this is where the key to understanding “being different” or “situated specificity” can be found. However, Area Studies specialists can no longer limit themselves to the production of isolated descriptions of the uniqueness of their region of choice. Instead, they are now compelled to put their observations into a comparative context, explaining the ways in which particular phenomena in their area of research are grounded, and relating these to similar phenomena elsewhere. In order to realize this goal and the goal of producing “area-based theory,” Area Studies specialists require a more straightforward approach that permits a concrete conceptualization of area as a correlation of place and scale. This concurs with Christoph Antweiler, who in this volume suggests striving for “Area Science” based upon the attempt to find particular characteristics of the socio-spatial relations of the area of concern. For its operationalization, I propose a three-step approach that begins with situational analysis, engages in translation-cum-comparison and finally involves the formulation of mid-range theoretical concepts. Situational analysis (SA) is a relatively new theory-methods package developed by. It is an extension of grounded theory methodology that draws on a range of qualitative research methods, including discourse analysis, actor-network theory, assemblage theory and so on. SA allows the researcher to consider his or her situatedness, the complexities and ambiguity in a variety of data, to include epistemic diversity and to analyze power relations embedded in the research situation. Researchers applying SA begin by making so-called situational maps, in which all the elements in the research situation are laid out. The relationships between each of these elements are then reflected upon in a relational analysis. The next step involves drawing maps of social arenas/worlds that address all the collective actors as well as their various discourses. The final phase of situational analysis creates positional maps, in which all the discursive positions taken and, perhaps more importantly, those positions not taken, are illuminated along two axes. Discursive positions do not, however, correspond to specific actors—rather they represent the array of positions that are voiced, as well as those that remain silent. These maps presume that some actors may take multiple, even contradictory positions and as a result they assist the researcher in avoiding oversimplification and enable a more complex picture of variation and difference to emerge (Clarke et al. 2015, pp. 11–50). The potential of SA for new Area Studies lies in the fact that it refers back to the anthropological social worlds tradition of the Chicago

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school, collects data in terms of situational space compatible with area and enables the researcher to view these in relation to larger contexts, thus putting relationality at the heart of the exercise. It also takes up discursive practices though, at the same time, it moves beyond the sole focus on the individual social actor or “knowing subject” and finally includes nonhuman actors as agents (Clarke et al. 2015, pp. 87–93). In the case of new Area Studies, which aim to understand “other” societies and cultures, doing a situational analysis is not enough. Taking a view from the inside, Area Studies’ findings are mainly framed in emic concepts and must therefore be translated. This second step is necessary so that the findings may be understood by non-area specialists and opened up for wider comparison. Translation necessarily involves a practice of “shifting” into a different system of meaning as well as “substitution” to achieve mid-level abstraction. Translation therefore involves negotiating between local perspectives and global academic language into a format that satisfies both. This means making local epistemologies compatible with scientific language, without privileging one over the other. The anthropologist Stanley Tambiah explained that translation tries to transport specific understandings of reality across boundaries of time, place and culture. This involves double subjectivity, since the observer has to enter the minds of the actors he/she studies and then distance him/herself again in order to translate the observed phenomena into scientifically based categories of understanding. The translation of cultures carries with it the problem of comparability and commensurability (“making proportionate” so that different phenomena become measurable with the same metric), some measure of which is already implied in its execution. Comparability implies the notion of a shared space of intelligibility. However, rather than trying to establish one-to-one correspondence between phenomena or concepts across different cultures, the mapping of a phenomenon within another culture seems to be more productive (Tambiah 1985). The issue of translation in new Area Studies is of crucial importance, yet translation is problematic in its own right, involving questions about the agency of the translator and the problem that every translation produces a gap as well as adding something (Niranjana 1992, pp. 2–9). Talal Asad has explained how translation consists of the integration of several practices within a single discursive representation, as other societies’ conceptions are represented in Western logical constructs, different habits of thought have to be mediated and synpraxic narratives are transformed into higher

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levels of abstraction (Asad 1985). Despite these complexities, the area can only be unlocked for analysis through the carefully considered application of translation. Doris Medick-Bachmann recently highlighted the potential of Area Studies to go beyond translation as a mere technique of dealing with cultural difference. Area Studies offer a translational perspective on transnationality as spaces of cross-cultural interaction are linked back both to local understandings and global ideas. Area Studies cannot only put the ideologies governing current mediatized representations of cultural conflict into question but also engage in cross-categorical translation (Medick-Bachmann 2015). Place-based knowledge that has been translated has the intention of moving beyond area-centrism towards a more inclusive format, which is intelligible across cultural boundaries but does not necessarily reflect standard Western-based disciplinary theoretical concepts. As Tambiah showed, comparison is part of translation but the kind of comparison described by Goto-Jones goes one step further and achieves mid-level abstraction. Instead of engaging in comparison by juxtaposing phenomena, “area comparison” explores comparativity, that is, a spectrum of proximities between things that are different and similar across a range of global discontinuities. Goto-Jones argues that doing this not only enables one to explore the frontiers of existing concepts, but also to introduce and develop new mid-range concepts that reach beyond the individual areas of research. In fact, mid-range concepts have already emerged from existing, traditional-­ style Area Studies though they have largely been ignored by non-area specialists who assume that they have no relevance beyond the container area itself. There are three formats of existing mid-range concepts, most of which try to encapsulate both globally relevant and area-­specific elements within one single concept. One format has been pursued by renowned scholars, who have taken mainstream disciplinary concepts but refined them by adding area-specific adjectives. These scholars have become known well beyond the boundaries of Area Studies and some of their concepts have been integrated into accepted disciplinary knowledge. The second type of mid-range concept that has emerged involves working with analogies or allegories in order to capture universal dimensions of that what is specific through the act of mirroring. The third strategy has been to take indigenous concepts and infuse them with overarching analytical content, which implies that cultural concepts on one area can be transferred to another area in order to explain hitherto unseen dynamics.

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From the 1960s onwards, area specialists have succeeded in coupling general disciplinary-based concepts with spatio-temporal signifiers. Pre-­ colonial Southeast Asian polities are now understood as mandala states (Wolters 1982) and current ones as theatre states (Geertz 1980). These scholars’ late colonial precursors had already introduced concepts such as dual economy (Boeke 1944), cosmic dualism (Josselin de Jong 1951) and plural society (Furnivall 1939); see for an overview King (2008). Underlying these concepts were structuralist notions of society, in line with the prevalent modernization paradigm, making a clear-cut distinction between tradition and modernity. Such terms, particularly with regard to types of state and society, have also been developed for other areas. African post-colonial states are labelled gatekeeper states (Cooper 2002), contemporary Central Asian states are seen as post-socialist and East Asian states as neo-­Confucianist. Likewise, variations of religion such as in the form of Javanese or Swahili Islam are constructed in a similar manner, highlighting local variation within global religious practice. Area specialists have also contributed significantly to a plural understanding of modernity. Carol Gluck has introduced the notion of “blended modernity” in order to understand Japan during the Meiji era but her analysis can be extended to other areas. On the one hand modernity possesses a worldwide common grammar but on the other hand Japan’s version was a result of a combination of particular preconditions, available models, conjunctural moments and improvisation by people more than by the state (Gluck 2011). The second mode of shifting area-specific concepts beyond the area itself has involved mirroring of or seeking analogies with Western concepts. For instance, Benedict Anderson explained how “power” in Java has to be defined in contradistinction to Western notions of power as abstract. The Javanese idea of power entailed a concrete fluid-like substance infused into the body of a person of authority (Anderson 1972). Many other area specialists have spent a lot of time showing how other meta-concepts used in Western social science need to be redefined within the specific context of the area. They have intervened in debates on nation, race, ethnicity, development, globalization and other meta-concepts in an attempt to extend these beyond Western understandings. Indeed, in the course of Western colonization many concepts were transferred to non-Western societies and included in local vocabularies, albeit with substantial semantic shifts. On the one hand, travelling concepts facilitate cross-cultural understandings; on the other hand, they are often mistaken to mean the same thing although being located within different cultural settings.

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The third format, stretching indigenous concepts and thereby opening them up for other spatio-temporal contexts, is potentially the most interesting one but has hardly been effective until now. This is mainly a consequence of the fact that most area specialists are familiar with their area only and are not au fait with concepts that are used to describe comparable phenomena in other areas. Area knowledge is still highly compartmentalized and cannot therefore unfold its full potential. A recent example of this approach is the concept of “tulong” in order to understand the articulation of local politics in the contemporary Philippines. Seeking help from politicians is the bottom-up cultural catalyst of negotiating power in exchange for the emotional gift of gratitude. This differs from conventional explanations of Philippine politics in terms of patron–client relations (Chuan Yean 2015). The concept of tulong has the potential to explain local politics in other parts of Asia and Africa as well, but will have difficulty in finding currency beyond Southeast Asian Studies. An earlier example is the notion of “cukupan,” having enough, as reflected in the aspiration of rising middle classes not only in insular Southeast Asia but potentially all around the world (Gerke 2000). What kind of novel mid-range concepts can emerge from new Area Studies, based on situational analyses that engage in translation? Only the contours of these are imaginable at this juncture, although we might be confident that the roots of some such concepts actually already exist— used by people in their everyday lives in order to make sense of their own positionality within the current globalized world. The mid-range concepts to look for are place-based but also connecting instead of exclusionary, allowing for the naming of concrete things in a differentiating-cum-­ integrating manner across scales of distance and proximity. These alterity concepts allow for an analysis of non-linear patterns across multiple spatial scales, similar to what is done in current ecological research (Brody 2005). A qualitative example from Area Studies is Peter Jackson’s concept of a “regime of images” as an attempt to frame the Thai cultural logic of visibility which discursively negotiates power in the private as well as public sphere (Jackson 2004). A more refined vocabulary is also needed in order to explain how particular processes and interactions of place and scale constitute themselves in different settings. Examples of such processual mid-range concepts to be explored further are accommodation, conversion, dissociation, modification, transposition, translocation, transduction, substitution, ­ remission, recombination, reduplication and so on. The comparitivity

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underlying these concepts is related to similarities in direction, proportion and quality of process rather than fixed modes of juxtaposition and distinctness. It is on the basis of these middle-range concepts that new Area Studies possess great innovative potential for a deep, polycentric understanding of the world.

Bibliography Anderson, B. (1972). The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture. In C. Holt, B. Anderson, & J. Siegel (Eds.), Culture and Politics in Indonesia (pp. 1–69). Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Asad, T. (1985). John Dixon. In F. Baker, P. Hulme, M. Iversen, & D. Loxley (Eds.), Europe and Its Others (pp. 170–177). Colchester: University of Essex. Birsl, U., & Salzborn, S. (2014). Unwritten Constitutions of Political Rule: Conceptual Approaches to Comparative Area Studies of Asia, the Middle East & North Africa, and Europe. ASIEN, 132, 12–25. Boeke, J. (1944). The Structure of the Netherlands Indian Economy. New York: Institute of Pacific Relations. Brody, S. (2005). Towards a Taxonomy of Spatial-Scale Dependence. Ecography, 38(4), 358–369. Chow, R. (2002). Theory, Area Studies, Cultural Studies: Issues of Pedagogy in Multiculturalism. In M. Miyoshi & H. Harootunian (Eds.), Learning Places. The Afterlives of Area Studies (pp. 103–118). Durham: Duke University Press. Chuan Yean, S. (2015). Tulong. An Articulation of Politics in the Christian Philippines. Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House. Clarke, A., Friese, C., & Washburn, R. (Eds.). (2015). Situational Analysis in Practice. Mapping Research with Grounded Theory. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. Cooper, F. (2002). Africa Since 1940. The Past of the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Derichs, C. (2014). Theory-Driven Conceptualization and Epistemic Reflection in Comparative Area Studies: Some Thoughts on “Unwritten Constitutions” and Research Designs. ASIEN, 132, 26–34. Dirlik, A. (2010). Asia Pacific Studies in an Age of Global Modernity. In T. WesleySmith & J. Goss (Eds.), Remaking Area Studies. Teaching and Learning across Asia and the Pacific. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Furnivall, J. (1939). Netherlands India: A Study of Plural Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Geertz, C. (1980). Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Gerke, S. (2000). Global Lifestyles under Local Conditions: The New Indonesian Middle Class. In C. Beng Huat (Ed.), Consumption in Asia. Lifestyle and Identities (pp. 135–158). London: Routledge. Gluck, C. (2011). The End of Elsewhere: Writing Modernity Now. The American Historical Review, 116(3), 676–687. Goto-Jones, C. (2011). A Cosmos beyond Space and Area Studies: Toward Comparative Political Thought as Political Thought. Boundary 2, 38(3), 87–118. Harootunian, H. (2000). History’s Disquiet. Modernity, Cultural Practice and the Question of Everyday Life. New York: Columbia University Press. Houben, V. (2013). The New Area Studies and Southeast Asian History. DORISEA Working Paper 4, Göttingen. Jackson, P. (2004). The Thai Regime of Images. Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 19(2), 181–218. Josselin de Jong, P. d. (1980). Minangkabau and Negri Sembilan. Socio-Political Structure in Indonesia. Dordrecht: Springer. King, V. (2008). The Sociology of Southeast Asia. Transformations in a Developing Region. Copenhagen: NIAS Press. Leiden Institute of Area Studies. (2012). [pdf]. Available at: www.hum2.leidenuniv.nl/pdf/lias/where_is_here_university_institute_for_area_studies_ lias_2012.pdf [Accessed 6 May 2014]. Medick-Bachmann, D. (2015). Transnation und translational: Zur Übersetzungsfunktion der Area Studies. CAS Working Paper 1/2015, Berlin. Niranjana, T. (1992). Siting Translation. Berkely: University of California Press. Sidaway, J. (2012). Geography, Globalization, and the Problem of Area Studies. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 103(4), 984–1002. Smith, N. (2010). Remapping Area Knowledge. Beyond Glocal/Local. In T. Wesley-Smith & J. Goss (Eds.), Remaking Area Studies. Teaching and Learning across Asia and the Pacific (pp. 24–40). Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Tambiah, S. (1985). Culture, Thought and Social Action. An Anthropological Perspective. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. van Schendel, W. (2005). Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Jumping Scale in Southeast Asia. In P. Kratoska, R. Raben, & H. Schulte Nordholt (Eds.), Locating Southeast Asia. Geographies of Knowledge and Politics of Space (pp. 275–307). Leiden: KITLV Press. Wolters, O. (1982). History, Culture and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

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Mid-Range Concepts—The Lego Bricks of Meaning-Making: An Example from Khorezm, Uzbekistan Anna-Katharina Hornidge

Area Studies: The Study

of Meaning and Being

In 1958, a medium-sized family business in Billund, Denmark, named Lego, patented the design of Lego bricks—automatically binding plastic building blocks used by children to recreate in play the everyday worlds they live in. The bricks produced are standardized small blocks in different colors that—due to their simplicity and the binding grip holding them together—allow the miniature (re-)creation of nearly anything humanly imaginable. Since 1958, these Lego bricks, and with them the Lego Group, have spread globally. Today, children worldwide grow up studying, understanding and replicating the social and physical environments they live in, by placing one standardized brick onto another. While the traditional bricks themselves merely vary in size and color, each Lego city built is unique. And it is this uniqueness of each construction, made out of the same pile of bricks, yet each time creating something very different, that cautions the child to pay attention to detail and to think carefully about similarities and differences between the bricks used, as well as the way they are used. Through the process of combining, disassembling and re-combining again the different pieces in varying ways, the child starts to A.-K. Hornidge (*) University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT), Bremen, Germany © The Author(s) 2017 K. Mielke, A.-K. Hornidge (eds.), Area Studies at the Crossroads, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59834-9_12

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understand that our social and physical environments are in fact little more than the accumulation of vast amounts of highly comparable elements. It is only in the moment of deciding which pieces are used and how, that difference, resulting in one or another type of “reality,” is being created. This decision of choosing only red or yellow bricks, small or large, nevertheless depends on what the child architect regards as so meaningful that she/he attempts to build it. Constructing and deconstructing miniature realities with the help of Lego bricks in many ways compares to processes of sense- (Sinn) and meaning- (Bedeutung) making,1 and to processes of social, communicative and discursive construction of reality as conceptualized by scholars such as Alfred Schütz (1932), Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1966, 1984), Hubert Knoblauch (1995) or Reiner Keller (2011a, b). A crucial element of these processes of making sense of our social and physical environments, and attaching meaning to elements of them, is the moment of typifying—comparing different elements of a particular environment and, based on the identification of similarities and differences, sorting them into different types. Each process of typification is a process of drawing a boundary and differentiating. Yet, depending on the scale level on which the typifying takes place (that is differentiating individuals (male/female) or families (family a/b)), an element or person is part of several types. Thus, while the identification of types, the sorting of detail into groups, serves as a basis for making sense of the complexities observed, the boundaries distinguishing one type from another, as well as which typification or grouping is mobilized as structuring element, are subject to constant renegotiation. This links to discussions on the socially constructed nature of boundaries and borders and the role of social, cognitive and epistemological boundaries (Gieryn 1983; Amsler 2007), as well as debates in political geography and transformative sciences (Paasi 2005, 2011; Newmann 2008; Mollinga 2010). The argument delineated here posits that it is the task of areanists to study what people in everyday life regard as meaningful, in order to understand their “being.” We do this by studying people’s lifeworlds and how they operate in and through them. While not necessarily expressed with the notion of the “lifeworld,” this has always been core to the mandate and research practice of Area Studies. Yet, as people (and with them their lifeworlds) become more and more mobile, the idea that certain types of lifeworlds are found in particular world regions and so, in consequence, particular Area Studies are needed to study them, holds less true. Does that mean that Area Studies are obsolete? No, it definitely does not. Many

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chapters in this book illustrate that local language skills have enabled long-­ term ethnographic research—research that requires the very particular skill set of areanists. Yet, what it does mean, and this is also portrayed in several chapters in this volume, is that the geographic framing of Area Studies becomes increasingly de-territorial. Area Studies consider the lifeworlds of people. These are always highly culturally contextualized, but these cultural contexts are less and less territorially fixed. Instead, the dialectical interconnectedness of physical, social, discursive and cognitive “areas,” constitutive elements to each individual’s lifeworld, move into the foreground as bases for the culturally contextualized realities that are being constructed and that areanists are keen to study. In largely qualitative ethnographic research—as commonly conducted by areanists—we make sense of the vastness of empirical detail by identifying the patterns that link and hold the many elements together, resulting in something bigger (a system or a structure). We thus identify the first-level abstractions, the objective reality in Berger and Luckmann’s understanding, that guide individual sense- and meaning-making. These first-level abstractions are—once they are grasped and objectified by scientists—what Robert Merton referred to as “theories of the middle range” (1949). In his words, “middle-range theory is intermediate to general theories of social systems which are too remote from particular classes of social behaviour, organization, and change to account for what is observed and to those detailed orderly descriptions of particulars that are not generalized at all.”

Merton clarifies further: “Middle-range theory involves abstractions, of course, but they are close enough to observed data to be incorporated in propositions that permit empirical testing” (Merton 1949, p. 448). While Merton still spoke of theory, I—similarly to Houben, Mielke and Wilde in this book—am substantially more interested in everyday concepts and firstlevel abstractions without any intention of aiming for them becoming theory. Therefore, I will speak of mid-range concepts, not theories, in the following. This chapter argues that empirically grasping first-level abstractions and identifying them as mid-range concepts that structure and guide everyday practices in local societies anywhere on this planet is core to the mandate of Area Studies research. To exemplify this, I draw on an example of a first-level abstraction that acts as important building block of local governance in the north-western province of Uzbekistan named Khorezm. Based on earlier work (Hornidge et al. 2013; Oberkircher & Hornidge

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2011), I briefly present the intricate pattern of boundary negotiations in Uzbekistan’s water management. It is these first-level abstractions that act as entry points for understanding (in line with Max Weber) local society in the interconnectedness of meaning and being (as stressed by Karl Mannheim). Once grasped and objectified as mid-range concepts, these first-level abstractions, just like Lego bricks, act as building blocks of sense- and meaning-making (Sinn- und Bedeutungsherstellung). Thus, they represent the ontologies and epistemologies we/society lives in and that guide processes of social differentiation (inherent to any existing form of governance) through the ever continuing processes of boundary making, weakening and renegotiating. To enable Area Studies students to identify these “entry points,” instead of getting lost in the ever increasing empirical complexities of a mobile world, it therefore seems very pertinent to systematically strengthen critical social theory in Area Studies teaching, encouraging analytical and less descriptive Area Studies research.

Meaning-Making

and Areas

In the 1920s, Karl Mannheim (1929) stressed the social situatedness of individual and collective knowledge (Seinsverbundenheit) pointing to the inseparable interconnectedness of being (Sein), which is in Area Studies contexts often also discussed under the notion of positionality, and meaning (Sinn). This was then taken up and developed further by Alfred Schütz, emphasizing the interconnectedness of meaning, motives and action as the basis for the meaningful construction of the social. On the level of the individual, a person’s lifeworld (Lebenswelt—a term originally introduced by Edmund Husserl) forms his/her province of reality of everyday life. An individual’s lifeworld consists of the individual’s immediate environment (Umwelt), his surrounding world (Mitwelt), the world of his predecessors/precedent world (Vorwelt) and the world of his successors/subsequent world (Folgewelt) (Schütz 1932, pp.  156ff; Schütz & Luckmann 1974, pp.  59ff). As such, the individual’s lifeworld is a construct based on the person’s social and cultural experiences and the meanings attached to these, which depend on and are determined by the person’s position in time and space (Schütz & Luckmann 1979, pp.  97ff). In the 1960s, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, inspired by Schütz’s work, put forth that indeed our reality is socially constructed, produced and constantly reproduced (while in parts transformed) in and through discourses through a process of realizing individuals’ “subjective realities” in ways

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that they become the collective’s “objective reality” (Berger & Luckmann 1966, 1984). Yet while the objective reality is sedimented within institutions and stocks of knowledge, the subjective reality is continuously shaped and reshaped based on the individual’s perceptions, interpretations and reinterpretations of this reality. As such, the authors emphasize common sense knowledge as the most relevant form of social knowledge, forming the basis for the continuous construction and reconstruction of society. Via processes of externalization, objectivation and internalizations, individual conceptions of reality, which themselves are based on processes of typification, institutionalization, legitimation and reification/socialization, are increasingly intersubjectively shared interpretations of reality and images of a future and as such guide action towards their creation. Schütz’s concept of the lifeworld offers important insight into the individual and—to a lesser extent—community level processes that the forming of this common sense knowledge is based on. Particularly in the process of objectifying certain conceptions of reality, the use of language and, as assessed by Luckmann (1992, 2002, 2006) and Knoblauch (1995, 2001), communication play a central role. Reciprocal communicative action assures the continuous construction and reconstruction of these multilayered subjective and objective realities. Luckmann states: “The human social world is at least predominantly constituted in communicative action” (2006, p. 10). While the concept of communicative action builds on the idea of social action, it is not to be separated from instrumental action, as argued by Habermas (Knoblauch 2013). Since every form of communicative action (speaking, visualizing, smsing, chatting, blogging and so on) is in its application material, it is always also instrumental, for example goal-oriented, action. This materiality of communicative action begins with the human body as a necessary precondition. Only the human body performs the act of communication and by doing so links subjective meaning with the environment. Consequently, it is the act of communicative and discursive action that objectifies subjective meaning. Yet, as the objectifying of the subjective is never only a technical process, but in reality often very power laden, Reiner Keller, in his sociology of knowledge approach to discourse (SKAD—2001, 2005, 2011a, b) links the works of scholars such as Schütz, Berger and Luckmann and Knoblauch with Foucault’s interest in power-knowledge complexes. This perspective thus encourages the researcher to study discursive practices and discourses as practices of power/knowledge, discursive formations, statements, dispositifs and discursive battles in processes of the institutionalization and transformation of symbolic orderings (Keller 2011a, b, p. 48). With discourses being

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“the identifiable ensembles of cognitive and normative devices” (2005, p. 7), discourses communicate, legitimate, objectify and socially construct structures of meaning with social consequences on the institutional, organizational and social actors’ levels. Keller therefore stresses the study of discourses as knowledge-power complexes that exist through and in practice(s) and dispositifs. Practices are broadly defined as conventionalized patterns of action, based on collective stocks of knowledge about the “proper” way of acting. Yet, in more detail, a distinction is made between the discursive practices and the non-discursive practices constituting the social processing of discourses, as well as model practices (that is templates for action) constituted in discourses for the respective addressees (2011a, p. 55; 2011b, pp. 255–257). Dispositifs, respectively, are defined as an infrastructure established by social actors or collectivities in order to solve a particular situation, with the more detailed distinction made between the dispositifs of discourse production and the dispositifs or infrastructures emerging out of a discourse. The latter then again can be “both: the institutional foundation, the total of all material, practical, personal, cognitive, and normative infrastructure of discourse production,” as well as the infrastructures of discourse implementation (2011a, p. 56; 2011b, pp. 258–260). In the Area Studies context, the above portrayal of social constructivist and phenomenological thought is of relevance for several reasons. First, areas are themselves social, communicative and discursive constructs. The idea of the container space characterized by particular cultural, social and language characteristics found on the inside, no longer holds in these times of increasingly global mobility of people, goods and ideas (van Schendel 2002; Appadurai 1996; Hornidge & Mielke 2015). Yet, when studying how people such as the water managers and water users depicted below define and construct the areas they live in, it becomes clear that, second, the decision of which type of boundaries and borders (political, physical, social, cognitive) are regarded as most meaningful determines which physical, social, discursive and cognitive spaces (or areas) people create as their own (as their homes). Thirdly, this also means that areas are not only characterized by multiple spatial dimensions such as place, scale, territory, distance and so on (Jessop et al. 2008; Leitner et al. 2008), but furthermore physical space stands next to social, discursive and cognitive space in determining the dialectical relationship between being and meaning. Through boundary-strengthening and boundary-weakening practices, fields of legitimate knowledge, truths or realities are constructed, maintained, transformed and broken down (Gieryn 1983; Camic & Xie 1994;

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Fuchs 1986; Amsler 2007). The boundaries of these fields of legitimate knowledge are consequently neither pre-ordained nor fixed, but instead are fluid and constantly negotiated “in contests for professional legitimacy, cultural authority and material or social resources” (Amsler 2007, p. 3 with reference to Gieryn 1983). For Area Studies research this calls for a more conscious reflection of the dialectical interconnectedness of physical, social, discursive and cognitive spaces as constitutive elements of each individual’s lifeworld and their role in constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing the subjective and objective realities and fields of legitimate truths that we later assess as areas. Area Studies research is thus not about studying physical areas and the people (and their lifeworlds) who live there, but about studying the physical, social, discursive and cognitive areas constructed as realities and that are in consequence guiding the lives of those living in them and with them in continuous, dynamically evolving processes of renegotiation. The below example from the field of water management in Uzbekistan’s cotton agriculture illustrates this interplay of the physical environment (and physical space), social, discursive and cognitive space and their social as well as discursive constructions. The actual empirical research behind the case is documented comprehensively in Hornidge et al. (2013).

Negotiating Realities in Uzbek Water Management Agriculture and water management in Uzbekistan are characterized by a high level of involvement from Uzbekistan’s central government in decisions at farm, district, regional and national levels. Area-based and production-based state quota are in place for cotton and wheat, with compulsory sale to the state at fixed prices, preferential credits for input supply and agricultural norms, as well as regulations in terms of cropping patterns and agricultural practices. As water supply is a key factor for the fulfillment of production quotas, the cotton and wheat quotas are major determinants of the irrigation water management process. Despite severe restructuring of the water sector in recent years the actual physical delivery of water continues to be hampered by inadequate human, financial and technical infrastructure (Manschadi et al. 2010; Tischbein et al. 2011). In consequence, effective water management in Khorezm is impaired by several limitations. Hornidge et  al. (2011), and with reference to a range of more detailed writings,2 identify five limitations as most pertinent: (a) infrastructural and

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(b) institutional deficits, resulting in the mismatch of water allocation and water delivery; (c) authoritarian state control, manifest in the agricultural quota system and limiting individuals’ ability to innovative by side-lining bottom-up idea development into the sphere of informality/illegality; (d) a vertically structured knowledge system, creating limits to creativity and agency development; and (e) a hierarchically organized society with a complex system of coercive reciprocity. With the aim to overcome these limitations and assure water access, water users employ a range of formal, strategic and discursive practices and—by doing so—continuously strengthen the boundary between the formal and informal spheres of water management. Formal Practices Once water is diverted from the Amudarya into Khorezm’s irrigation system, a number of state organizations on different administrational levels are formally responsible for the allocation and delivery of water from the off-takes along the river to the entrance of the Water Users Associations. Allocation hereby refers to the assignment of so-called water limits to different units within the irrigation network. These limits are determined through water requests based on irrigated area, planted crops and the respective irrigation state norms, which are passed on and aggregated on various organizational levels from the dehqon (peasant) and fermer (private farmer) via the Water Consumer Associations (WCAs), the Sub-basin Irrigation System Authority and the Lower Amu Darya Basin Irrigation System Authority to the Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources at province level. The allocation of limits is done vice versa from the Ministry of Agriculture downwards, and water quantities are allocated among different water management units on each level (Veldwisch 2008, 2010). On the level of the former (collective farms) kolkhozes, water allocation is formally in the hands of WCAs, which were introduced (originally under the name “Water User Associations”) in Khorezm between 2000 and 2005. The physical delivery of water, for example the operation of technical structures, is done only by some of the water management organizations, mainly the main canal management units of the Sub-basin Irrigation System Authority, the WCAs and the water users themselves (Ul-Hassan & Hornidge 2010). Formally, water delivery should match the water allocations. In reality, however, delivered water quantities depend on many factors, only one of them being the official limits. As result, the quantities of water assigned and actually arriving on the fields often do not match.

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Strategic Practices Veldwisch (2008, 2010) has shown for Khorezm that water management in years of average water abundance reacts rather effectively to water users’ demands and shows considerable flexibility due to different strategies that water users apply to get access to water outside the formal functioning of the water management organizations. Such strategic practices are a deviation from the formal rules of water management and reveal the strong agency of the actors who follow their own set of informal practices. One strategy is the use of small, unregistered mobile pumps to lift water into field canals, which is formally considered illegal theft of water but is informally a widespread practice (Oberkircher 2011). At pumps that are shared between fermers and dehqons, pump management is a negotiation process in which social relations, such as well-established contacts, play a large role for determining the rules of water use. However, it becomes strategically even more important to use such relationships when actors aim to influence decisions on water delivery. In a survey of WCA Ashirmat in 2009, 17 of 21 fermers stated that they would go to the WCA chairman and make a request when in need of water, for example, and so they would follow formal practice. However, 14 fermers also mentioned that they would approach the village mayor or neighborhood leader for water, while ten would even go to the hokimiyat (district administration), all of whom are influential agents but are not formally responsible for water management. In our interviews, this importance of social relationships in assuring water access was locally and commonly summarized by the statement: “[I/He/They] can get water” (Hornidge et al. 2013; Oberkircher & Hornidge 2011). Furthermore, strategic practices are employed on a higher water management level: the WCA is formally responsible for water delivery to the fermers; however, this delivery is often controlled and monitored by the staff members of the state organization, the Sub-basin Irrigation System Authority. Due to this strategic practice, the Sub-basin Irrigation System Authority staff makes it possible to deliver water to, and monitor the irrigation of, areas that the WCA is unable to supply with water, while simultaneously strengthening their individual influence in the patron–client network of water management. Examples of such areas are lands irrigated by gravity or by pumps, but for which the WCA could not provide the manpower, as well as lands freed from the state plan, due to high salinity levels, but then used for rice cultivation (Eichholz et al. 2012).

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By catering to individuals’ water demands, this delivery according to strategic practice (both with the help of technical means as well as social relations) is a deviation from the formal water management institutions but at the same time effectively compensates for the inadequacies of the formal water management organizations—at least for influential agents (Oberkircher & Hornidge 2011; Trevisani 2008; Trevisani 2007). Discursive Practices Water management in Khorezm is thus shaped by two parallel systems of practices: (a) the official system with its practices that reflect clearly formulated formal institutions and (b) the strategic practices that individual agents apply to pursue their interests and that follow informal institutions. Additionally, (c) continuous processes of strengthening and reproducing these two parallel systems of practices through discursive practices by the actors can be observed. While deviation from the formal is a common occurence, the actors involved spend considerable effort and resources on the discursive compensation of these deviations. When fermers diverge from the rule that cotton as a state crop should be irrigated before the cash crop rice, observations in the case study WCAs have shown that they are very likely to claim in any official conversation that cotton needs to be irrigated first. At the same time as individuals take water management actively into their own hands and pursue their own interests, their statements suggest that “water management is up to the state” (Ul-Hassan & Hornidge 2010; Djanibekov et al. 2012b). This behavior (a) to some extent reflects the political risk that openly admitted deviation carries in an authoritarian state and (b) illustrates the multiple roles of individual agents in informal and formal (state administrative) networks, the latter creating a stake for themselves to preserve the status quo of the formal water management institutions. But the very prominence of these discursive practices on all levels of the hierarchy, down to the peasant farmers, suggests that there is a meaning in such practices that goes beyond these motivations. These discursive compensations, basically the verbal references to formal institutions, can be understood as a way to actively reproduce the formal water management discourse instead of formalizing informal practices. Acts of deviation, such as the strategic practices discussed above, are thus compensated by means of discursive practices. They acquire the character of exceptions, special acts in a particular situation—no matter how frequently they occur. They are accepted,

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applied and do not challenge the formal water management discourse but instead can be regarded as barriers to change. The limitations of the system and the practices employed to cope with them shape the setting in which water management takes place, and as such are constantly producing and reproducing boundaries demarcating the two spheres of water management. While formal practices follow formal rules of the formal sphere, strategic practices, and deviations from the formal, follow informal rules and so demarcate the informal sphere. However, the coexistence of both spheres, and the boundary between them, is strengthened by discursive practices employed to verbally confirm the formal, while in reality following the informal. This is in line with discursive and communicative constructivist thought. Knoblauch assesses reciprocal, communicative action as a crucial determinant for the continuous construction and reconstruction of multilayered subjective and objective realities (Knoblauch 1995, 2001). Keller encourages explicit focus on the practices constituting action, and stresses the powerful role of discursive practices in constituting discourses as structural elements of objectifying reality (Keller 2001, 2011a, b). While the avoidance of openly voiced differences between official water accounting and actual water management (through discursive practices) prevents conflict, it also prevents change, self-renewal and further development of the official system of water planning along the lines of (f)actual water delivery. As such, the institutionalization of evolving water management practices on the ground is prevented due to a lack of communication of these changes and evolutions in the formal sphere. Due to this prevented institutionalization, local water management practices remain informal and in the sphere of deviation from the formal. Therefore, the boundary between the formal and informal spheres becomes less permeable, is covered up and appropriated by the continuous employment of discursive practices and thus two increasingly delinked systems of water management exist parallel to each other—both dysfunctional by themselves and unsustainable over a longer period of time, but reified (and continuously discursively strengthened) in the formal and informal institutions that maintain them.

 Concluding Thoughts: The “Areas” in Our Minds The above argues that “areas” in Area Studies are substantially more than just a physical framing for scientific inquiry. This insight is not new, but it gets neglected far too often in ongoing discussions on the role, design

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and future of Area Studies. Originally, the defining bases of Area Studies were of course geographically defined spaces and the cultures, cosmologies, forms of societal organization, languages and so on found in these. Yet, while this interconnectedness of geographical space, culture, languages, cosmologies and forms of societal organization holds true less and less, and Area Studies in opposition to so-called “systematic disciplines” undergo a period of self-reflection and redefinition, assessments such as that is this chapter illustrate that meaning is created in the interplay of physical, social, discursive and cognitive realities, all of which are different dimensions of area, but also of the lifeworlds of the individuals studied. Karl Mannheim’s call for the social situatedness of individual and collective knowledge, referred to above as the inseparable interconnectedness of being and meaning, here comes to mind again. It is the aim of Area Studies to understand (as put forth by Weber) the people, cultures, beliefs, political and social systems found in particular world regions. Understanding requires us to grasp what is considered meaningful, and why, by locals in a particular context. Yet, if we take Mannheim seriously, meaning is tied to being. So if Khorezm’s water users regard it as meaningful to discursively and repeatedly strengthen a formal water management system that they know is in fact is dysfunctional, what does that tell us about their being? It outlines a system of agricultural production in which water and water management has been turned into a tool of power politics. It tells us a story of water users that fulfill two distinctly different roles: the role of (a) dependent agricultural laborers who work the land in the name of the state, producing cotton and wheat to fulfill state production quota— for political and social, but very little (besides cotton stalk for heating), if any, financial remuneration; and (b) independent, small-scale peasant farmers, growing rice (to be sold at high prices on a free market, for many the only real source for cash income), vegetables and fruits to sell on a non-state-regulated market—for personal gain. We look at two distinctly separate agricultural systems and their underlying incentive systems that nevertheless are intricately linked and depend on each other. While the state-controlled system of cotton and wheat production depends on the labor provided by peasant agriculture, the latter depends on the water that arrives on the rice fields and in kitchen gardens without entering the official books of water management. Thus we have the story of two in fact competing agricultural systems: (a) state cotton and wheat agriculture, in which the farmers are agricultural workers in the name of the state, and (b) rice and peasant agriculture, in which the peasants are farmers in their own

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right, enfolding all agency possible to assure that the much-needed water arrives on their fields. From an outside perspective, the water management system in place is highly dysfunctional and characterized by limitations that push the system to the verge of breakdown. Yet, from the perspective of a local peasant it is a system that is dysfunctional enough to allow for local agency in the interest of peasant farmers, and thus offers loopholes in an otherwise centralized system, governed in a highly authoritarian manner in the interest of state elites. With regard to Area Studies, the above is a call, firstly, for analytical and critical social sciences-inspired Area Studies. Understanding in Weber’s sense can only take place if the empirical wealth of data collected are analyzed and conceptualized, meaning the first-level abstractions of the everyday being identified and made visible through words. This requires analytical Area Studies, not descriptive. To achieve this, the teaching of critical social theory and even more so the joint socialization of Area Studies and other qualitative social science and humanities students (largely from anthropology, sociology, gender and Postcolonial Studies and political sciences) is crucial. Secondly, and in line with other colleagues in this volume, it is a call for highly contextualized, qualitative ethnographic, local-level, long-term research enabled and facilitated through local language expertise in—for any outsider—health-wise, psychologically and culturally tricky environments. The first-level abstraction and maybe even mid-range concept of formal, strategic and discursive practices in Uzbekistan’s water management outline above would fall under type 2 in Mielke and Wilde’s typology of mid-range concepts (in this volume)—those conceptualizations that are derived from a kind of Mertonian approach to empirical data. While the original data on the water management system were collected following a grounded theory approach, not yet having social, discursive or communicative constructivist theory in mind, the analysis was indeed eventually encouraged by Western theoretical thought. This of course comes with its own risks and limitations. While we attempted to overcome the risk of Western domination or a hegemonic approach to the data through substantial discussion amongst the two German and one Uzbek researcher in the team, it could never be ruled out. To some, the above might even seem like a good (or bad) example of Western theory in Uzbekistan only. And while I would not agree to this criticism (the research was collected in periods spread over five years, with the longest stay in the field amounting to eight months, the shortest to five months and was substantially

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discussed and re-discussed with a large network of local interview partners as well as local researchers) the point that it has to be thoroughly reflected as a world-making exercise is very valid. Any Area Studies research—and this is my third point, adding to the above—requires the researcher to be aware of the fact that her/his research is just as world-making as the processes that he/she studies. It calls for a high degree of self-reflection and not only the question of what is meaningful to the people (and their lifeworlds) being studied, but conversely what is meaningful to me, the researcher, why, and what does that tell me about my own being. It is here that Mannheim again meets todays renewed debates on areanists’ positionality and where—for those of us with kids or having grown up with Lego themselves—the process of observing, constructing, disassembling and reconstructing again comes to mind. In line with areanists as well as with social constructivist thought, the child studies her/his social and physical environment in all its details and mentally takes it apart into its many, in the end very comparable elements. Based on the child’s interpretation of what is seen, she/he then imagines the miniature environment to be constructed and selects the elements that are required. Each Lego city built, each first-level abstraction conceptualized, is thus nothing other than an expression of how the child, or scholar, makes sense of the observed and attaches meaning to it. It is the visualization of a first-level abstraction. Yet the question remains as to whose first-level abstraction it really is.

Notes 1. “Sense-making” refers to a person seeing a rational, strategic, emotional or financial sense or logic in the observed. The term “meaning-­ making” takes this further and describes a person who does not only see some kind of sense in the observed but in addition attaches value to it. The latter therefore describes a closer self-interest and buy-in than the former. 2. Amongst others see Trevisani (2008), Veldwisch (2008, 2010), Lerman (2008), Djanibekov et  al. (2012a, 2013), Eichholz et  al. (2012), Oberkircher (2011), Oberkircher & Hornidge (2011), Schlüter et  al. (2010), Schlüter & Herrfahrdt-Pähle (2011), Wall (2008).

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Hornidge, A.-K., Oberkircher, L., & Kudryavtseva, A. (2013). Boundary Management and the Discursive Sphere—Negotiating “Realities” in Khorezm, Uzbekistan. Geoforum, 45, 266–274. Jessop, B., Brenner, N., & Jones, M. (2008). Theorizing Sociospatial Relations. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26(3), 389–401. Keller, R. (2001). Wissenssoziologische Diskursanalyse. In R. Keller, A. Hirseland, W. Schneider, & W. Viehöver (Eds.), Handbuch Sozialwissenschaftliche Diskursanalyse, Theorien und Methoden (Vol. 1, pp. 113–143). Opladen: Leske und Budrich. Keller, R. (2005). Analysing Discourse. An Approach from the Sociology of Knowledge. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 6(3), Article 32. Available at: http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/19/42 [Accessed 27 April 2016]. Keller, R. (2011a). The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD). Human Studies, 34, 43–65. Keller, R. (2011b). Wissenssoziologische Diskursanalyse. Grundlegung eines Forschungsprogramms. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Knoblauch, H. (1995). Kommunikationskultur. Die kommunikative Konstruktion kultureller Kontexte. Berlin: de Gruyter. Knoblauch, H. (2001). Diskurs, Kommunikation und Wissenssoziologie. In R. Keller, A. Hirseland, W. Schneider, & W. Viehöver (Eds.), Handbuch Sozialwissenschaftliche Diskursanalyse, Theorien und Methoden (Vol. 1, pp. 207– 224). Opladen: Leske und Budrich. Knoblauch, H. (2013). Grundbegriffe und Aufgaben des kommunikativen Konstruktivismus. In R. Keller, H. Knoblauch, & J. Reichertz (Eds.), Kommunikativer Konstruktivismus—Theoretische und empirische Konturen eines neuen wissenssoziologischen Ansatzes (pp. 25–48). Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Leitner, H., Sheppard, E., & Sziarto, K. (2008). The Spatialities of Contentious Politics. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 33(2), 157–172. Lerman, Z. (2008). Agricultural Development in Uzbekistan: The Effect of Ongoing Reforms. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Discussion Paper 7.08, Jerusalem. Luckmann, T. (1992). Gedanken zur Bedeutung der Kommunikation im gesellschaftlichen Aufbau der Wirklichkeit. [Unpublished Ceremonial Lecture Manuscript]. Konstanz. Luckmann, T. (2002). Wissen und Gesellschaft. Ausgewählte Aufsätze 1981–2002. Konstanz: Universitätsverlag Konstanz. Luckmann, T. (2006). Die kommunikative Konstruktion der Wirklichkeit. In D. Tänzler, H. Knoblauch, & H.-G. Soeffner (Eds.), Neue Perspektiven der Wissenssoziologie (pp. 15–26). Konstanz: Universitätsverlag Konstanz. Mannheim, K. (1929). Ideologie und Utopie. Bonn: Friedrich Cohen. Manschadi, A., Oberkircher, L., Tischbein, B., Conrad, C., Hornidge, A.-K., Bhaduri, A., et al. (2010). “White Gold” and Aral Sea Disaster—Towards More

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Efficient Use of Water Resources in the Khorezm Region, Uzbekistan. Lohmann Information, 45(1), 34–47. Merton, R. (1949). Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: Simon and Schuster. Mollinga, P. (2010). Boundary Work and the Complexity of Natural Resources Management. Crop Science, 50(1), S-1–S-9. Newmann, D. (2008). Boundaries. In J. Agnew, K. Mitchell, & G. Toal (Eds.), A Companion to Political Geography (pp. 123–137). Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Oberkircher, L. (2011). On Pumps and Paradigms. Water Scarcity and Technology Adoption in Uzbekistan. Society and Natural Resources, 24(12), 1270–1285. Oberkircher, L., & Hornidge, A.-K. (2011). Farmer Rationales and Water-Saving in Khorezm, Uzbekistan—A Life-World Analysis. Rural Sociology, 76(3), 394–421. Paasi, A. (2005). The Changing Discourses on Political Boundaries—Mapping the Backgrounds, Contexts and Contents. In H. van Houtum, O. Kramsch, & W. Zierhofer (Eds.), B/ordering Space (pp. 17–31). Aldershot: Ashgate. Paasi, A. (2011). A Border Theory: An Unattainable Dream or a Realistic Aim of Border Scholars? In D. Wastl-Walter (Ed.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Border Studies (pp. 11–31). Farnham: Ashgate. Schlüter, M., & Herrfahrdt-Pähle, E. (2011). Exploring Resilience and Transformability of a River Basin in the Face of Socioeconomic and Ecological Crisis: An Example from the Amudarya River Basin, Central Asia. Ecology and Society, 16(1), Article 32. Schlüter, M., Hirsch, D., & Pahl-Wostl, C. (2010). Coping with Change: Responses of the Uzbek Water Management Regime to Socio-Economic Transition and Global Change. Environmental Science and Policy, 13(7), 620–636. Schütz, A. (1932). Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt. Wien: Springer. Schütz, A., & Luckmann, T. (1974). The Structures of the Life-World. London: Heinemann Educational Books. Schütz, A., & Luckmann, T. (1979). Strukturen der Lebenswelt. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Tischbein, B., Manschadi, A., Hornidge, A.-K., Conrad, C., Lamers, J., Oberkircher, L., et al. (2011). Ansätze für eine effizientere Wassernutzung in der Provinz Khorezm, Usbekistan. Hydrologie und Wasserbewirtschaftung, 55(2), 116–125. Trevisani, T. (2007). After the Kolkhoz: Rural Elites in Competition. Central Asian Survey, 26(1), 72–91. Trevisani, T. (2008). The Reshaping of Inequality in Uzbekistan: Reforms, Land and Rural Incomes. In M. Spoor (Ed.), The Political Economy of Rural Livelihoods in Transition Economies—Land, Peasants and Rural Poverty in Transition (pp. 123–137). London: Routledge.

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Ul-Hassan, M., & Hornidge, A.-K. (2010). “Follow the Innovation”—The Second Year of a Joint Experimentation and Learning Approach to Transdisciplinary Research in Uzbekistan. ZEF Working Paper Series 63, Bonn. van Schendel, W. (2002). Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Jumping Scale in Southeast Asia. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 20(6), 647–668. Veldwisch, G. (2008). Cotton, Rice and Water. The Transformation of Agrarian Relations, Irrigation Technology and Water Distribution in Khorezm, Uzbekistan. PhD. Universität Bonn. Veldwisch, G. (2010). Adapting to Demands: Allocation, Scheduling and Delivery of Irrigation Water in Khorezm, Uzbekistan. In M. Arsel & M. Spoor (Eds.), Water, Environmental Security and Sustainable Rural Development (pp. 99–121). London: Routledge. Wall, C. (2008). Argorods of Western Uzbekistan. Knowledge Control and Agriculture in Khorezm. Münster: Lit.

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PART V

De-Streamlining Academic Society: Pedagogy and Teaching

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The Case for Reconceptualizing Southeast Asian Studies Cynthia Chou

At the time of working on the first draft of this chapter in the autumn of 2014, a somber announcement was released by the Danish Ministry of Education. Sofie Carsten Nielsen, then the Minister for Higher Education and Science, declared her plan to lower student intake into the humanities and social sciences in order to prevent future over-unemployment of highly qualified young people. The minister’s concern focused especially on courses that involved the study of foreign languages, as they were costly and did not yield much by way of results (Myklebust 2014, pp. 1–2). By early 2016, the University of Copenhagen, Denmark’s oldest university, saw itself in the grip of a crisis. Following a slash in government funding, 532 academics and support staff lost their jobs (Grove 2016). All PhD admissions and intake of new students were halted for a slew of area study programs that included Modern Indian Studies, Indology, Southeast Asian Studies, Tibetology, Balkan Studies, Polish, Hebrew, Turkish, American Indian Languages and Culture, Ancient Greek, Finnish and Eskimology (Young 2016). Criticisms that these were cuts “without vision or perspective” (Liu 2015) and a “hard blow to internationalization” (Icef.com 2014) in no way altered the mindset of political leaders. Further reductions are expected in the coming three years (Icef.com 2014).

C. Chou (*) University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA © The Author(s) 2017 K. Mielke, A.-K. Hornidge (eds.), Area Studies at the Crossroads, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59834-9_13 [email protected]

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The situation in Denmark is not particularly unique. Excepting Chinese and Arabic Studies, many other Area Studies seem to have come under threat or are being closed—an all too common occurrence in many institutions of higher learning in Europe these days. The greatest impact has been on what are sometimes called the “small and endangered subjects” such as Southeast Asian Studies. Notably, in contrast to this general scenario of gloom in Europe, is the cheerful state of affairs of Area Studies in Asia, where it is gaining ever more ground and importance. This chapter argues that there are different “Southeast Asias” to study. The cultural complexity and differentiation within the region necessitates a broader heuristic approach in the academic inquiry into Southeast Asia. The intention of exploring and discussing this heuristic approach is to put into orbit reflection, analysis, discussion, and argumentation to facilitate new ideas and discoveries to rethink our picture of what “regions” are and to reflect on how we can rethink Area Studies.

Controversies Attacks on the enterprise of Area Studies have come from various quarters. For the sake of brevity, I shall highlight just two dominant rubrics of opposing voices that are often heard today. First, there are the policy makers who say that their accounts indicate that it is irrational to maintain costly area study programs. Then there are those whose anxiety is that Area Studies encapsulates a mode of Western intellectual imperialism. The first group asserts that Area Studies, which requires several years of in-depth training in what they consider obscure foreign languages, is too costly for modest university budgets (Nett 2014). As an example, Southeast Asian Studies would have at least seven national languages drawn from four distinct families and countless regional languages. In the opinion of some, it would be more relevant and cost effective in this current era of information technology to train students on how best to use Google Translator and to allow such tools into examination halls, rather than to require students to devote years of learning via the traditional methods of poring over language textbooks. Moreover, they argue, today’s world is dominated by the “Made in China” phenomenon. They are convinced that there are fewer job prospects for graduates of area study programs that do not cover the current economic giants and so such education is irrelevant.

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The second group contends that the origin of Area Studies is the root of its problem (cf. Said 1978; Mignolo 2000). They argue that Area Studies was an enterprise designed during the Second World War to serve Euro-American needs to secure an understanding of unknown areas of the world for the purpose of promoting specific political and military agendas. Directly after the war, these fields of study continued to be oriented to serve contemporary, non-scholarly purposes. Shadows of doubt have thus been cast over the intent of Area Studies. Said’s (1978) fervent critique of Area Studies as constituting linear descendants of Orientalism that are subject to its error of perceiving everything east of the Suez Canal as a homogenous space devoid of any kind of human experience has inspired many scholars to adopt similar stances. Scholars such as Neil Larsen (1995), Idelber Avelar (2000), Walter Mignolo (2000), Daniel Mato (2000), Jon Beasley-Murray (2003) and Alberto Moreiras (2001) draw upon Latin American Studies as a case in point to censure Area Studies as a mode of inquiry. Larsen (1995, p. 1) sees such a subject of discourse to be “a holdover from the colonial past” and in consequence a perpetuation of colonial imposition. Following suit are Avelar (2000) and Mato (2003), who hold that the histories of places have been composed on the basis of exclusionary practices. The problem with Area Studies for Mato (2003, p. 793) is that it is “historically marked by the interests of imperial and other forms of transnational and international dominance.” This results in the plea for the need to move away from such biased accounts and to look into “how and through what process the postulate of a continental identity creates a field of inclusion and exclusion, assigns positions, interpellates and constitutes subjects” (Avelar 2000, pp. 122–123). In an extended argument on the “coloniality of power” (Mignolo 2000, p.  16), Mignolo (2000, p. 21) explains how Area Studies emerged as a consequence of the “hierarchical division into First, Second and Third Worlds” in the latter half of the twentieth century. His questioning of the geopolitics of Area Studies once more alludes to a broader and problematic hierarchical imposition at the core of Area Studies as a mode of inquiry. His reasoning is that all kinds of silenced knowledge exist in places where talking and writing take place but do not register in planetary systems of knowledge production (Mignolo 2000, p.  71). Therefore, “[i]n a shrinking world where sharp dichotomies, such as East/West and developing/developed, blur and shift,” he points to the inadequacy of Area Studies (Mignolo 2000, back cover). Instead, he introduces the notion of “colonial difference” into the study of the modern colonial world and calls for “the emergence

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of new forms of knowledge,” which he calls “border thinking” (Mignolo 2000, back cover; Epifania A. Amoo-Adare, in this volume). In exploring this concept further, Mato (2000) has avowed that it is all impregnated with the history of an American and Western European hegemonic concept of Area Studies. Using the case of the historiography of Latin America as an elaboration, Moreiras (2001) maintains that the “first” or “historical” Latin Americanism, that is to say, the conventional, Area-Studies-based Latin Americanism, is no longer valid. This is because “Latin America” is no longer defined by fixed points and so the notions of Latin America and Latin American Studies—and in extrapolation, Area Studies in general— are no longer valid in their traditional form. Approaching the issue from another slant is Beasley-Murray’s (2003, p. 227) appraisal that in this age of globalization, Area Studies is in crisis because “there is no absolutely external viewpoint from which to delineate the neatly compartmentalized global system that Area Studies represents.” In amalgamation, these dissenting voices have logged their dissatisfaction that the core assumptions of the identity of Area Studies are far from being an unproblematic given. Instead, they are eclipsed with endless questions. However much these viewpoints might differ, critics from both sides insist that Area Studies is out of sync with the contemporary world. Therefore, they no longer ascribe credence to causal considerations thriving within separate societies. Critics in the first rubric perceive new economic spatial configurations as realigning the world into one interdependent “system.” From their perspective, the current stage of globalization has market power as its final goal. Critics in the second rubric strongly object to perceiving the world as a homogenous space. They point to new theoretical paradigms that encompass more universal categories to deal with diverse epistemologies and cultures of scholarship to counter the tendency of Occidentalist perspectives. Regardless of the differing reasons, the criticisms all hark back to how globalization challenges the way space and time are comprehended. However, downgrading the area approach for universal economic or newer revolutionary theory-making epistemes would have recourse to what Schwartz (1980, p.  24) has cautioned is a “frozen alternative” of “either an ahistorical culturalism” or paradigms of normalcy in “the spurious universality of holistic configurations derived from the West” that would obstruct balanced understanding. At this point, it would be useful to reflect upon the concept of globalization.

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Globalization To start with, “globalization” suggests a process underlining the becoming and subsequently, the achievement of an increasingly interdependent and entangled world. It is in transnational idiom conceived as the last of three stages of global transformation since 1945: development and modernization after the end of World War II; the raising of the transnational corporation and the demise of the state after the world crisis of 1968 … and finally, the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. In a more socio-historical vocabulary, “globalization” could be linked to the U.S. sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein’s modern world system (1974) and to its geo-culture (1950; 1991a), and … to German sociologist Norbert Elias’ “civilization process” (1937); and finally, to a particular moment of the general process of civilization studied by Brazilian anthropologist Darcy Ribero (1968; [1969] 1978); the moment in which a new type of mercantilism based on slavery emerges, with the “discovery” of America, and [its attachment] … to a Christian mission. (Mignolo 2000, pp. 278–279)

Each phase of globalization reveals a darker underside of power struggle and an articulation of a particular global design with the complicity of a new civilizing design or “coloniality of power” (Mignolo 2000, p. 280). As barriers between nation states are removed in the process of globalization, it appears for some to be the case that local cultures are weakened with the concomitant increase in cultural homogeneity. Hence, there are strong arguments that globalization in reconfiguring spaces nullifies Area Studies for the reason that there are no longer any clearly defined areas to be studied. As Mignolo (2000, p. 310) argues, “the crisis of area studies” thus pivots on “the crisis of old borders, be they nation borders or civilization borders.” The issues involved in globalization though are profound and multifaceted. It is “a highly complex, contradictory and thus ambiguous set of institutions and social relations, as well as one involving flows of goods, services, ideas, technologies, cultural forms and people” (Kellner 2002, p. 286). In one of the most influential works on the cultural effects of globalization, Appadurai (1996, p. 42) sets down a timely reminder that “the globalization of culture” is not synonymous with “its homogenization.” As he persuasively contends, the critical point is that both sides of the coin of global cultural process today are products of the infinitely varied mutual context of sameness and

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difference on a stage characterized by ­radical disjunctures between different sorts of global flows and the uncertain landscapes created in and through these disjunctures. (Appadurai 1996, p. 43)

To disregard the disjunctures and fractures that also constitute the realities of the processes of globalization and to accept that a universal economic principle or a new intellectual theoretical paradigm could widen our understanding of our world today is to fall into the trap of accepting a universally correct model of civilization. In doing so, what would be ignored are the dangers (1) of imperialism; (2) of the subalternization of different kinds of knowledge and culture; and (3) that universalist aspirations, even of adhering to scientific principles such as universal laws of human behavior, can be easily transformed into notions of a universal civilization. As Schwartz (1980, p. 22) warned, “[a]ll knowledge is a mode of domination. Even the possibility of using knowledge as a vehicle for achieving understanding (Verstehen) in the Weberian sense is ruled out a priori.” The risks of the underside of globalization have not gone unnoticed. It is noteworthy that in our current globalizing world, disparate countries sharing the same interests and goals are urgently establishing regional organizations of various sorts for a more forceful and successful presence on the global stage. A Southeast Asian regional identity through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in particular is “becoming more and more self-evident” (Chou & Houben 2006, p. 11). What must also not be overlooked is that the significance of Southeast Asia as a region has recently been strengthened and reinforced by the vibrancy of academic studies on Southeast Asia from within the region. The fact that Southeast Asia the region, as a concept and as a focus of scholarly investigation and analysis, can mean very different things to different people, ranging from lackluster interest to deep involvement, reflects the differences characterized by the radical disjunctures in our globalizing world and is the very reason for its importance as a field of inquiry.

Reconceptualizing Area Studies: Southeast Asian Studies as a Case Study There has been a heightened sense of anxiety and urgency among regional specialists in view of a marked decline in interest in Area Studies and Southeast Asia in the Western world, and in particular in Europe. This decline might reflect a tranquil confidence or arrogance in thinking that

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all that needs to be known about the region is already known, or that radical theory-making epistemes can explain all diversities. Such suggestions or claims are, however, disputed by a steady and growing volume of local Southeast Asian voices. They stress the importance and significance of Southeast Asian Studies in general and, unlike in the past, actively undertake to propose future research agendas for it (cf. Thongchai Winichakul 2003; Wang 2005). Two important publications have come out recently reflecting current deliberations in (re-)conceptualizing Southeast Asian Studies: Goh Beng Lan’s (ed.), Decentring and Diversifying Southeast Asian Studies: Perspectives from the Region (2011), and Park Seung Woo and Victor King’s (eds), The Historical Construction of Southeast Asian Studies: Korea and Beyond (2013). Goh’s (2011, p. 3) volume comprises a collection of autobiographical accounts by 11 of Southeast Asia’s most eminent scholars. The scholars come from varying generations, disciplinary backgrounds and countries in the region. Their autobiographies offer deep insights into their personal struggles in interpreting the region to which they belong and the challenges they encountered in the politics of knowledge production of Southeast Asia in a postcolonial world. Woven into their individualized autobiographies are also their reflections of the institutional, disciplinary and theoretical developments of Southeast Asia Studies as a field of inquiry within the region itself. The aim of the volume is to decenter and diversify the Euro-American knowledge production of Southeast Asia. The purpose is to provide “alternative perspectives on the future of Southeast Asian Studies” (Goh 2011, p.  13) by including knowledge from local scholars that is derived from “lived realities and meanings” (Goh 2011, p. vii) in the region itself. For the continued vitality of Southeast Asian Studies, it would be necessary first for “Southeast Asian scholars” to explicate their “understandings of normative social science concepts within the region” instead of embracing unquestioningly theoretical paradigms “emanating from the West/outside as the formulae for defining the region” (Goh 2011, p. 15). Second, it is crucial for scholars who are “based in and thinking from the region” (Goh 2011, p. 14) to be involved in the future of Southeast Asian Studies, “so as to highlight interconnected yet also different sets of concerns and imperatives from regional practices and perspectives.” As Goh (2011, p. 14) and her contributors assert: Neither insider nor outsider p ­ erspectives can claim supremacy over the other. Rather, “[t]he way forward in the effort to

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reorganize knowledge about Southeast Asia is for each side to listen to, respect, and learn from the other.” Nonetheless, there is the need “to create a platform to speak about Southeast Asian perspectives so that regional scholars sharing the same convictions can come together to discuss issues that may not be of concern to those outside of the region” (Goh 2011, p. 15). The volume co-edited by Park and King (2013) is in close agreement “with the spirit and intent” of Goh’s mapping of Southeast Asian Studies. However, they warn of the perils of sharply distinguishing between “insider” and “outsider” viewpoints and concerns (Park & King 2013, p. 5) or of trying to determine models of Area Studies from “within” or “beyond” the region. Instead, they emphasize a research agenda based on filling gaps in our knowledge based upon closer global collaborations in knowledge production in Southeast Asian Studies. On this score, there is no doubt that this volume clearly demonstrates a successful East-West collaborative effort that has effected an exchange interaction between Korean researchers and specialists from outside East and Southeast Asia who have wide experience of the region. For the first time, it presents to the international realm the work and viewpoints of Korea’s foremost scholars on the development of Southeast Asian Studies both within and outside the region. Six of the 11 chapters are authored by Korean researchers, and the editorial introduction is jointly written. The remaining contributions are by scholars bringing in their experiences from Europe, Australia, America and within Southeast Asia itself. The intention has been to provide a platform for the expression and development primarily of Korean perspectives and thoughts on Southeast Asia as a region and on the histories of the development of Southeast Asian Studies both within Southeast Asia itself and beyond, and particularly in East Asia. The volume has been organized to present a country-by-country account of the historical development of Southeast Asian Studies as an academic subject. What is particularly important here is the selection of “countries and regions where Southeast Asian Studies have been largely fostered and developed into an independent academic field of studies” (Park & King 2013, p. 10), but which have mostly remained largely inaccessible to English-speaking audiences. It raises our awareness of just how varied the imaginations and perceptions of Southeast Asia are in, for example, Korea, China, Japan, Singapore, Vietnam, Australia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, America and the borderless world of popular cul-

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ture. It also provides an important overview of a very substantial body of non-English writings about the region that has been regrettably overlooked for far too long now in major discussions about Southeast Asia. The problem also occurs in reverse when there is a lack of attention in English-medium scholarship to some of the most important non-­English contributions. As the editors of this volume gently remind us, there also exists “Oriental-Orientalism” (Park & King 2013). These two important volumes clearly mark that this is an exciting phase in the field of Southeast Asian Studies. In spite of the imminent dangers of globalization and the sustained criticism of Area Studies in the West, this is actually one of the most exhilarating phases in the transformation of knowledge production in the intellectual development of the field of Southeast Asian Studies. What we are witnessing is the “coming of age of scholars from Southeast Asia” (Duara 2011, back cover) who are exuding a confidence that acknowledges the multiple trajectories of “multi-lingual scholarship of Southeast Asian studies in Asia and beyond” (Liu 2013, back cover). In considering these two volumes, my intention is to show the multiplicity of epistemological production that has been and is taking place in the field of Southeast Asian Studies. These, I contend do not merely constitute “alternatives” to approach the study of the region. Each different formulation of Southeast Asia might have been born out of different priorities and interests, and so it would be wrong to judge which is more relevant or which has more political bearing. To do so would be akin to imposing a universal albeit imperial standard of measurement. Indeed, as the editors of the two volumes discussed above contend: Southeast Asia as a region, as a concept and as a field of studies “can mean different things to different people” (Park & King 2013, p. 4) and “[t]he way forward in the effort to reorganize knowledge about Southeast Asia is for each side to listen to, respect, and learn from the other” (Goh 2011, p. 14). The congeries of perception, episteme and lived realities of Southeast Asia reflect just how difficult it is to conceptualize and interpret the region that is so known for its diversity and arbitrary borders. This fact carries many implications. First, it is not conceivable that Southeast Asian Studies could be dominated by a single method of study or specific methodological approach. Second, we might ask how best can we address the problem of our “incomplete” knowledge of the region as we search for ways to forge ahead in reconceptualizing Southeast Asian Studies.

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Adopting a Heuristic Approach As I have discussed elsewhere (Chou 2006b, pp. 130–133), there are different “Southeast Asias” to study. This creates the need for a wide-lensed heuristic approach in the academic inquiry into the region. Heuristics, a branch of logic aimed at spurring discovery or invention, provides much inspiration here. The term “heuristic” is derived from the Greek word “heuriskein” and means to find or discover. In the heuristic approach to qualitative research, the concern is about the process of a search for knowledge aimed at discovering the nature, meaning and essences of an experience.1 The aim is to understand the wholeness and not just parts of the experience. The heuristic approach begins with a self-inquiry or challenge to understand the experience as well as its wider social and universal significance. The art of heuristic inquiry is to draw on a wide reservoir of methods and sources of exploration in order to maximize the chances of discovering the wholeness of the experience. An unlimited array of methods and sources such as textual analysis, grounded theory, hermeneutics, personal documentation, ethnography, empirical phenomenological research, and trial and error based on educated guesses can be utilized. The means to discovery are not dictated by any predefined variables or by any particular theoretical paradigm. No single discipline or form of knowledge is of lesser status, value or importance. Instead, a well-designed matrix of solutions allowing maximum variation is put forward and tried. The composite elements of the matrix can thus be altered, repeated or interchanged. The purpose of the variations in question is to avoid just getting one answer and to pare down biased representations of the topic. Fundamentally, the heuristic approach invites the researcher to be open to new concepts and to possible changes in perception through the research process. Discoveries can come by way of chance, but such chances also often rest on an accumulation of knowledge. Research procedures are thus not unilinear but dialectical. This is imperative for the adjustment of the epistemic structure of the researcher to the structure of the phenomenon. This could open up various ways of making a discovery or finding an assortment of solutions. It could well be that all these ways provide equally crucial conceptual insights and that all are important discoveries. Conceptually, the increase in the number of solutions presents no problems at all, as they are to be understood as attempts to realize an optimal solution, which in fact may not be possible. What researchers have to do is simply ­consider all

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­ ossibilities and decide on the best formulation, which is often an amalp gamation of their and other researchers’ experience combined with trial and error. A heuristic approach is not a fully developed theory of any kind. More precisely, it is an approach that provides researchers with the necessary flexibility to seek solutions innovatively that empirically makes sense, so that a more complete solution to the inquiry may eventually be achieved. Far from advocating that we would or must achieve an optimal solution, what I am arguing for is the production of new knowledge through imaginative, innovative and unexpected lines of inquiry to refine our perception and understanding of Southeast Asia. After all, what awaits us is the challenge to draw on and to get to know Southeast Asia’s diversity in a creative and positive manner. This may require a parting from orthodoxy, that is, to have the willingness, ability and courage to look beyond one’s particular disciplinary or theoretical home for more innovative theorizing and approaches to understand the region. A heuristic approach is not to be mistaken with a multi-disciplinary approach. A multi-disciplinary approach specifies a number of disciplines and excludes those who may have rich local experiences of the region but who do not fall within any discipline. A heuristic approach goes beyond that. It is an approach that can be forged by inter-, multi- and cross-disciplinary, as well as transnational discussions, including local experiences which may not be embedded formally in any one of the disciplinary bases. A heuristic approach relaxes self-binding categorical rules to enable an engagement of everybody and anybody from whatever point of view, but with an in-depth experience of Southeast Asia as an academic discipline, a homeland or an activist, to contribute to our understanding of the region. The region “is arguably the most insubstantial of world areas, being at once territorially porous, internally diverse, and inherently hybrid” (Steedly 1999, p. 13). The “area” of Southeast Asia can be understood as a theoretical problem and as an object of inquiry proffering new sets of questions and methodologies (Tadiar 1999, p. 18). A heuristic approach comprising a composite of all forms of knowledge and material to studying the region promises to elevate it from a static entity for comparative scholarship to a more dynamic “field,” crossing, if not transgressing, conventional disciplinary as well as geopolitical boundaries. As changes in the region accelerate, and as dramatically new socio-political and economic landscapes are taking shape, comparative analyses become crucial, and the framing of local events within the contexts of globalization become an

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urgent agenda. Study programs therefore need to be revitalized with new ways to think, teach and discuss the region as whole, as well as its particular component societies and its global face. Dialogue and debates not only with colleagues in different disciplines, but also with the very people who are of and in Southeast Asia itself are sine qua non. A heuristic approach can be used for all topics which are open to empirical research. A heuristic approach opens a circuit of reflection, analysis, discussion, and argumentation that expedites new ideas and new discoveries. It is important that we “recall that … the academic imagination—is part of a wider geography of knowledge” formed by dialogues, networks and collaborations zig-zagging and crisscrossing boundaries. The salient attribute about this wider and new geography of knowledge is that it “incites us to rethink our picture of what “regions” are and to reflect on how research itself is a special practice of the academic imagination” (Appadurai 2003, p. 7).

Pedagogy For many, research and teaching co-exist on a continuum. The need to adopt a wide-lensed heuristic research approach to revitalize conceptual frameworks to understand regions in an increasingly interdependent and entangled world is the twin challenge to revisit the conceptual frameworks that inform the traditional ways of teaching Area Studies. Presently, much of Area Studies is taught within the boundaries of traditional disciplinary homes. In cases where there is institutional flexibility in terms of interdisciplinary knowledge, courses might be taught in disciplinary departments and cross-listed with interdisciplinary and area study programs. Even within area study programs, courses are often designed and taught within the confines of traditional disciplinary approaches. More often than not, the above arrangements result in at least two kinds of territorial battles. First, disciplinary departments compete to increase their student numbers and vie for a larger share of limited university budgets and second, between pedagogues with a steadfast need for disciplinary inertia. In either scenario, the subscription to traditional disciplinary parameters rather than adoption of a heuristic conceptual approach in the teaching of Area Studies serves only to limit how students are taught about the world and their place in it, and above all the acquisition of more profound Area Studies knowledge (Ranchod-Nilsson 2000, pp. 4–5). Institutional transformation is formidable and not always possible. How then can we succeed within existing institutional structures to craft

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pedagogical strategies to adopt a heuristic conceptual approach to address Area Studies in the intersections between global processes and the specificities of time, space and place? The argument here is not a call for students to be enrolled into one systematic or major discipline with a portfolio of minor disciplines or to pursue a degree in Areas Studies based upon a cumulative body of disciplinary studies. Instead, this is about transforming pedagogy to develop curricula that embrace a heuristic conceptual approach to infuse new energy into area study programs and widen the understanding of regions in an increasingly interdependent and entangled world, whereby diverse epistemologies and cultures of scholarship count. As an example of a step forward, the University of Chicago, in an attempt to rethink research and pedagogical strategies in Area Studies, made the study of languages vital to any revised approach to Area Studies. However, the study of language was to be redesigned to encapsulate basic cultural, geographical and historical knowledge, while introducing new ideas about language boundaries, language and ethnicity, mixed or hybrid languages, socio-linguistics and the like. It would also incorporate the many recent advances in thinking about textuality as an within historical and social phenomenon which have been generated from within linguistic and literary studies, as well as from anthropology. (Guneratne et al. 1997, pp. 4–5)

As another example, the pedagogy of history courses would be invigorated by giving heed to “interactions, motion and linkages, as well as to the ways in which power is implicated in all forms of historical knowledge” (Ranchod-Nilsson 2000, p.  10). The new pedagogy of histories would “consciously” impart a “constructionist” making of areas “that they are not facts, but rather artifacts” (Ranchod-Nilsson 2000, p. 10) contextualized in spatio-temporal fluxes and complex interactions. Crucial to this would be the heuristic conceptual approach to engage in an understanding of a mosaic of perspectives of the variety of peoples who have interacted through alliances or conflicts to shape regions. In short, there are plural histories to be taught (Ranchod-Nilsson 2000, p. 18).

Conclusion In this chapter, I have discussed how the Southeast Asian Studies project, which began primarily in the West and has come under severe attack by globalist thinkers in one way or another, has significantly not crumbled

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under these pressures. Instead, it has forged ahead into an exciting new phase of expanding its spheres of knowledge production. As Schwartz (1980, p. 15) astutely observed: The term “area studies” asserts no particular theory of society or theory of culture and no particular views of the relations of society and culture to history or other areas of human experience. The word “area” refers quite literally to some portion of the earth’s surface inhabited by human collectivities, more or less marked off from other collectivities by virtue of the fact that they constitute relatively autonomous fields of human interaction among various life-realms. An area is, so to speak, a cross-disciplinary unit of collective experience within which one can discern complex interactions among economic, social, political, religious, and other spheres of life. (Schwartz 1980, p. 15)

Indeed, however much the focus of the word “area” may alter, “it is always based on some concrete principles of coherence, which give due weight to the specificities of local conditions” (Schwartz 1980, p.  16). Area Studies have, in spite of its early entanglements with political-­ economic pursuits, “produced a positive knowledge which has its own validity as knowledge” (Schwartz 1980, p. 22). Today, Southeast Asian Studies is no longer exclusively limited to matters that have immediate obvious pragmatic goals. Instead today, “Southeast Asian studies is for everyone, it is also for Southeast Asians themselves” to explicate their lived realities (Goh 2011, p. 15). It is a crucial platform for communication across formidable barriers. The debates over Southeast Asian Studies have all but underlined the inherent aspiration of this field of study to achieve a complex and deep understanding of other cultures and societies from a variety of vantage points and perspectives. As a mode of inquiry, its principal purpose might not be to assert any particular theories, yet lest it be forgotten, “theories are heavily based on the experience of given localities” (Schwartz 1980, p. 19). Southeast Asian Studies have been an epicenter for theoretical knowledge production. It has made crucial contributions with analytical categories such as “agricultural involution,” “thick description,” “theatre state,” “imagined communities,” “galactic polity,” “geobody,” “weapons of the weak,” and “moral economy,” all of which have become key concepts in the social sciences. (Chou & Houben 2006, p. 1)

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In a globalizing world of unprecedented experiences of the movement of capital, people, and ideas, the need for the development of linguistic expertise and understanding of one’s neighbors has become even more acute (at least as acknowledged in the promotion of Southeast Asian Studies in some quarters particularly in Asia and America). As we celebrate the diversity of approaches and perspectives in Southeast Asia as a concept, a region and a place of lived realities, its continued vitality very much lies in having a heuristic approach to appreciating and valuing the wealth of its different trajectories of knowledge production. To do so would be to open the door to more interactive thinking and collaborative work to achieve new, unimaginable dreams. Those who choose to slumber on while this exciting new phase of reconceptualizing Southeast Asian Studies is occurring, have chosen to remain in a wasteful comatose state.

Note 1. The heuristic approach to qualitative research was initiated by psychologist Clark Moustakas (1990).

Bibliography Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Appadurai, A. (2001). Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination. In A. Appadurai (Ed.), Globalization (pp. 1–21). Durham: Duke University Press. Avelar, I. (2000). Toward a Genealogy of Latin Americanism. Disposio/N, 49, 121–133. Beasley-Murray, J. (2003). Latin American Studies and the Global System. In P. Swanson (Ed.), The Companion to Latin American Studies (pp. 222–238). Oxford: Routledge. Chou, C. (2006a). Borders and Multiple Realities: The Orang Suku Laut of Riau, Indonesia. In A. Horstmann & R. Wadley (Eds.), Centering the Margin: Agency and Narrative in Southeast Asian Borderlands (pp. 111–134). New York: Berghahn Books. Chou, C. (2006b). Reconceptualising Southeast Asian Studies. In C. Chou & V. Houben (Eds.), Southeast Asian Studies: Debates and New Directions. Leiden: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

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Chou, C., & Houben, V. (Eds.). (2006). Southeast Asian Studies: Debates and New Directions. Leiden: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Duara, P. (2011). [Back Cover Text]. In B.-L. Goh (Ed.), Decentring and Diversifying Southeast Asian Studies: Perspectives from the Region. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Goh, B.-L. (Ed.). (2011). Decentring and Diversifying Southeast Asian Studies: Perspectives from the Region. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Publishing. Grove, J. (2016). University of Copenhagen to Cut More than 500 Jobs. Times Higher Education. Available at: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/ news/university-copenhagen-cut-more-500jobs [Accessed 11 Feb. 2016]. Guneratne, A., Appadurai, A., Bhabha, J. & Collins, S. (1997). Area Studies, Regional Worlds: A White Paper for the Ford Foundation [pdf]. Available at: http://regionalworlds.uchicago.edu/areastudiesregworlds.pdf [Accessed 14 Jan. 2016]. Icef.com. (2014). Danish Reforms Will Impact Both Domestic and International Students. Available at: http://monitor.icef.com/2014/10/danish-reformswill-impact-domestic-international-students [Accessed 20 Oct. 2014]. Kellner, D. (2002). Theorizing Globalization. Sociological Theory, 20(3), 285–305. Larsen, N. (1995). Reading North by South: On Latin American Literature, Culture, and Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Liu, H. (2013). [Back Cover Text]. In P. Woo & V. King (Eds.), The Historical Construction of Southeast Asian Studies: Korea and Beyond. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Liu, Y. (2015). Humanities Dean: Cuts Are “Without Vision or Perspective.” University Post. Available at: universitypost.dk/article/humanities-dean-cutsare-without-vision-or-perspective [Accessed 28 Oct. 2015]. Mato, D. (2000). Transnational Networking and the Social Production of Representations of Identity by Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations of Latin America. International Sociology, 15(2), 343–360. Mato, D. (2003). Latin American Intellectual Practices in Culture and Power: Experiences and Debates. Cultural Studies, 17(6), 783–804. Mignolo, W. (2000). Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Moreiras, A. (2001). The Exhaustion of Difference: The Politics of Latin American Cultural Studies. Durham: Duke University Press. Moustakas, C. (1990). Heuristic Research: Design, Methodology and Applications. London: Sage Publications. Myklebust, J. (2014). Minister Cuts 4,000 Study Places with Low Job Prospects. University World News, (337). Available at: http://www.universityworldnews. com/article.php?story=20141002163554769 [Accessed 12 June 2015].

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Nett, S. (2014). Minister to Cut 4,000 Study Places from Danish Universities. University Post. Available at: http://universitypost.dk/article/minister-cut4000-study-places-danish-universities [Accessed 24 Sept. 2014]. News.ku.dk. (2016). Slashing Small Programme Offering. Available at: news.ku. dk/all_news/2016/01/slashing_small_programme_offering/ [Accessed 18 Jan. 2016]. Park, S., & King, V. (Eds.). (2013). The Historical Construction of Southeast Asia Studies: Korea and Beyond. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Ranchod-Nilsson, S. (2000). Regional Worlds: Transforming Pedagogy in Area Studies and International Studies [pdf]. Available at: http://regionalworlds. uchicago.edu/transformingpedagogy.pdf [Accessed 21 Feb. 2016]. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. London: Routledge. Schwartz, B. (1980). Presidential Address: Area Studies as a Critical Discipline. Journal of Asian Studies, 40(1), 15–25. Steedly, M. (1999). In I. Abraham (Ed.), Weighing the Balance: Southeast Asian Studies Ten Years After: Proceedings of Two Meetings Held in New York City on 15 November and 10 December, 1999. New York: Southeast Asian Program, Social Science Research Council (SSRC). Tadiar, N. (1999). In I. Abraham (Ed.), Weighing the Balance: Southeast Asian Studies Ten Years After: Proceedings of Two Meetings Held in New York City on 15 November and 10 December, 1999. New York: Southeast Asian Program, Social Science Research Council (SSRC). Taylor, C., & Pitman, T. (2013). Latin American Identity in Online Cultural Production. New York: Routledge. Thongchai, W. (2003). Writing at the Interstices: Southeast Asian Historians and Postnational Histories in Southeast Asia. In A. Ahmad & T. Ee (Eds.), New Terrains in Southeast Asian History (pp. 1–29). Singapore: Singapore University Press. Wallerstein, I. (1974). The Modern World System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press. Wang, G. (Ed.). (2005). Nation-Building: 5 Southeast Asian Histories. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Young, M. (2016). Humanities Stops 2016 Admissions to Polish, Turkish, Other Programmes. University Post. Available at: http://universitypost.dk/article/ humanities-stops-2016-admissions-polish-turkish-other-programmes?utm_sou rce=Universitypost+via+mailman+-+UK&utm_ [Accessed 15 Jan. 2016].

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This Area Is [NOT] under Quarantine: Rethinking Southeast/Asia through Studies of the Cinema Arnika Fuhrmann The 2010 award-winning feature film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives by Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul includes a sex scene between a mythical princess and a catfish, humans and ghosts who find themselves at the same dinner table, and a historical temporality that reaches into the past as well as into the future. In addition to highlighting temporal and ontological mobility in this manner, Apichatpong’s film turns on the engagement of distinctly Isan (Northeast Thai) locations, aesthetics, and histories. While virtuosity in the deployment of temporal and ontological mobility may be unique to Apichatpong’s œuvre, much of contemporary cinema across Southeast Asia combines the centering of unmistakably local content with high transnational legibility.1 In 2010 Apichatpong became the first Southeast Asian director ever to be awarded the prestigious Palme d’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival. He has since become as much of a household name in France and other locations across the globe as in Thailand. The aptitude of Southeast Asian cinema to mobilize the distinctly local while at the same time producing

The title of my paper is derived from a 2008 film by independent Thai filmmaker Thunska Pansitthivorakul, Boriwen Ni Yu Phai Tai Kan Kak Kan (This Area Is NOT under Quarantine). A. Fuhrmann (*) Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA © The Author(s) 2017 K. Mielke, A.-K. Hornidge (eds.), Area Studies at the Crossroads, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59834-9_14 [email protected]

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transnationally legible aesthetics of avantgarde visual representation, is not only indicative of a new quirk of global arthouse cinema. This prominent aesthetic in independent cinema from the region also enables novel perspectives on the goals and methodologies of teaching Southeast Asia Studies. This paper takes the chronotopes, or the spatiotemporal properties, of contemporary Southeast Asian cinema as an occasion to inquire into the ways in which both the region’s new cinemas and scholarship in this field allow us to rethink humanities approaches to the “area” of Southeast Asia and to pedagogies of Asia more broadly (Harootunian 2012, p. 30). As both a Cold War formation and a region of supposedly singular cultural density, the area of Southeast Asia lends itself to pedagogies geared toward rethinking the imbrications of the local and the translocal (Harootunian 2002).2 While the scholarship has attempted to assign unity to a region that evinces considerable cultural diversity, Southeast Asia cannot be thought of apart from translocal histories and exchanges with China, India, and other parts of the world (Emmerson 1980; Owen 2010); Reid 2015; Reynolds 2008).3 Taking Southeast Asia’s cultural density seriously moreover brings up fundamental theoretical questions regarding sovereignty, assimilation, and hybridity. In the classroom, students grasp intuitively that cinema and new media are where area appears inimitably local, but at the same time figures most translocally—in cinematic aesthetics, content, and circulation. Some of the crossroads potential of the field of Southeast Asian cinema studies then derives from inherent features of its object of analysis. Cinema is a mass cultural medium of local and translocal relevance. Its tendency to traverse local, regional, and national boundaries makes it an apt object of inquiry for a revision of Area Studies’ goals, objects, and pedagogies. Conversely, cinema’s dependencies on predominantly restrictive mechanisms of funding and exhibition possess their own geographic logics and provide insight into complex trajectories of global circulation as well as into national and transnational regimes of prohibition and promotion (May Adadol Ingawanij 2008, 2012). Several features of the diverse theoretical apparatus of cinema studies moreover lend themselves to a re-envisioning of Area Studies. Thus the notion of the gaze and of the directionality of observation finds useful conceptualization in Feminist Film Studies and apparatus theory (for example Mulvey 1975). In the classroom, cinema studies provides a sophisticated set of tools for inquiry into the optics of place, persons, and histories. Film

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Studies as a whole represents an interdisciplinary project that draws on approaches in psychoanalysis, feminist theory, anthropology, and affect theory among other disciplines, and therefore lends itself to a diversification of approaches in the study of areas. Rather than develop a medium-­driven theory of a new Area Studies or one that relies solely on cinema studies, however, this chapter examines how a particular body of contemporary films as well as scholarship that focuses on cinema lend themselves to innovative ways of teaching about Southeast Asian cultural objects and contexts. In the classroom, the study of cinematic materials enables the almost visceral experience of the temporal and spatial plurality of “Asia” in the present. At the same time, film is particularly effective in highlighting the mediatedness of knowledge production about Asia and in complicating the notion of origins and revising temporal hierarchies that pervade both popular as well as scholarly conceptions. Thus filmic materials aid in revising binaries such as “tradition versus modernity” as well as oppositions of “East and West.” With my mention earlier of Apichatpong’s combination of transnational and local elements, and his deployment of divergent temporal dimensions, I wish to draw attention to a mode of analysis that exceeds the merely spatial logics of cinema and area. Thus we must consider the particular make-up of this cinema also to be indicative of a temporal logic. When Apichatpong’s films place fantasy worlds populated by tiger and monkey ghosts (Tropical Malady, 2004; Uncle Boonmee, 2010) and other supernatural beings on the same temporal plane as contemporary models of sociality and politics in Thailand, they also teach us about the coexistence of multiple temporalities in the Southeast Asian present. They further bring into view the fact that these multiple temporalities do not relegate Southeast Asia to a prior time, but situate it within contemporaneity. Thus while a perspective on space and on mobility within new conceptions of spatiality is important, I argue with Harry Harootunian that new Area Studies pedagogies cannot forego the concomitant consideration of temporality.4 While authors such as Wang Hui and Kuan-Hsing Chen have issued productive calls to re-imagine Asia through the expansion of spatial frameworks, Harootunian exhorts us also “to restore time to any [such] consideration of space” (Harootunian 2012, p. 8; Wang 2011; Chen 2010). Until today, assessments of temporal orders and teleologies of development continue to dominate Area Studies’ considerations of non-European and US-American histories and cultures. As Bliss Cua Lim cautions, notions of

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anachronism continue to structure ideological rhetoric, wherever we hear the temporal cast of claims to legitimacy: politically, in the terms progressive or conservative, in thinkers who are “ahead of ” or “behind” the times, and with regard to style, the ideas of being “hip” or “current” as opposed to that which is “dated” or “passé.” (Lim 2009, p. 83)

As both a time-bound and spatially defined medium—and as a field of cultural production that addresses the places and times of (Southeast) Asia also in content—film furnishes an apt object for the chronotopical inquiry (this time in this place/this place at this time) that Harry Harootunian suggests as a reparative strategy for Area Studies in its post-Cold War incarnations.

Area Studies Temporalities In his 2012 critique of Area Studies, Harootunian demands that we restore heterogeneity to the temporal frameworks of the study of Africa and Asia. According to Harootunian, the Cold War discipline of Area Studies became implicated in perpetuating and systematizing regimes that turned on the notion of uneven development. Attributing progress to the western metropolis and “untimeliness,” or temporal lag, to locations in Asia and Africa, Area Studies provided the ideological engine and informational support for the concerns of the security state as well as for the logistics of the expansion of capital: “[A]rea studies has been a silent accomplice, duplicitous in its capacious desire to serve a state that sought to refashion the world through unbound capitalism” (Harootunian 2012, pp. 8, 10). What had to be elided for this purpose, and in the name of progress was the coexistence of multiple, differing temporal orders: “Rather than classifying the collisions [of different temporal orders] as common moments of noncontemporaneity, they are judged as examples of time lag and assigned to a developmental trajectory characterized by permanent catch-up” (Harootunian 2012, p. 31). The deployment of these temporal logics has by no means come to an end in the post-Cold War era; rather, neoliberalism exacerbates the logic of uneven development further. For the present, Harootunian thus diagnoses an “end of temporality” that excludes time’s agency […] and spatializes certain world regions, transubstantiating multiple temporalities […] into a singular temporality that marks the distance between developed and undeveloped. This spatial privileging converts a purely quantitative measure of time—chronology—into a qualitative yardstick, whereby a different temporality becomes a symptom of backwardness. (Harootunian 2012, pp. 7–8)

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The overarching framework that Harootunian proposes for a revision of area scholarship after the Cold War is one that directs attention to the concomitant temporal and spatial dimension of its objects of study, or to what he references as “Bakhtin’s conception of the chronotope that manages to configure the space-time relationship under specific historical circumstances.” For Harootunian, scholarly attention to the chronotopes of the present represents the only way in which scholarship can interfere with the obscuring logics of sameness put into place by capital expansion. Only a chronotopically literate Area Studies can thus counter the evacuation of the political from the present that is the hallmark of neoliberalism. As Harootunian puts it, “politics and history appear [only] at the juncture where discordant times intersect” (Harootunian 2012, pp. 30, 31).

Re-Envisioning Southeast/Asia of the Cinema

in Studies

The work of film scholar Bliss Cua Lim is exemplary in how it mobilizes temporality for Area Studies. In her 2009 book Translating Time: Cinema, the Fantastic, and Temporal Critique, Lim forges a methodology that draws a “visual-ontological” critique into relation with a “historical-­ postcolonial” critique (Lim 2009, p. 12) While investigating also individual historical occurrences, the book focuses more broadly on the injustice of a temporal regime. Drawing Philippine cinema into relation to other Asian and diasporic cinemas, Lim undertakes the detailed investigation of an important history of the concept of anachronism and traces its role in colonial rationality.5 She stresses that, in this context, anachronism becomes a tool for the containment of difference. Suggesting that “this temporal management of troublesome heterogeneity under the rubric of modern homogeneous time is the imperial move that postcolonial scholars vociferously refute,” Lim asserts that “refusal[s] of anachronism, of a past left behind” remain imperative in the present (Lim 2009, pp. 82, 16). The rectifying move that Translating Time makes is that it sets the critical potential of haunting against the historical injustice of this deployment of anachronism. The historically reparative factor in Lim’s argument is derived from a certain notion of temporal resilience. A vital part of the argument of Translating Time thus centers on the notion of the immiscibility of different temporal registers, or the fact of the persistence of “discrete temporalities incapable of attaining homogeneity with or full

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incorporation into a uniform chronological present” (Lim 2009, p. 12). From this enhanced perspective on temporality emerges the assertion that the past is never left behind, but endures in the present. What this alternative conception of temporality enables is the survival of alterity, the persistence of demands for historical accountability, and the disruption of the empty, homogeneous time of the nation. In the classroom, Lim’s framing of the chronotope of haunting allows for a reworking of “area” on several levels. For one, since “the fantastic unsettles the fantasy of a single calendrical present shared by all citizens through an occult splintering of the national meanwhile,” the chronotope of ghostly return enables interventions into nationalist historiographies (Lim 2009, p. 39). Thus Lim asserts that an occurrence of haunting in the Philippine film Haplos (1982) opens up the seeming homogeneity of the national present to renewed consideration of unfinished political conflict, as the film draws into relation “phantoms from the Japanese occupation in World War II with the guerilla conflicts of the 1980s.” She further highlights a paradigmatic moment in Stanley Kwan’s Rouge (1987) in which a ghost sees a scene from her past superimposed on a modern day shop window (Lim 2009, pp. 150, 151, 156). For the student viewer–reader, this scene breaks up the unity of time and space literally, parses the multiplicity of temporality visually, and teaches us a layered perception of space, history, and personhood. Lim’s work becomes singularly effective in making palpable an “equal rights” perspective on temporality that lets students recognize the (co)existence of temporalities that differ from those of the nation, capital, or Google Calendar. Across Asia Studies more broadly, we can identify a heterogeneous move to make the study of cinema available for interventionist pedagogies. Thus Tani Barlow’s work mines the cinematic as a primary index for what she calls “women-in-transition,” a mobile notion of a pan-Asian gendered position that is closely tied to surplus value (Barlow 1998). Other chronotopical interventions are developed by Jonathan M.  Hall, whose study of queer Japanese cinema critiques developmentalist notions of sexuality, and Feng-Mei Heberer, whose comprehensive consideration of trans- and inter-Asia connections inaugurates a new mode of doing transnational Asia Studies (Hall 2000; Heberer 2014). Scholars whose work on the cinema is currently effecting innovation in the study of Southeast Asia include Mariam B. Lam, Hoang Tan Nguyen and Fiona Lee. Nguyen integrates considerations of Southeast Asian cin-

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emas with diasporic films in a provocative study of Asian-American masculinity (Nguyen 2014). Analyzing independent film in Malaysia, Lee’s chronotopical intervention opens up the possibility of a critical, alternative history, especially of race in colonial and postcolonial contexts (Lee 2013). And Lam’s Pacific Standard Time: Southeast Asian Arts Activism and Global Capital (2017) revises approaches to Southeast Asia through the analysis of transnational, regional economies of film production.

Primitive Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s work occupies the chronotopes of personhood and collectivity in particularly provocative ways. In his films, the Southeast Asian present is constitutionally haunted, or marked by the coexistence of divergent temporalities (Ingawanij 2013). His work is further underwritten by particular gendered logics and puts forth transregional, postcolonial perspectives on national (Thai) histories. As students frequently bring strong interests in sexuality and gender equality as well as demands for stringent postcolonial critique to the humanities classroom, Apichatpong’s films are especially suited to a pedagogy that integrates these problems into investigations of historical accountability and justice. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, which uses the story of a man who can recall past lives to outline a political history, culminates the director’s Primitive project, a multiplatform endeavor addressing the history of communist suppression in Northeast Thailand.6 Primitive further includes the seven-screen installation Primitive, the single screen installation Phantoms of Nabua, an artist’s book, and the short film A Letter to Uncle Boonmee (Animateprojects.org 2008). When works from the Primitive project emerged onto the international scene of installation art in 2009, critics read the trope of haunting in this work to signal Apichatpong’s turn toward increased politicization. The installations draw on the violent history of the Thai state’s suppression of communism in the village of Nabua in Nakhon Phanom ­province. Instead of positing a shift toward politicization solely at this time in the director’s career, however, I suggest that we understand the political in Apichatpong’s films to encompass a wider scope than the Primitive project’s recovery of an explicitly marked slice of history. Apichatpong’s entire œuvre has been dedicated to envisioning social and aesthetic forms that continually expand those of the present. The Northeastern region of Thailand (Isan) has always been his preferred

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site from which to envision these ideals. If Cold War politics were instrumental in shaping the field of Southeast Asian Studies, then the director’s privileging of Isan as a primary location of Cold War politics (for example Thailand as a stalwart, anticommunist ally of the USA; Isan as a US base during the Vietnam War) is significant. This mobilization of the Northeast as a source of social and aesthetic ideals bears both national and transnational implications. The Primitive project as a whole renders the repressed history of Thai anticommunism through an aesthetics of the ordinary as well as through the temporalities of haunting. For students confronted with the history of Southeast Asia during the Cold War for the first time, the visual medium makes palpable the complexities of past and present political ideologies. At the same time the deployment of the trope of haunting renders Southeast Asia as a site constituted by multiple temporal components—the realpolitik components of liberal and authoritarian governance as well as less linear, mythical temporalities that bring other concepts of collectivity and justice to bear on the present. “There Was No Nation” Primitive’s notion of collectivity relies on the constitution of a temporally complex archive. The project marks a third stage in Apichatpong’s filmmaking in which he no longer works solely from personal, autobiographical memory. For this project, the director instead inhabited the place of history that is Nabua long enough to blend an experiential dimension that includes the collaborative production of new memories with a historiography of the village’s experience of counterinsurgency. In Apichatpong’s account, Primitive is a project that itself emerges from an innovative form of pedagogy: So I traveled to the northeast and focused on the idea of remembering. Ultimately I settled on the village of Nabua in Nakhon Panom. Nabua was one of the places the Thai army occupied from the ’60s to the early ’80s to fight so-called communists. While there is no obvious link between Boonmee and Nabua, the village is full of repressed memories. I decided to work there and initially interviewed a lot of people. But I ended up not using this material, instead just working with local teenagers to build a spaceship and make our little movies. That was my process of remembering the place. (Apichatpong Weerasethakul 2010)

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The “portrait of the village” that emerged evolved into the multiple works that constitute the Primitive project. In a 2009 Master Class in Berlin, Apichatpong characterized his contemporary projects as concerned with “the extinction of memory, language, culture, and dignity.” In Primitive, the recovery of history relies on improvisational collaboration with the descendants of the alleged communists that were killed in Nabua from the 1960s to the1980s, leaving the village almost completely devoid of men. A scene constructed from stills of improvisations with the young descendants of the men who were disappeared from the village en masse is the culmination of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives’ reflections on political temporality and space (Fig. 8). Young men who are mostly clad in military uniforms stage scenes of capture, submission, and male bonding in the fields of the village. In several images, they are joined by monkey-ghosts (Fig. 9). A voiceover tells of a journey from the past to a political present dominated by panoptic surveillance. In this context, the narrative invokes the cinematic features of light and of the screen as features that attain political meaning. The Primitive project as a whole relies on the experimentation with the possibilities of cinema to illuminate, without burning in the process. Apichatpong does this literally, when he experiments with using military flares as well as a burning (soccer) ball in the installation Phantoms of Nabua. The flares stand in for

Fig. 8  A Sequence of Still Images Is the Culmination of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His past Lives

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Fig. 9  The Descendants of Disappeared Communists Improvise on the History of Nabua

both the salutary and potentially destructive power of cinematic illumination: while they throw light on a buried history they also represent tools of military aggression. In the narrative accompanying Uncle Boonmee’s stills sequence, the vicissitudes of cinematic illumination also play a key role: When they found “past people,” they shone a light on them. That light projected images of them onto the screen. From the past until their arrival in the future. Once those images appeared, these “past people” disappeared. I was afraid of being captured by the authorities because I had many friends in this future. I ran away. But wherever I ran, they still found me. They asked me if I knew this road or that road. I told them I didn’t know. And then I disappeared. (Fig. 10)

In the stills sequence, the notion of disappearance emerges as the primary political metaphor of the future-present—chiefly in the sense of an overwhelming threat: “The future city was ruled by an authority able to make anybody disappear.” When the voiceover ends with the narrator’s statement that he disappeared, the choice to disappear before one can be disappeared seems to represent the only solution to extracting oneself from the violence of political authority (Ingawanij 2013). The deployment of the sequence of stills within the film serves to defamiliarize further the already diverse temporalities of Uncle Boonmee. First

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Fig. 10  Disappearance Emerges as the Primary Political Metaphor of Uncle Boonmee

and foremost, the sequence re-presences a suppressed past and links the historical case of state violence to ongoing violence in the future-present, without positing simplistic parallels. The avantgarde technique of interspersing still images into the film unpacks the density of time and space in this location and brings into view the layering of political violence—that is, a history of state violence and impunity that furnishes a partial causality for the political configuration of the present and future. Here the techniques of cinema make evident the coming together of “discordant times” that Harootunian claims as the only condition under which “[politics] and history appear” (Harootunian 2012, p. 31). In Uncle Boonmee, the question of accountability is moreover transacted in the idiom of Buddhist notions of rebirth. However, rebirth does not appear in the context of a religious teaching, but rather as a temporal framework that inquires anew into the issue of accountability and interrupts expectations of how historical debt is to be resolved. In addition to recovering a specific slice of history, the monkey-ghost as the embodiment of the disappeared communist(s) lends a primordial dimension to this history. This dimension adds gravity to the capacity of the history of communist suppression to keep on haunting: it represents the tenacity of a past that precisely cannot be “left behind” (Lim 2009, p. 16) (Fig. 11). In particular, it works against the “strategy of temporal containment” that

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Fig. 11  The Trope of Haunting and the Figure of the Monkey-Ghost Add a Primordial Dimension to the History of State Violence from the 1960s to the 1980s

the empty, homogeneous time of the nation imposes. Countering perspectives that “presum[e] a totalizing historical movement applicable to all peoples and cultures and labeling certain forms of difference as primitive or anachronistic,” Uncle Boonmee refrains from merely designating Thailand illiberal or not-yet-democratic, but recuperates the primitive for a thoroughly contemporary political provocation (Lim 2009, p. 82). Primitive ultimately deploys the repopulation of the village with the young men to point toward a kind of collectivity that bears counternational connotations, yet also reaches beyond the national. Like much of Apichatpong’s work, the Primitive project consistently makes the nation a point of reference. Yet the works do so in casual, offhand ways and ­primarily put forth notions of collectivity that exceed the registers of the nation and national historiography. The director’s focus on the culturally distinct region of Isan and on Lao culture also creates transnational connections with the country of Laos. By invoking the Northeast of Thailand—and providing an alternate perspective on its poverty, symbolic role as Bangkok’s other, positioning in time as “prior,” and its insurgent histories—Apichatpong highlights also histories that extend across national boundaries and brings into view colonial pasts and neoliberal presents. His films’ politics of location further include the

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fact that migrants appear as both objects and subjects of desire and as important actors in the director’s vision of a desirable sociality.7 In spatial terms, too, this cinema is thus one that draws on myriad formats, settings, and tropes to reach beyond national boundaries.

Queer Sociality

and Ordinariness

The political in Apichatpong’s films is centrally encapsulated in the aesthetics of the ordinary, or the singular cinematic language of the Thai everyday that the director has developed (Kong Rithdee 2005; Anchalee Chaiworaporn 2006; Chalida Uabumrungjit 2005). On the most basic level, the fact that Uncle Boonmee renders the everyday almost in real time facilitates a perspective that mediates Southeast Asia’s contemporaneity for students: this is happening now and it is detailed enough for me to imagine as a contemporary reality. It does not exactly mirror my reality, yet bears some of the elements of neoliberal governance that mark my everyday life while drawing my attention also to additional dimensions of our time. What is more, the director’s expert rendering of nonmetropolitan, nonbourgeois Thailand and his films’ dominant register of casualness are inextricably linked with Apichatpong’s vision of a possible sociality—his proposition for how and with whom one might live; pleasurably, less violently, and perhaps justly. In his work as a whole, it is queerness that underwrites this political vision; it is instantiated in the highlighting of same-sex relations while also figuring as a broad, cross-gender social ideal.8 In Primitive, the director takes queerness in a new direction, however. He explains how a particular kind of homosociality came to serve as the basis for his (re)creation of history in this work: Brian Curtin: [T]he Primitive Project is populated largely by men and, as with some of your other recent work a pronounced homoeroticism seems to exist. How conscious are you of this? Apichatpong Weerasethakul: I love the beauty of men and think [this] should be explored more. BC: Are the stories of the history of Nabua primarily handed down through a male line? AW: Well, there are fables and there is the actual history of Nabua. Fables include one about a “widow ghost” who abducts men that enter her empire. I guess the ghost is seeking revenge for an abusive relationship! The area is known, in Thai, as “meaung mae mai”: the region of widows. In terms of actual history, the Thai army set up a camp in Nabua and monitored the

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villagers during the so-called Red period from the 1960s to the early 1980s. There are many off-the-record accounts of abuses by the soldiers, including thefts, rapes and murders; so most of the men fled into the fields and mountains to join the Communist Party of Thailand and women tended to stay to take care of the homes, rice fields and cattle. I want to create a realm where the village is re-populated with men only, including fictional soldiers. My aim is to reunite the men and maybe also challenge the widow ghost’s empire. (Weerasethakul 2010)

The scenario that the director outlines differs from ideals of sociality in his previous films, in which women assumed the primary agency in economic, discursive, and social matters. However, although the director designates the antagonistic force in this scenario to be female, his invocation of queerness nevertheless does not take on the masculinist cast that dominates contemporary political critique. Rather homosociality comes to figure in scenarios of replenishing and of play with domination and submission, revelation and disappearance. Both the ordinariness and the queer sociality that suffuses his films’ stories and tonalities prompt the student spectator to engage very actively with the affects and politics of the films. Viewing a cinema that foregrounds the mechanics of its own making (collaborative production, diffusion of narrative agency, highlighting of filmic craftedness), students remain aware not only of the mediated nature of cinema, but also of the truth content of Area Studies knowledge. Temporalities of Buddhism Buddhist motifs represent a central element of the architecture of temporality in Apichatpong’s work. Each instance of ghostly return is framed by Buddhist tropes, stories, or images in his films. Initially, students understand Buddhism as merely a local, originary, and prescriptive feature of life in Thailand. As they study the films in depth, however, they become engrossed in analyzing their use of Buddhist imaginaries, iconographies, and motifs to outline collective futures and counternormative modes of desiring. Critics from Tony Rayns to James Quandt have frequently understood Buddhist teachings to work doctrinally in these films. I argue that rather than deploy Buddhism as religious pedagogy, the films mobilize Buddhist motifs, stories, and temporalities nondoctrinally, for the purpose of rewrit-

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ing Thai political and sexual modernity. Thus Buddhist-coded tropes of haunting elaborate the multiple causalities of history and the affective dimensions of desire in Apichatpong’s films. In Uncle Boonmee a national and transnational history of counterinsurgency reemerges in the shape of an animal-human-ghost conglomerate. Uncle Boonmee lets this quasi-mythical figuration coincide in time with more realist segments. Although—or precisely because—its story plays out on such seemingly different ontological planes, students understand the film’s two temporalities to represent a certain kind of contemporaneity. The element that they initially marked as local, “other,” or belonging to the past—Buddhism—becomes the signifier of something that radically reconfigures the present. This is the moment at which oppositions of East and West, religion and secularity, and liberalism and illiberalism crumble in the classroom. Thus the Buddhist component lets reemerge an always already transnational history of communism and its violent suppression—a history that is largely effaced from national historiography. The film’s homosocial tableaux bear the burden of reminding viewers of the possibility of an alternate mode of social organization as well as of finding ways of living after its brutal suppression. The young men in Uncle Boonmee both resurrect the alleged communists and, as their descendants, bear the burden of living with loss and finding political forms for their present. For one, the young men’s engagement with scenarios of domination and submission represents a working through of the psychic effects of a history that remains largely under cover. At the end of the film, three of its main characters sit transfixed by a television newscast, enacting the immobilizing effects of official representations both of Thai history and of the political now. When haunting makes palpable the political dilemmas of the present in this way, students come to understand “Asian” and “Western” modernities as differently enchanted, rather than as opposites of enchantment and disenchantment. A supposedly “traditional,” unchanging feature of life in Asia, Buddhism, becomes suffused with multiple historical, political, and aesthetic meanings.

This Time in This Place/This Place at This Time Merging seemingly divergent temporalities as they do, films like Apichatpong’s Uncle Boonmee thus enable students to grasp models of collectivity that exceed standard secular, liberal figurations and conven-

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tional historical accounts. In a scholarly field that has not done enough to address the contemporaneity of (Southeast) Asia, the perspective on cinema enables students to reach a more complex understanding of the temporalities and locatedness of personhood and collectivity in the political now. It contributes to a “refusal of anachronism” and resists calibrations of Asian models of collectivity and personhood as either situated “before prohibition” or lagging “behind liberation” (Lim 2009, p. 16). A focus on the chronotopes of (Southeast) Asian cinemas allows for analyses that extend beyond the nation and across historical eras. The temporal strategies and aesthetic properties of this cinema infuse history with a temporal depth that allows students to grasp the complexities of events that do not always find official recognition. Pedagogies that engage cinema can thus shift attention to new foci of analysis and provide insight into causalities that Area Studies has historically not been able to uncover. An emphasis on cinema, at the crossroads of discipline(s) and area, thus significantly strengthens the study of the region as multiply networked in time and space, rather than bounded by geography and the conventions of traditional area scholarship. If scholarly work is required to produce conceptual difference, such difference must in our pedagogies always be finely attuned to the complexities of Southeast Asian temporalities’ past and the present.

Notes 1. Indonesian director Garin Nugroho (for example Opera Jawa [Requiem from Java], 2006) represents a good example of another director who blends similar aesthetic components. 2. See especially Harootunian (2002). “Postcoloniality’s Unconscious/ Area Studies’ Desire.” 3. Norman G. Owen (2010) introduces the region in this manner in The Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia: A New History. For an overview of Southeast Asian Historical Studies until the 1980s, see Donald K. Emmerson (1984). “Issues in Southeast Asian History: Room for Interpretation—A Review Article.” 4. See also Barlow, “Positions: Asia Critique: Twenty Years After.” 5. Bliss Lim, Translating Time, see especially pp. 69–95 and pp. 14–16. 6. Primitive (Thailand/Germany/UK 2009) premiered in February 2009 at Munich’s Haus der Kunst and online at Animate Projects.

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7. This is the case also in Blissfully Yours (2002) as well as in “Unknown Forces.” 8. See especially the short films Faith (Nuea Mek, 2006), Luminous People (Khon Rueang Saeng, 2007), Emerald (Morakot, 2007), Teem (2007), Unknown Forces (2007), Vampire (Sud Vikal, 2008), Mobile Men (2008), and M Hotel (2011) and the feature films Tropical Malady (2004) and Syndromes and a Century (2006).

Bibliography Animateprojects.org. (2008). Films by Project: Primitive. Available at: http:// www.animateprojects.org/films/by_project/primitive/primitive [Accessed 22 Apr. 2016]. Barlow, T. (1998). “green blade in the act of being grazed”: Late Capital, Flexible Bodies, Critical Intelligibility. differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 10(3), 119–158. Barlow, T. (2012). Positions: Asia Critique: Twenty years after [Editor’s introduction]. Positions: Asia Critique, 20(1), 1–6. Chaiworaporn, A. (2006). A Perceiver of Sense—Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Available at: http://www.thaicinema.org/Essays_07apichatpong.php [Accessed 30 May 2015]. Chen, K.-H. (2010). Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization. Durham: Duke University Press. Dabashi, H. (2005). Transcending the Boundaries of an Imaginative Geography. In S. Neshat, H. Dabashi, & O. Zaya (Eds.), Shirin Neshat: La Ultima Palabra/ The Last Word (pp. 31–85). Milan: Charta. Emmerson, D. (1980). Issues in Southeast Asian History: Room for Interpretation—A Review Article. Journal of Asian Studies, 11(1), 43–68. Hall, J. (2000). Japan’s Progressive Sex: Male Homosexuality, National Competition, and the Cinema. In A. Grossman (Ed.), Queer Asian Cinema: Shadows in the Shade (pp. 31–82). New York: Haworth Press. Harootunian, H. (2002). Postcoloniality’s Unconscious/Area Studies’ Desire. In M. Miyoshi & H. Harootunian (Eds.), Learning Places: The Afterlives of Area Studies (pp. 150–174). Durham: Duke University Press. Harootunian, H. (2012). “Memories of Underdevelopment” after Area Studies. Positions: Asia Critique, 20(1), 7–35. Heberer, F.-M. (2014). How Does It Feel to Be Foreign? Negotiating German Belonging and Transnational Asianness in Experimental Video. In R. Curtis & A. Fenner (Eds.), The Autobiographical Turn in Germanophone Documentary and Experimental Film (pp. 111–136). Rochester: Camden House.

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Lam, M. (2017). Pacific Standard Time: Southeast Asian Arts Activism and Global Capital [Monograph]. Lee, F. (2013). Spectral History: Unsettling Nation Time in The Last Communist. Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, 39(1), 77–95. Lim, B. (2009). Translating Time: Cinema, the Fantastic, and Temporal Critique. Durham: Duke University Press. Ingawanij, M. (2008). Disreputable Behaviour: The Hidden Politics of the Thai Film Act. Vertigo, 8(8), 30–31. Ingawanij, M. (2012). Dialectics of Independence. In M. Ingawanij & B. McKay (Eds.), Glimpses of Freedom: Independent Cinema in Southeast Asia (pp. 1–14). Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Ingawanij, M. (2013). Animism and the Performative Realist Cinema of Apichatpong Weerasethakul. In A. Pick & G. Narraway (Eds.), Screening Nature: Cinema Beyond the Human (pp. 91–109). New York: Berghahn Books. Mulvey, L. (1975). Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Screen, 16(3), 6–18. Nguyen, H. (2014). A View from the Bottom: Asian American Masculinity and Sexual Representation. Durham: Duke University Press. Owen, N. (2010). The Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia: A New History. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Reid, A. (2015). A History of Southeast Asia: Critical Crossroads. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Reynolds, C. (Ed.). (2008). Early Southeast Asia: Selected Essays. Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program Publications. Rithdee, K. (2005). Jungle Fever. Film Comment, 41(3), 44–47. Uabumrungjit, C. (2005). Sleepy Consciousness of Thai Documentary Film. Asian Cinema, 16(1), 71–77. Wang, H. (2011). The Politics of Imagining Asia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Weerasethakul, A. (2010). The Political is Personal: Apichatpong Weerasethakul [Interviewee] in Conversation with Brian Curtin [Interviewer]. Art It. Available at: http://www.art-it.asia/u/ab_brianc/zoHk6f73OAjnqldPmvrg [Accessed 22 Apr. 2016].

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Teaching to Transgress: Crossroads Perspective and Adventures in (?)-Disciplinarity Epifania A. Amoo-Adare What I am about to discuss here is as much about my peculiar positionality on the complexity of certain philosophical, spiritual, and poetic principles, as it is an expositional critique and scientific deliberation on the problematic socio-spatiality of today’s academic world. More specifically, I want to speak to (and with) the growing calls for rethinking science, especially those that talk about the dangers inherent in taking for granted any research practice rooted in western conceptualizations, particularly, if we also seek to truly comprehend the multiplicities of our diverse, chaotic, complex, and ever expanding universe. In this regard, I make an earnest and argumentative case for the deschooling1 of our (academic) society through critical research praxes that aim to decolonize the structures of knowledge production in westernized universities (Grosfoguel 2013). I insist on the growing need for scholars and their students to actively engage in post-disciplinary ventures (Buckler 2004) in order to ­adequately study much of today’s phenomena. Furthermore, I argue that such endeavors cannot merely be intellectual exercises to improve our modes of practice, and other technicalities, in the usual production of knowledge. They must, instead, be “personal is political” (Hanisch 1969) efforts that look to enable social justice with regards to the “who, where, what and how”

E. A. Amoo-Adare (*) University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany © The Author(s) 2017 K. Mielke, A.-K. Hornidge (eds.), Area Studies at the Crossroads, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59834-9_15 [email protected]

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of scholarship. To this end, I propose the need for a form of “teaching to transgress” (hooks 1994), which includes a reflexive praxis of nurturing within oneself, and in others, an ability to cross the boundaries around and within given epistemological and ontological spaces. Additionally, any proposed academic transgression requires a “mestiza or border consciousness” (Anzaldua 1987/2012) to engage in the co-­ construction of knowledges from, within, and on the many contested in-betweens, which are so full of promise, ambiguity, and uncertainty. It is why I also argue that such praxis should also utilize spatially oriented analytical concepts, both for research and teaching. More importantly, a post-disciplinary approach also demands our becoming “revolutionary educators” (McLaren 2001) who engage the world with a conscious positionality and are dedicated to transforming knowledge through “epistemological critique” that nurtures our “decoloniality of thinking and being” (Mignolo & Tlostanova 2006); that is, our ability to confront and delink from hegemonic power-knowledge systems. I make these arguments from a very specific positionality; one that is situated within the interdisciplinary Crossroads Asia network, which serves as a platform for me to contemplate the possibilities and challenges inherent in post-disciplinary endeavors. The network has also acted as a space within which to engage in the teaching of a post-disciplinary course that utilized spatially oriented conceptual frames to think about contemporary societies in the Global South. This course formed one of several concrete, but preliminary, pedagogical endeavors contributing toward the elucidation of a Crossroads Perspective for rethinking Area Studies, and related disciplines, by encouraging an ambiguous situatedness of the researcher and knowledge production betwixt arborescent and rhizomatic (Deleuze and Guattari 1987) ways of doing scholarship. Basically, through this paper, I rest on the notion of the Crossroads network as a paradigmatic academic borderland from which I must insist on a new politics of knowledge that is “neither here nor there”; between worlds, and so located within a quintessential liminal space in which all are (and is) at once in an uncertain process of differentiated and perhaps radical (un)becoming. This type of academic politics would occur chiefly through our border crossings and concomitant acts of “epistemic disobedience” (Mignolo 2009; Mignolo 2011), all as part of the intentionality for “shifting the geography of reason”2 (Alcoff 2011; Gordon 2011; Maldonado-Torres 2011) in what Lewis Gordon (2011) describes as an age of “disciplinary decadence.” And it is for these critical reasons that

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my exposition in this paper cannot simply be about what I write for, that is argumentation, but must also be about why I write and from where I write.

Why I Write: Beyond Legacies of Epistemic Violence within Transmodern Complexity We live in an age, where when, how, and where we move are as important as where we live, in terms of differentiating one person from another (Cresswell 2010). Places then—as particular unique moments in networks of social relations, discourses, and spatial understandings—have become substantially porous locations from which we experience the postmodern condition and, at times, the ravaging effects of globalization differentially and unequally (Massey 1991, 1994). In effect, we live in a time where lived spaces are increasingly permeable due to social networks, communication, and the constant movement of people, technology, capital, ideologies, and information (Appadurai 1999). This then results in various social, material, and discursive assemblages (Deleuze & Guattari 1987) that defy conventional forms of analysis. The realities of our complex, interconnected, and dynamic world, now point to the efficacy of spatially oriented conceptualizations such as that of translocality (Brickell & Datta 2011), or mobility3 (Urry 2007; Sheller & Urry 2006) and its politics (Cresswell 2010), to better understand contemporary societies. In so doing they also contest all normative notions of development as a linear process of modernization, the nation state as its nexus, and gendered hierarchies of individuals subject to performativity within such a progress narrative. More specifically, theorizations such as these point to the significance of the multiply identified mobile body, interacting in various networks of relationships within, and beyond, any society (Latour 2011). They also indicate the need for a critical pedagogy on space-time,4 especially the forces involved in its production and reproduction. Additionally, in everyday struggles for intellectual, social, economic, environmental, or political justice, there is a growing awareness of the need for ­evidence-­based strategic practice derived from an analysis of spatial configurations, concepts, and ideologies that help us to rethink the disciplines, as well as Area Studies, in light of the mobile world in which we currently live. Consequently, I would argue that spatial consciousness is a necessary condition for a thorough understanding of all contemporary societies.

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As relevant as these spatially oriented western perspectives might be for better analyzing contemporary phenomena, we must also seriously consider certain critical epistemological questions such as when Grosfoguel (2008) asks us whether we can produce knowledges that go beyond Eurocentric and Third World fundamentalisms. Grosfoguel sits in good (decolonial and postcolonial) company, out of which scholars speak of the need to end the “epistemic violence” embodied by mainstream academic scholarship (Mignolo 2009; Spivak 1995). Collectively (as well as individually), they argue for conscious objections to what Grosfoguel describes as the epistemic racism/sexism that is foundational to the knowledge structures of westernized universities, which are implicated in the extermination of other knowledges and ways of being. Like Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2013) and Molefi Asante (2012), these decolonial scholars critique the persistence of Euro-North American intellectual thought in academic and everyday imaginaries around the globe, as “epistemic violence” inherent in the “tyranny of abstract universals” (Mignolo 2007). They also call for a reconstitution of knowledges on other world-senses—and views—in order to delink from westernized knowledge production processes that basically serve as an essential component of the ongoing maintenance of a “colonial matrix of power” (Quijano 2000, 2007). This can be seen, for example, by the unquestioned use of western constructs as primary referents for analyzing all societies, especially those located in the Global South; as has been the problematic case with the utilization of “gender” for indiscriminately analyzing Third World women’s multiple socio-spatial experiences (Mohanty 1988; Oyewumi 1997; Tlostanova 2010). Such decolonial thinking is the awareness and institution of a “border consciousness” (Anzaldua 1987/2012); that is, a means for undermining and dismantling the tendency to assume that Western European thought, albeit provincial, is in fact universal (Quijano 2000). Decoloniality questions or problematizes the colonial matrix of power originating from Europe, as it argues that this history underlines the logic of Western civilization, especially in terms of knowledge and its production (Mignolo 2011). Decoloniality is a response to current domineering Euro-North American relationships with the Global South, as presently fomented in economic, political, social, cultural, educational, and other arenas (Quijano 2007). Decoloniality fosters various analytic approaches and political practices that are opposed to coloniality and modernity, the two main pillars of Western civilization. Decoloniality, thus, is both a political and epistemic project (Mignolo 2011).

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As Nikolay Karkov and Jeffrey Robbins (2014) emphasize, the work of decolonial scholars is not only heterogeneous, but it also strives to: access “worlds and knowledges otherwise,” as concepts such as universality yield pride of place to pluriversality, modernity and postmodernity to transmodernity, nomadology to border thinking, ontological difference/Being to colonial difference/coloniality of Being, gender trouble to coloniality of gender, posthumanism to decolonial humanism, the common to the communal, communist hypothesis to the work of translation, etc. (Karkov & Robbins 2014, p. 5)

These are a multiplicity of perspectives, which I see as critical to the idea of teaching to transgress because of the recognition that a complex and dynamic world, such as ours, requires more than an intellectual turn to trans-, inter-, pluri- or even post-disciplinary approaches to knowledge production. It also requires a deep commitment to a radically transformed politics of power-knowledge systems.

Where I Write From: Crossroads Asia and Feminist Embodiments of Spatiality Since “who we are and from where we speak,” has implications for the kind of knowledge we produce (Moya 2011), it is pertinent that I, now, also provide a brief account of my positionality (England 2010; Rose 1997). This is in order to further situate the position that I present in this paper, while imbuing the ensuing arguments with greater nuance. I am an Asante woman who has lived in 12 cities across four continents and for these, and many other reasons, I suffer a contradictory crisis of being placeless and yet simultaneously filled with the knowledge of different urban spatialities. It might be said that my life is subject to the increased mobility associated with today’s world citizens (Urry 2007). And this may well account for my obsession with deciphering the politics of space and what my role—as an African woman—is in that place of quintessential social struggle over geography and knowledge. Having always lived in urbanity, I find that my understanding, negotiation, manipulation, and ownership of space (real and imagined) is often predetermined, but not always confined, by the heteronormatively prescribed, colonized, gendered, racialized, and/or class-based social relations of global capitalism. Within this politics of space, I have been privy

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to what Leslie Kanes Weisman (1994) might describe as a minority and female experience of discrimination by design of a predominantly Western “man-made” built environment. Albeit restrictive, each discriminatory circumstance has often been mediated by my very specific combination of gender, age, ethnicity, class position, able-bodied heterosexuality, and architectural privilege; thus, consequently varying (over time) in nuance and degree from situation to situation and location to location. It is from these relational liminal spaces that I develop what I define as critical spatial literacy (Amoo-Adare 2013); specifically, nurturing a critical womanist-­ feminist understanding of the politics of space, for example, by determining what kinds of social insights are encoded in the built environment, how the built form may reproduce and/or contest dominant ideologies, and (in the latter case) how this contestation requires an ability to “critically read the world” (Freire 1983/1991, 1970/1996). It is as a consequence of serendipity and my embodied interest in spatiality (as a Black5 woman, a trained architect, and an urban dweller), that I find myself working within the Crossroads Asia network. As already mentioned, the network served as a platform within which I began to understand the possibilities and challenges associated with engaging in a post-disciplinary endeavor to rethink Area Studies, while utilizing the multidimensionality of space as a core element of data analysis and related theoretical conceptualization processes (Mielke & Hornidge 2014). Additionally, and more pertinent to this paper, I was able to teach a post-­disciplinary course entitled Crossroads Asia and CounterNarratives of Development: The “Post” in Area Studies and Development Theory.6 The course introduced students to various spatially oriented counter-­ narratives that contest normative notions of development as modernization and the nation state as its nexus. More specifically we analyzed the significance of the migrating “body,” as agent, interacting in networks of relationships within, and beyond, developing societies; most especially in contexts where conflict arises as a consequence of boundary marking in the formation of nation states. Utilizing spatial lenses, derived from post-­Area Studies, postcolonial and feminist perspectives, we also discussed questions such as: What is space? What is the relationship between ­spatial conditions and power? How does conflict arise as a consequence of struggles over space? How does mobility become a strategic response to conflict? What kinds of spatial mobility occur in conflictual contexts? How does mobility differ for men versus women?

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Additionally, we utilized research work developed under the Crossroads Asia umbrella to delve into the above questions, as well as to reveal the intimate and self-reinforcing connections between conflict and migration in certain “developing” societies on the Asian continent. Through multidimensional spatial concepts such as space, place, territory, network, mobility, rhizome, figuration, and positionality, we interrogated widespread understandings of developing societies in Asia as being given and set in specific places that are bound by fixed—and at times gendered—categories such as nation-state; that is, a structure developed for and not a context developed by society. We then contrasted this with an understanding of space as both a manifestation as well as a vehicle of the productive relations of power by various bodies acting on and in it. Conducting this class illuminated key pedagogical considerations when trying to teach a post-disciplinary course by engaging in a praxis of critical pedagogy, whereby I adhered to the idea that: [o]ne of the most important tasks of critical educational practice is to make possible the conditions in which the learners, in their interactions with one another and with their teachers, engage in the experience of assuming themselves as social, historical, thinking, communicating, transformative, creative persons; dreamers of possible utopias, capable of being angry because of a capacity to love. Capable of assuming themselves as “subject” because of the capacity to recognize themselves as “object.” All this, while bearing in mind that the assumption of oneself does not signify the exclusion of others. (Freire 1998, pp. 45–46)

By design, critical pedagogy was deeply involved in the teaching of the course, as it is also in the arguments to follow. This is because critical pedagogy is a powerful mechanism for enabling a praxis of teaching to transgress (hooks 1994). Critical pedagogy is designed to serve the purpose of both empowering educators and teaching for empowerment, in that: (1) it asks what the relationship is between what educators do in the classroom and efforts to build a better society; (2) it encourages educators to seek connections that would link their personal brand of pedagogy to wider social processes, structures, and issues; and (3) it provides educators with the critical skills, conceptual means, and moral imperatives to analyze critically the goals of schooling (McLaren 2007). Critical pedagogy accordingly “involves a strong agenda for change: within education, through education and throughout society” (McArthur 2010), as must also be the case in any critical rethinking of the sciences.

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What I Write For: Teaching to Transgress as an Adventure in (?)-Disciplinarity On analyzing what it means when the tools of racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruit of said patriarchy, Audre Lorde (1984) came to the resounding conclusion that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change” (p. 112). It is in bearing such prescient thinking in mind that we might recognize the failures of leftist and postcolonial endeavors to change the status quo, as perhaps being as a consequence of working with the master’s tools—even if used from oppositional standpoints. This is why it is critical to deschool (academic) society through a process of teaching scholars and their students to cross far beyond inter-, trans-, pluri- and post-disciplinary boundaries. Furthermore, Henry Giroux (2010) draws our attention to the fact that, in many places, tertiary education as a democratic public sphere is absent or gradually being eroded due to the emergence and dominance of a new “form of bare pedagogy” in our institutions of higher education. By this he refers to “a political and social practice that mirrors the economic neo-Darwinism of neoliberalism” in knowledge production processes, including “an emphasis on winning at all costs, a ruthless competitiveness, hedonism, the cult of individualism, and a subject largely constructed within a market-driven rationality that abstracts economics and markets from ethical considerations” (p.  185). Similarly, Peter McLaren (2014) argues that in the USA, especially, “capitalism subordinates human beings to things, splitting human beings off from themselves” (p. 583); at the same time, social science is “being militarized in the service of war” (p. 586), as social scientists are forcefully called upon to do their so-called patriotic duty. These circumstances, according to McLaren, require a purposeful effort by “educators to transcend, through self-transformation, the limits of everyday reality and the human condition under capitalism, and a ­willingness to marshal this unbounded potentiality in the direction of social justice” (pp. 606–607). It is such thinking—along with concerns about the immense global environmental, social, and political challenges—that has Jing Lin (2006) advocating a new and unconventional schooling paradigm; that is, one based on love and the teaching of compassion to students in order to foster peace and wisdom in the field of education and society at large. It is

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precisely these concerns about a neoliberal commandeering of education that drive the call for a critical reassessment of the biopolitics of research (D’Hoest & Lewis 2015), as well as the desire to move to more embodied learning (Wagner & Shahjahan 2014), spirituality (Hart 2004; Shahjahan 2004), collectivism, and scholar-activism as part of a slow scholarship (Mountz et  al. 2015) that globalizes research from below (Nnaemeka 2004), while seeking decolonized methodologies for (and from) the subaltern (Smith 1999; Sandoval 2000). These are standpoints that resonate in sentiment—if not in ideologies and proposed strategies—with many of the debates on rethinking Area Studies and related disciplines (MorrisSuzuki 2000; Szanton 2002; McClennan 2007; Wesley-Smith & Goss 2010; Sidaway 2013). Bearing these positions in mind, I continue to, first, emphasize the importance of critical pedagogy and the spatial turn in any rethinking of the disciplines and Area Studies. Second, I advocate a process of academic border-crossing in all our research endeavors. The concept of borders and their crossing has been taken up beyond anthropology, political science, and sociology and is also now considered within literary theory, Cultural Studies, Media Studies, and decoloniality discourses. In these various schools of thought, borders can exist in different human arenas such as cultural, political, territorial, racial, psychological, social, sexual, and so on. The notion of borderlands has also become of analytical interest to Area Studies scholars, who find currency in Willem van Schendel’s (2002) deliberation on Zomia as a metaphor for why greater attention must be paid to “process geographies,” including the significance of transnational flows and the fuzzy conditions of border categories. From a perspective of de-colonial thinking, Mignolo and Tlostanova (2006) also provide us with “border thinking,” as an emergent response to the eradication of difference. Critical border thinking seeks to deny the privilege of a social science or humanities observer who sees the rest of the world as an object of study; hence, it “moves away from the post-­ colonial toward the de-colonial, shifting to the geo- and body-politics of knowledge” (p.  206). The idea is that this type of border thinking brings different kinds of knowledge and actors together in order to displace European modern epistemologies. Critical border thinking engages us in two processes long advocated by pan-African decolonial thinkers: that of “decolonizing the mind” (Fanon 1952/1993; Nkrumah 1970; wa Thiong’o 1986) and of “moving the centre” from its assumed location in the West to a multiplicity of locations in cultural spheres around the world

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(wa Thiong’o 1993). More importantly, critical border thinking becomes indispensable if we are to believe Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) when she says that most of “the ‘traditional’ disciplines are grounded in cultural world views that are either antagonistic to other belief systems or have no methodology for dealing with other knowledge systems” (p. 65). It is in light of such considerations that the Crossroads Asia network endeavors to elaborate a Crossroads Perspective, which is an interdisciplinary research paradigm for knowledge generation on a more interrelated world. Anna-Katharina Hornidge and Katja Mielke (2015), describe the perspective as being focused on (1) developing appropriate theoretical concepts for analyzing an interconnected world; (2) determining key methodological approaches to best capture interdependencies in dynamic spatial formations; and (3) enabling reflexivity among researchers through serious consideration of their positionalities in knowledge production. The perspective as it currently stands, is nascent and very much in a fluid state of in-betweenness, whereby within the network there is constant negotiation of spatially oriented concepts such as place, mobility, networks, and positionality, as well as their significations within multiple verges located between (and amid) the researcher and the researched, theoretical knowledge and embodied practice, academia and the policy environment, Area Studies and the disciplines, or, as importantly, teaching and scholarship. This process of the network’s acknowledgement of the multitude of happenings at these numerous thresholds, as well as following their figurations to findings discussed within and beyond the network, yields a keen recognition of the potency of the metaphor of “the crossroads,” which in many cultures is a spatial symbolization of a “betwixt and between” place. Additionally, AnaLouise Keating (2013) reminds us of the liminal significance of the ontological, epistemological, and ethical dimensions of “in-­ between space,” within which we as decolonized researchers must embody the fluid process of becoming that is inherent in these liminal socio-spatial junctures. Keating argues that by doing so, we begin to take on the characteristics of what Gloria Anzaldua describes as the neplantera;7 that is, according to Keating, “a kind of threshold person or world traveler: someone who enters into and interacts with multiple, often conflicting, political/cultural/ideological/ethnic/etc. worlds and yet refuses to entirely adopt, belong to, or identify with any single belief, group, or location” (p. 12). It is here that, I would argue, we must begin our transgression by situating ourselves in such unfixed locations for grappling with the immense

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wealth of world senses and knowledges. This is despite the high levels of ambiguity, uncertainty, anxiety, and insecurity that such a potentially insurmountable endeavor brings. Certainly, academic transgression is an exercise in danger: one that might easily result in professional suicide or worse still the erosion of one’s scholarly sanity; seeing as “you’re in neplanta, you’re in chaos—tugged between starkly different people and worldviews” (Keating 2013, p. 12). But it is exactly this kind of “frictional existence” that is a prerequisite for forging complex commonalities and the co-development of “alternative perspectives—ideas, theories, actions, and/or beliefs that contain yet exceed either/or thinking” (p.  14), while we simultaneously endeavor to be post-disciplinary in our formation of theories from and about the in-betweenness of life and its social constructions. An endeavor such as this requires scholars and their students to study theories and perspectives that are often considered to be marginal, off the beaten track, and downright irrelevant by those of us anchored in the rather provincial surety of “universal” Euro-North American canon that is considerably more “authentic” and “legitimate.” Students are critical to any exercise of decolonizing our westernized systems of education, since they will serve as the vanguard for enacting transformation in how academic business is presently conducted. Students’ backgrounds, personal experiences and prior learning also provide us with wealthy foundations upon which to scaffold these new modes of decolonial thinking, being and doing scholarship. As scholar-educators, we must welcome and encourage the diversity of knowledges8 and identities that students bring into our classrooms for the simple reason that “any radical pedagogy must insist that everyone’s presence is acknowledged” (hooks 1994, p. 8). And particularly because we know that students in relationship to us, often adhere to historic performativity that maintains grossly unequal power dynamics in our classrooms; be that between students and faculty or for that matter among students, and outside the classroom, most especially, among ourselves as scholars. Michel Foucault (1975/1995) insists that the socio-spatial construction of the classroom and its related politics of space is heavily imbued with the nature of “disciplinary” power, which is embodied and re-­ articulated in such institutions. In other words, we find that today in tertiary education—as much as in other forms of schooling—we are predisposed to historical approaches on academic instruction, whereby it is clear that “[e]ducation in the classroom is not simply the uncomplicated

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transmission of knowledge, but involves a complex web of embodied relations of power which have remained stable over time and are instantiated in the space in the classroom” (McGregor 2004, p. 18). Moreover, the ubiquitous experience of spatiality in the classroom setting is indeed “a ‘hidden curriculum’ where past practices shape those of the present through materially-­embedded relations” (McGregor 2004, p.  17). This then demands a conscious subversion and dismantling of physical (and ideological) space when teaching, for example, through simply rearranging furniture, choosing unconventional spaces for classes, implementing activities that build classroom community, and/or profiling the real-time effects of the unfolding spatial politics in the classroom as “teachable moments” and an essential aspect of rethinking science pedagogy.

In Conclusion: Deschooling Academic Society and Other Decolonial Becomings In this chapter, I argue for critical, post-disciplinary readings of the contemporary world that subvert epistemic violence by decolonizing knowledge production processes, so as to co-construct situated knowledges (Haraway 1988) that contribute to a pluri-versal landscape of theories—rooted in empirical data and in constant dialogue with each other (Mignolo 2011). Central to this agenda is “education as a practice of freedom” (Freire 1973); hence, the importance of teaching ourselves to transgress either/ or positions on research theory and practice, as conducted by scholars in Area Studies and related disciplines. And perhaps by doing this, we might begin to fulfill Ivan Illich’s (1971/1973) primordial call for the deschooling of society; whereby we engage in the dismantling of higher education systems that maintain hegemonic power-knowledge structures, and thus perpetuate the status quo of epistemic and ontological inequalities. For as Illich (1971/1973) so rightly reminds us, “[n]ot only education but social reality itself has become schooled” (p. 10). What I would argue for now, is that we learn how to be constantly negotiating and “becoming” fluid, rhizomatic (Deleuze & Guattari 1987) forms of hybrid multiplicity, epitomizing “border consciousness” (Anzaldua 1987/2012). In other words, we must become iterations of the inherent paradox in recognizing that our westernized (academic) “privilege is our loss” (Spivak 1995), as much as it is what simultaneously enables us to think and act critically in our efforts to ensure that subalterns indeed speak— preferably without our limited translations of their otherness.

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I see myself in this same contestatory space: specifically, as an indigenous-­ foreigner. In my case, one who is of supposedly “pure” Asante origin but has simultaneously been educated in westernized institutions and lived in various permutations of the contemporary colonial/modern project, with its multitude neocolonial effects that cannot be instrumentally teased out of us. Yet, at the same time, these effects demand to be somehow excised out of our existence in a kind of “strategic essentialism” (Spivak 1993; Spivak & Grosz 1990). The latter is not so much about my persistence in an oppositional politics, reflecting certain hierarchies of oppression, but is more to root myself in a dynamic politics for someone, somewhere, and over something; in this case, for our teaching of ourselves (and others) to transgress an academic colonization of sorts.

Notes 1. By this, I refer to Ivan Illich’s (1971/1973) call for the disestablishment of education systems, due to the fact that (academic) schooling has indeed continued to be a ritual performance, within which learning is commodified for consumption by many and whereby hidden curriculums and disciplinary spatial practices perpetuate socio-cultural inequalities and maintain hegemonic power structures. 2. Maldonado-Torres (2011) describes this as a bid to move reason beyond a European and provincial scope, while simultaneously engaging in the production of post-disciplinary knowledges. 3. Note that mobility requires of us pluridisciplinarity in order to study its effects (Urry 2007). 4. Space-time here must be considered in its multidimensionality; namely, physical and socio-cultural spaces and their various dimensions that occur through and in time. 5. The word Black is intentionally used with a capital “B” to denote the political term Black versus the adjective black. 6. The course was taught to University of Bonn MA students in the Political Science and Sociology Department and the Department of English, American and Celtic Studies. It was also designed in collaboration with Anna-Katharina Hornidge; however, due to unforeseen circumstances, I was charged with the sole administration of the course.

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7. According to Keating (2013), Anzaldua bases the concept of neplantera on the Nahuatl word neplanta, which represents intellectual, psychic, spatial and temporal forms of liminality and, consequently, transformative potential. 8. With this I would also like to emphasize the value of making room in one’s pedagogy for linking to non-academic knowledges that proliferate on social media platforms, as well as other cultural modes of thinking, being and doing.

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Fanon, F. (1993). Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto Press (Original work published in 1952). Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books (Original work published in 1975). Freire, P. (1973). Education: The Practice of Freedom. London: Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative. Freire, P. (1991). The Importance of the Act of Reading. In C. Mitchell & K.  Weiler (Eds.), Rewriting Literacy: Culture and the Discourse of the Other (pp.  139–145). New York: Bergin and Garvey (Original work published in 1983). Freire, P. (1996). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin Books (Original work published in 1970). Freire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Encouragement. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Giroux, H. (2010). Bare Pedagogy and the Scourge of Neoliberalism: Rethinking Higher Education as a Democratic Public Sphere. The Educational Forum, 74(3), 184–196. Gordon, L. (2011). Shifting the Geography of Reason in an Age of Disciplinary Decadence. Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, 1(2), 95–103. Grosfoguel, R. (2008). Transmodernity, Border Thinking, and Global Coloniality: Decolonizing Political Economy and Postcolonial Studies. Eurozine. Available at: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-07-04-grosfoguel-en.html [Accessed 27 Oct. 2014]. Grosfoguel, R. (2013). The Structure of Knowledge in Westernized Universities: Epistemic Racism/Sexism and the Four Genocides/Epistemicides of the Long 16th Century. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, 11(1), 73–90. Hanisch, C. (1969). The Personal is Political [pdf]. Available at: http://www.carolhanisch.org/CHwritings/PersonalisPol.pdf [Accessed 5 Sept. 2010]. Haraway, D. (1988). Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575–599. Hart, T. (2004). Opening the Contemplative Mind in the Classroom. Journal of Transformative Education, 2(1), 28–46. hooks, B. (1994). Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge. Hornidge, A.-K., & Mielke, K. (2015). Crossroads Studies: From Spatial Containers to Studying the Mobile. Middle East–Topics and Arguments, 4, 13–19. Available at: http://meta-journal.net/article/view/3577 [Accessed 25 Aug. 2015]. Illich, I. (1973). Deschooling Society. London: Penguin Books (Original work ­published 1971).

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Karkov, N., & Robbins, J. (2014). Decoloniality and Crisis [Introduction to Special Issue]. Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, 12(4), 1–10. Keating, A. (2013). Transformation Now! Toward a Post-Oppositional Politics of Change. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Latour, B. (2011). Networks, Societies, Spheres: Reflections of an Actor-Network Theorist. International Journal of Communication, 5, 796–810. Lin, J. (2006). Love, Peace, and Wisdom in Education: A Vision for Education in the 21st Century. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Education. Lorde, A. (1984). Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. Freedom: Crossing Press. Lugones, M. (2007). Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System. Hypatia, 22(1), 186–209. Maldonado-Torres, N. (2011). Thinking through the Decolonial Turn: PostContinental Interventions in Theory, Philosophy, and Critique—An Introduction. Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, 1(2), 1–15. Massey, D. (1991). A Global Sense of Place. Marxism Today, 1991(June), 24–29. Massey, D. (1994). Space, Place and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. McArthur, J. (2010). Achieving Social Justice within and through Higher Education: The Challenge for Critical Pedagogy. Teaching in Higher Education, 15(5), 493–504. McClennan, S. (2007). Area Studies beyond Ontology: Notes on Latin American Studies, American Studies and Inter-American Studies. A Contra Corriente: A Journal on Social History and Literature in Latin America, 5(1), 173–184. McGregor, J. (2004). Space, Power and the Classroom. Forum: For Promoting 3–19 Comprehensive Education, 46(1), 13–18. McLaren, P. (2001). Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Politics of Hope: Reclaiming Critical Pedagogy. Cultural Studies: Critical Methodologies, 1(1), 108–131. McLaren, P. (2007). Life in Schools: An Introduction to Critical Pedagogy in the Foundations of Education. New York: Pearson Education. McLaren, P. (2014). Education Agonistes: An Epistle to the Transnational Capitalist Class. Policy Futures in Education, 12(4), 583–610. Mielke, K., & Hornidge, A.-K. (2014). Crossroads Studies: From Spatial Containers to Interactions in Differentiated Spatialities. Crossroads Asia Working Paper Series 15, Bonn. Mignolo, W., & Tlostanova, M. (2006). Theorizing from the Borders: Shifting to Geo- and Body-Politics of Knowledge. European Journal of Social Theory, 9(2), 205–221. Mignolo, W. (2007). Delinking. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 449–514.

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Mignolo, W. (2009). Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and De-Colonial Freedom. Theory, Culture and Society, 26(7–8), 1–23. Mignolo, W. (2011). The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham: Duke University Press. Mohanty, C. (1988). Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses. Feminist Review, 30, 61–88. Morris-Suzuki, T. (2000). Anti-Area Studies. Communal/Plural, 8(1), 9–23. Mountz, A., Bonds, A., Mansfield, B., Loyd, J., Hyndman, J., Walton-Roberts, M. et al. (2015). For Slow Scholarship: A Feminist Politics of Resistance through Collective Action in the Neoliberal University. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 14(4), 1235–1259. Available at: http://ojs.unbc.ca/index.php/acme/article/view/1058/1141 [Accessed 8 Oct. 2015]. Moya, P. (2011). Who We Are and from Where We Speak. Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, 1(2), 79–94. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. (2013). Coloniality of Power in Postcolonial Africa: Myths of Decolonization. Dakar: Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). Nkrumah, K. (1970). Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonization. New York: Monthly Review Press. Nnaemeka, O. (2004). Nego-Feminism: Theorizing, Practicing, and Pruning Africa’s Way. Signs, 29(2), 357–385. Oyewumi, O. (1997). The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America. Neplanta: Views from South, 1(3), 533–580. Quijano, A. (2007). Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality. Cultural Studies, 21(2), 168–178. Rose, G. (1997). Situating Knowledges: Positionality, Reflexivities and Other Tactics. Progress in Human Geography, 21(3), 305–320. Sandoval, C. (2000). Methodology of the Oppressed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Shahjahan, R. (2004). Centering Spirituality in the Academy: Toward a Transformative Way of Teaching and Learning. Journal of Transformative Education, 2(4), 294–312. Shahjahan, R. (2014). Being “Lazy” and Slowing Down: Toward Decolonizing Time, Our Body, and Pedagogy. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Incorporating ACCESS, 47(5), 488–501. Sheller, M., & Urry, J. (2006). The New Mobilities Paradigm. Environment and Planning A, 38(2), 207–226.

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Sidaway, J. (2013). Geography, Globalization and the Problematic of Area Studies. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 103(4), 984–1002. Smith, L. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous People. London: Zed Books. Spivak, G. (1993). Outside the Teaching Machine. New York: Routledge. Spivak, G. (1995). Can the Subaltern Speak? In B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths, & H. Tiffin (Eds.), The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (pp. 24–28). New York: Routledge. Spivak, G., & Grosz, E. (1990). Criticism, Feminism and the Institution. In S. Harasym (Ed.), The Postcolonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues (pp. 1–16). New York: Routledge. Szanton, D. (Ed.). (2002). The Politics of Knowledge: Area Studies and the Disciplines. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Tlostanova, M. (2010). Gender Epistemologies and Eurasian Borderlands. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Urry, J. (2007). Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity Press. van Schendel, W. (2002). Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Jumping Scale in Southeast Asia. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 20(6), 647–668. Wagner, A., & Shahjahan, R. (2014). Centering Embodied Learning in AntiOppressive Pedagogy. Teaching in Higher Education, 20(3), 244–254. wa Thiong’o, N. (1986). Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: James Currey. wa Thiong’o, N. (1993). Moving the Center: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms. London: James Currey. Weisman, L. (1994). Discrimination by Design: A Feminist Critique of the Manmade Environment. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Wesley-Smith, T., & Goss, J. (Eds.). (2010). Remaking Area Studies: Teaching and Learning across Asia and the Pacific. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

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PART VI

Anticipating the Future of Area Studies

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Are Transregional Studies the Future of Area Studies? Matthias Middell

We are confronted with ongoing and as some would argue accelerated processes of respatialization on our planet. Faster communication and transportation reduce the tangible distance between world regions while the ways these regions are connected to each other intensify and multiply through all forms of mobility. This situation has raised both a growing interest in knowledge produced by Area Studies as well as doubt about the appropriateness of their conceptual frameworks. The notion of Transregional Studies gains popularity and either addresses connections between various areas—world regions—alone or analyses the more general trend of respatialization with a focus on the reconfiguration of world regions into a global spatial order. The aim of this chapter is to locate the discussion about Transregional Studies within the larger picture of the current debate (in Germany first, but with some side glances to other academic cultures as well) about the future of Area Studies. It quickly becomes evident that the rather rhetorical question at the beginning of this chapter cannot be answered with a yes or no but that Area Studies are, on the one hand, very much needed to develop Transregional Studies further and, on the other hand, Transregional Studies have a lot to offer in managing a renewed interest in Area Studies.

M. Middell (*) University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany © The Author(s) 2017 K. Mielke, A.-K. Hornidge (eds.), Area Studies at the Crossroads, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59834-9_16 [email protected]

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There is undoubtedly an ambivalence in the discourse on Area Studies. On the one hand, both insiders and outsiders are convinced that knowledge produced by Area Studies is becoming ever more important for orientation in an increasingly connected world. Over the past 20 years or so, research has focused, among other topics, on the mobility of people, goods, ideas, and capital, highlighting that the seemingly faraway becomes the surprisingly nearby. It is noteworthy that a wide range of funding initiatives have proclaimed this societal demand for up-to-date knowledge about other parts of the world as well as for the specific expertise only Area Studies can provide. This appeal is due to a centuries-long preoccupation with areas of focus within individual regional studies, the languages spoken in these regions and the cultural patterns characteristic of the areas under investigation (Houben 2013). On the other hand, there is a sense of crisis among representatives of Area Studies. They refer to massive budget cuts and criticisms addressing unfulfilled expectations (King 2015). In regard to the latter, Russian Studies were criticized for not having predicted the breakdown of the Soviet Union just as Oriental Studies were for not having delivered sufficient expertise to foresee the recent confrontation with radicalized Islamism. The new interest in global connectedness leads to another sort of critique that addresses the limitations that seem to be inherent in the project of Area Studies, that is to say, where the area is the defining factor for the understanding of its subject. This critique is based upon the observation that a growing number of mobilities—of capital, people, ideas, goods, and many other things—do not adhere to the clear-cut borders of an area but cross and transcend these borders. Consequently, the question has been raised if Area Studies are likely to become Global Studies. Notwithstanding this hypothetical proposal, the counterpoint is also valid that border-­crossing processes—including all shapes, sizes, and speeds— will not completely erase the regions defined by these borders. The spatial turn in the humanities and social sciences, which insists on the fact that the “areas” in Area Studies are historically constructed and therefore the ever-changing products of their times, has undermined at least a naive identification with the region under investigation. This ambivalence between perhaps over-optimistic expectations of the growing importance within societies that have to manage increasingly complex global processes and crises plays out in specific forms in the USA.  However, the debate there has a strong impact on discussions in other world regions and academic cultures even when conditions are quite

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different. Among these conditions that have distinct impacts are (a) the traditions of institutionalization, (b) the legacies of dominant paradigms both for the interpretation of worldwide regionalization (being the process that brings areas to the fore or made their construction necessary) and for the location of Area Studies within the wider spectrum of the humanities and social sciences, and (c) the relationship between academic knowledge production and the demand from various parts of society for this knowledge, including media, the educational sector and cultural brokers as well as military, secret services, the political class, and also the business sector. Studies on the history of Area Studies that have been undertaken over the past two decades demonstrate strong variations in the combination of these conditions. Russian vostokovedeniye (Eastern or Oriental Studies, which includes the study of Africa) (Marung 2013) was influenced over most of the twentieth century by other geopolitical considerations (Rupprecht 2010; Rupprecht 2015) and conceptual paradigms than French aires culturelles.1 The debate on Edward Said’s Orientalism came to the conclusion that German Orientalism is substantially different from the British or the French, and that its particular features have to do with experiences before and during high imperialism (Rabault-Feuerhahn 2008; App 2010; Eckert 2013). Moreover, the variations multiply when looking at the emergence of Area Studies outside Europe and the world of former settler colonies (Bajpaj 1997; Duara 2010; Hofmeyr & Dhupelia-­ Mesthrie 2007). All these new studies encourage seeing the history and current situation of Area Studies as being much less homogenous and in contrast much more related to the political, cultural, and economic contexts within which they are producing knowledge about other world regions. This does not neglect the particularly strong internationalization in Area Studies, in which scholars are often much more outward looking than in other disciplines while triangulating their results with the findings of scholars from the region itself and with those presented by their colleagues from other countries but interested in the same region, be it Africa or Southeast Asia. What is often an intellectual advantage—the transnational entanglements across academic communities—under certain conditions tends to turn into an obstacle when the situation of Area Studies in one world region is generalized or taken uncritically as a role model for further transformation. Area Studies are no longer the outward look of Westerners at non-European societies who are interested primarily in the explanation of different civilizational status or underdevelopment. Instead, they become

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a tool used in almost all societies around the world to negotiate their relationships with parts of the world that are no longer simply the “other” but the well connected, which in turn most often becomes incorporated in one way or another. To reduce Area Studies to the post-Second World War development in the USA, as is often done when Area Studies are called a product of the Cold War, significantly underestimates the above-mentioned variety of approaches, traditions, and institutional configurations.2 One may therefore ask why there is so much emphasis placed on the North American way of organizing Area Studies research. Hypothetically, we can formulate three assumptions that have as much to do with the situation outside the USA as in North America itself. Our first hypothesis has to do with the fascination, especially in the 1990s, with the idea of a new unilateral world order dominated not only politico-militarily and economically by the USA but also flanked by or based upon the world-leading role of research universities in the USA. During this time, it was understood that internationalization strategies gain more and more importance both for outgoing mobility as well as the attraction of foreign scholars and students while strategic connections made or at least facilitated by Area Studies came into focus. Compared to the very active role of Area Studies departments at many US universities in such strategic internationalization efforts, the contribution made by similar structures at European universities seemed to be limited if not marginal.3 The substantial funding Area Studies had received over the years in North America, notably from private foundations such as Rockefeller, Ford, or Carnegie, raised awareness while helping Area Studies scholars to confront funding agencies for further assistance. A second reason for the fascination with US-based concepts and practices Area Studies was related to a sort of self-criticism of rather philologically oriented regional studies, especially in Germany. What had been celebrated by many observers from outside Germany—that is to say, the strong editorial and hermeneutical tradition, such as that found in the emerging nuanced knowledge of classical texts in, for example, Sinology or Indology—came under fire not so much for its quality but for its occupation of resources, which should be used, according to the critics, for the investigation of more contemporary issues. US Area Studies here served either as a role model for the necessary focus “on the relevant” or as a sinful method for a perverse instrumentalization of the humanities for political purposes. Irrespective of whether the one or the other is true

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when it comes to North American Area Studies, the debate indicates that there was a controversy beneath the surface that it was easier to treat Area Studies in other academic communities as a straw man than to address it in the context that was meant. It is only very recently that the debate became more mature and now targets the relationship of the kind of Area Studies that may be able to provide more direct political advice (Braig and Costa 2013). The third element of a possible answer to the question where the fascination with North American Area Studies comes from has to do with the new narrative proposed by the theoretical framings in the 1990s. Both Marxism and classical modernization theory had fallen into a legitimacy crisis under the attack of post-structuralist criticism towards grand narratives already in the 1970s and into the 1980s, having failed repeatedly to make accurate predictions. Neither had the promised integration under the auspices of socialist brotherhood materialized, nor had the green revolution or the deregulation under the Washington Consensus avoided the deep economic and social crisis many countries of the third world were facing. Furthermore, the Asian tiger economies as well as the economic rise of China were not related to either concept. At this time, Area Studies also produced knowledge about the non-Western world; however, they were affected by the theoretical uncertainty as well as by the fact that it became increasingly difficult to frame the research findings in a convincing way. For those who claimed to produce more relevant knowledge, this lack of a convincing paradigm became particularly problematic. The new promise of a generally accepted paradigm on the horizon was therefore welcomed with special enthusiasm and sometimes in an uncritical manner. Globalization theory, even in its infant stage, gave Area Studies a new chance to frame its findings, which were inspired by so many disciplinary traditions (Steger 2009; Bach 2007). Undoubtedly, the discussion about what globalization is and what its explanatory power as a concept might be was much more advanced in the USA than in the rest of the world at the beginning of the 1990s (Beck et  al. 2003). The new fascination with theories or narratives placing globalization at the centre translated into a demand for a renewed relationship between Area Studies and systematic disciplines. The opposition between Area Studies and systematic disciplines in the social sciences and Cultural Studies can be criticized for various reasons but the persistence of this discursive figure is telling—it indicates in my reading, first and foremost, a search for a solution to the dilemma; that is to say, Area Studies have no proper tradition of theory

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building but trust in the products of others in order to “apply” them to their subjects. This was obviously not problematic at times when Area Studies borrowed their fundamental categories like civilization, culture, and society from history, sociology, or international relations. However, with the critical debates—inspired by research undertaken in Area Studies as well as in other disciplines—around these categories in post-colonial approaches, historicizing attempts, and self-reflexive social sciences, Area Studies also had to redefine their relationships to such terms that had been undisputed for decades. The use of US Area Studies as a yardstick for reform in European regional studies originated in different and often only loosely connected debates; nevertheless, they all went in the same direction: the reinvention of Area Studies after the Cold War to make them an instrument for orientation in a globalizing world. Traditions of investigating the non-Western world had to be revisited in order to identify useful tools for this purpose. New funding was needed and the political class as well as the taxpayer had to be convinced of this need. And a relocation of Area Studies within the knowledge order of disciplines and within the department structure of universities—or even more broadly within the national and transnational science systems—had to be found. In contrast to a couple of Anglophone countries, where for different reasons Area Studies seemed to suffer from diminishing attention and funding, German higher education policy “discovered” the importance of Area Studies at the beginning of the 2000s. An alarming report by the German Council for Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat) declared some of the regional studies to be endangered species, at risk of becoming the first victims of uncoordinated local cuts of tenured positions (Wissenschaftsrat 2006; Middell 2013). The Federal Ministry of Education and Research followed the advice of the council and initiated a funding scheme that supported both interdisciplinary centres at specific universities as well as scholarly networks across universities for a period of four to six years, with the expectation that afterwards the universities would further develop the established structures. While some of these centres and networks focus on a particular world region, others have mobilized scholars from various Area Studies and investigate cross-area connections4 or the “Global South” as a new unit of analysis. The Global South Studies Centre at the University of Cologne argues as following in favor of a shift in focus: Disciplines active in the Global South have often been hampered by an area-specific or narrow disciplinary approach which is not capable of

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tracing connections between continents, particularly not with a perspective on South–South relations. The Center seeks to overcome these multiple divides by focusing on processes of mobility and exchange and on the resulting translocal connectivities. The respective members of the Center do not conceptualize the Global South as defined by clear spatial boundaries but rather as an emergent topography of historically evolving and overlapping networks of exchange, of dominance and exclusion, and of identity ascriptions. In this vein they intend to contribute to the questioning of perceived geographies and to further an understanding of the making of global transitions, networks, inequalities and aspirations.5

With the graduate schools and research clusters funded since 2008 as part of the Excellence Initiative, which has pumped more than two billion euros into the German research system, Area Studies have become, for the time being, much better financed than they were a decade ago. Critics, however, insist on two points: the additional money that was devoted to concrete research projects only has so far not had very much of a structural effect on the institutional situation of Area Studies in Germany. It has attracted excellent young scholars who have contributed with their dissertations or books to a short-term boom, but it has not created tenured positions, thereby letting this new generation run into a trap or driving these scholars from the country and/or academia (Boatca 2012) in the quest to move on their careers. It is too early for a complete balance but the problem addressed by these critics is not specific to Area Studies but characteristic of a higher education system where tenured positions—and the teaching at universities—are paid from limited budgets at the level of the Länder, while research both at extra-university institutions and at universities are paid to an ever-increasing extent by federal bodies, either the ministries themselves or their agencies. The ambivalent effects of these distinct policies are felt more acutely the smaller the discipline or the institutional unit. Such effects may at the same time explain why German Area Studies representatives (besides a very pessimistic German worldview) are much less positive about their current situation than the received amounts of research money would suggest. What was expected by the Federal Ministry and the experts at the Wissenschaftsrat seems to be at least very difficult to achieve—the translation of initial funding into a permanent improvement of the structural situation of Area Studies at the various universities. It is true that the funding was given on a competitive basis and has not reached all Area Studies across the country. It has strengthened some

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places and necessarily weakened—at least comparatively—the others. This was an openly declared intention of the Federal Ministry: not to spread scarce resources over all possible places but to initiate a process of concentration. In the beginning, this process was meant as a sort of division of labour along the logics of traditional Area Studies: one centre for Chinese Studies, another one for Indian or African Studies, and so on. There are, however, two principal obstacles to such a strategy. Firstly, the German academic landscape is for historical reasons much more decentralized and multipolar than many others. In the short run, it is almost impossible to identify—without the risk of losing internationally well-known competences—the one centre that may become the national resource centre focusing on a particular region. The available funding was much too small and limited in its ambition to even seriously start such a process. It is therefore only consequent that the call for applications included not only the building of local centres but also cooperation across universities and regions—counterbalancing the logic of “winner takes all.” But secondly, it became quite clear right from the beginning of this process that an investigation of isolated cases or areas would not be innovative enough to convince the reviewers in the competition. Transregional connections as well as the recontextualization of areas in global processes received growing attention internationally as well as among German scholars. With globalization as a new framework of explanation in the humanities and social sciences, Area Studies became increasingly distant from a paradigm that was very important to them right from the beginning— the division of the world into regions one can for good reason analyze separately. To this end, this division allowed for a distinction to be made between civilization and wilderness—where the innocent savage attracted curiosity in the eighteenth century or became the object of a civilizing mission in the nineteenth—or between the imperial metropolis and colonies, and the resulting demarcation of a first and second world, on the one hand, and a third one, on the other. Area Studies had emerged and developed in a divided world and had contributed in fostering this division at least intellectually, and often also very practically through the training of colonial officers or foreign policy advice. These paradigms, however, became more and more criticized as a legacy that must be overcome by new approaches: the Third World was not as homogenous as imagined (in fact it never was but this only became more apparent with Asian Tigers, Chinese growth rates, new emerging economies, and disparate effects of

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global challenges), nor was Europe or the West as homogenous as imagined—with East Central Europe joining the European Union, new tensions between the North and the South in Europe, the reconfiguration of the US economy, and so on. Commodity and value chains connected the West and the rest at an ever-increasing pace with global outsourcing activities of companies and with new possibilities to speed up transportation and communication. The amount of capital facilitating the expansion of capitalism into regions not yet fully integrated into the world economy has multiplied dramatically while at the same time provoked crises that have made more and more people aware of the vulnerability of their own society to risks taken in faraway places. Although it is not clear if the proportion of migrants within the world’s population is dramatically rising as some conservatives in the West claim, the presence of the other has gained momentum—this is for certain—and has caused in some places panic over sovereignty among people who have begun to realize that the traditional forms of control over global flows are no longer effective. To summarize a process with many facets: the world is undergoing a dramatic process of respatialization and the old categories with which we described its spatial formats are no longer completely valid. It is not that the number of spatial formats has per se risen dramatically, but that the relationship between them has changed. The period until the late 1960s was characterized by a clear hierarchical order of spatial formats with the national on top of the pyramid and other categories subordinated below, for example, the local (the city or the village) within the nation-state or the international as the point where nation-states (or the representatives) meet. Even in the case of persisting imperial configurations, the focus was on the already existing nationalization of the metropolis and the ongoing, or planned, nation-building in the colonies. Under the dominance of the national, all other spatial formats were placed at lower or junior levels, marginal in a worldview that places emphasis on the teleology of the national. Areas in this context increasingly became containers of such national units and were imagined as being similarly characterized by clear-­ cut borders. The spatial turn in the humanities and social sciences has reflected since the 1970s growing doubts about neglecting the complexity of the spatial order, which gained more prominence with the increasing attention paid to global mobility and connections. The idea that spaces or spatial formats are the product of actions and perceptions by tangible actors is now widely accepted. However, the resulting spatial order—seen as the t­otality of all

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spatial formats and their interactions—cannot be attributed to a single group of actors but is rather the outcome of a confusing multitude of individual production processes and the power potentials of its actors. The fact that such spatial orders undergo a permanent historical change complicates the story further. Transregional mobility is not something new for our times. As new paleogenetic theories and findings demonstrate with even more rigour than traditional anthropology, in prehistoric times there were already strong ties between continents established by slow but substantial migration movements (Pääbo 2014). Transregional entanglements played a role as early as the emergence of modern humans. Written records contain an enormous amount of documents describing ways and consequences of interregional contacts and encounters. State-building from Rome to China was accompanied by reflections about the other, maintained over and over by experiences of confrontation across the borders of one’s own region or civilization (Mann 2012). The intense debate about the difference between civilization and wilderness that occupied so many authors since the late seventeenth century has emerged on that foundation. And the invention of areas as the basis for Area Studies is nothing more than another element in that long tradition of observations of the transregional (Vermeulen 2015). Notwithstanding, these transregional short-term encounters and long-term connections were framed in a spatial order whose dominant actors saw territoriality placed to an ever-growing extent at the centre (Elden 2013). Border-crossing was an element in this spatial order but never central to the understanding of the world within this framework. That has only changed very recently. This does not mean that territoriality has disappeared or that the announcement of the end of the nation-­ state has proven to be convincing (Ō mae 1995).6 On the contrary, as we saw during the recent financial crisis, the nation-state returned to a very important position—saving banks and entire economies with the nationally collected money of taxpayers. But new phenomena came to the fore in parallel with the persistence of strictly territorially bound spatial formats, such as commodity and value chains, enclaves, and special economic zones. The current debate about migrants makes more and more people aware how porous are the borders of nation-states, supranational entities, and areas. Not surprisingly, this is not welcomed by everyone and some populist parties receive support from those who panic about the loss of sovereignty. What is expressed by these parties and movements is a dream of a possible return to the old hierarchies of spatial formats, organized around the centrality of nations and nation-states. Their opponents—and

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interestingly enough they come from the right as well as from the left— insist on the impossibility of such a simple return. What is at stake is the loss of control over the spatial order and the search for new forms of such a control. The nation-state is not disappearing but “they are becoming just one form of governance among many.” (Khanna 2013, p. 5).7 But this invalidation of categories that were well established and used for a long time without any doubt about their suitability did not immediately result in a new theoretical framework. Conversely, vocabulary became fluid and new terms were coined often without references to other propositions: empire became a forceful metaphor but also led to the discovery of the afterlife of historical imperial configurations (Hardt & Negri 2002; Burbank & Cooper 2010). A new emphasis has been given to the local, and Saskia Sassen as well as other authors has introduced the idea of global cities being at the heart of the new social confrontation between the local and the global (Sassen 2001, 2006). At the same time, the debate on transnationalism is gaining momentum. It had several points of departure already at the beginning of the twentieth century and in the 1970s (Patel 2004a), and has transformed a number of disciplines: sociology analyzing transnational spaces populated by migrants; political science studying transnational civil society in connection with international relations and organizations; economics looking into the specific features of transnational companies; and history investigating the long roots of current transnationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Saunier 2013). Undeniably, there is a lot of progress in the empirical investigation of transnational phenomena (Iriye & Saunier 2009). The transnational became the most fashionable concept since it addresses the growing importance of such new spatial formats that are not limited to the national containers within which traditional social scientists imagined the essential processes of evolution occurring. In contrast, scholars of transnationalism start with the assumption that social change is more often caused by interaction between societies than by internal factors only. There is, however, a problem with transnational studies that focus only on the most recent developments as they often remain bound to the former spatial order and accept, ironically, the centrality of the nation-­state ex negativo. The only borders that are crossed by actors in their stories are those of national entities. The term transnational, therefore, has become quite popular. But historians may ask if it is only the borders of nation-states that become porous by increasing long-distance mobility and entanglements. They may even query when it historically makes sense to speak of transnationalism:

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Who speaks about transnationalism for these times [the Greek polis, China under the Tang dynasty, or Europe under the Carolingian kings] is either using an anachronistic fashion label or introduces by the back door an essentialist understanding of nation that the transnational perspective wants to avoid. (Patel 2004b, p. 634)

Indeed, one sometimes has the impression that transnational is synonymous with border transcending and therefore critics have rightly warned not to overstretch the use of the term. Achim von Oppen and Ulrike Freitag, for example, invite differentiation between translocal, transcultural, and transnational: Translocality as a research perspective […] aims at highlighting the fact that the interactions and connections between places, institutions, actors and concepts have far more diverse, and often even contradictory effects than commonly assumed […] [it] therefore proposes a more open and less linear view on the manifold ways in which the global world is ­constituted:  through the trans-gression of boundaries between spaces of  very different scale and type as well as through the (re-)creation of “local” distinctions between those spaces. (Freitag & von Oppen 2010, pp. 5–6)

The most recent dimension in that debate concerns the transregional. A debate has been started about the distinct character of connections between larger areas or world regions (Bentley et al. 2005). Scholars insist both on the newness of this approach and its roots in empirical research that has not yet used the term but has already utilized the perspective.8 At least the emergence of a term not yet commonly used indicates the dissatisfaction with the existing vocabulary describing the changing spatial order and the rearrangements of spatial formats. It hints at the need for a new terminology addressing a dimension of our perception in societal developments that may have existed already but was not consequently addressed with conceptualization. It is only now that the term transregional begins its “emancipation” from a rather unreflected use in daily life towards a more or less well-defined concept and becomes central to various academic projects. And it is true that we are right in the beginning of a serious debate on what transregional may mean in contrast to other terms describing spatial formats. While there is a lot to learn from the much more advanced discussion about how to approach the transnational, it is evident at the

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same time that there is more than a simple upscaling at stake when it comes to the transregional. In terms of methodology, Transregional Studies can build upon achievements made during the debate on transnationalism in many scholarly disciplines. The recent shift from the dominance of diffusionism to the study of reception and cultural appropriation applies to Transregional Studies as well as to studies transcending the borders of localities, culturally defined entities, empires, or nation-states. Since its inception, the study of cultural transfer or of histories croisées has developed a convincing complexity in which these achievements can be built upon by Transregional Studies (Espagne 2013). Nevertheless, we have to simultaneously be aware that the context— institutionally as well as epistemologically—is somehow different since Transregional Studies emerge in the environment of Area Studies and not primarily in the context of traditional methodological nationalism as was the case with transnational history, politics, or sociology. Area Studies have produced an enormous amount of knowledge about societies in their areas but they have not been very interested in the definition of areas themselves. For various reasons, most of them pragmatic in nature, scholars in Area Studies have most often taken the areas for granted and have not asked who has defined them or when and why. This has begun to change recently.9 A separate methodological reflection is therefore necessary to make Transregional Studies more than just an ambitious programme. These differences have to do with the particular way the regional—or the area—has been constructed. In contrast to the national, there are other important factors when it comes to the invention of areas, which have happened at others times and at other rhythms than the invention of nations.10 The regional is not directly related to the emergence of statehood but the recent debate on “new regionalism” insists on its ongoing institutionalization in forms of international organizations that have regional/continental scope (Söderbaum & Shaw 2005). Another focus in Transregional Studies is on both commodity and value chains, on the one hand, and migratory systems on the other, all crossing the borders of continents or larger historical world regions. It is about a specific selection from all the possible and observable mobilities of people and foods. Most of these mobilities have probably so far been happening within a certain region; notwithstanding, only when analytically isolating them from the larger bulk of border-crossing activities may we gain an understanding of their weight within global processes—often assumed as being central to the understanding of globalization but neither empirically

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nor conceptually clearly separated from all the other “trans”-processes in economy and social life. Last but not least there is also the cultural sphere, which is full of trans­ regional circulations of patterns and ideas. But also the institutional side of transregional cultural phenomena has found its way into research on music, film, literature, higher education, language policies, law, and even the reformulation of concepts of heritage. The list can easily be extended but my aim in this short chapter is not to give an exhaustive list of all possible subjects and topics of Transregional Studies. What I am intending to demonstrate here is the vast territory of knowledge to be discovered by scholars subscribing to the agenda of Transregional Studies. To conclude, we can say that this kind of perspective has to and will surely renew the relationship between Area Studies and macro-interpretations as developed in Global Studies, Global History, or interpretations of global processes within the social sciences. What makes the perspective of Transregional Studies unique is not primarily the border-transcending aspect in the histories and current developments of various area or world regions. Rather, it is the new analytical framework of the respatialization of the world that allows us to better understand that all spatial formats—including world regions—are products of historical processes of construction by concrete actors at concrete times with concrete aims and goals, intentions, and perceptions of their actions. Transregional Studies therefore look into the fabrication of such regions in processes of mutual constituency. World regions neither have an eternal life nor have they only been the product of internal processes. Terms like the “Near” or “Far East” as well as the “West” already indicate the directionality of this mutual constituency, and authors like Prasenjit Duara have convincingly argued that there would not be any “Asia” without the manifold internal and external actors contributing to its invention. This happens not only at the level of ideas and imaginations but also comes as the product of, often brutal, interventions and of material processes of production and consumption. While other dimensions of these processes of respatialization could be mentioned, the overall argument is hopefully clear on what Transregional Studies are about. Transregional Studies are therefore not replacing Area Studies but adding urgent and necessary new perspectives, subjects, and eventually also new methodological approaches such as the investigation of transnational or transregional political movements or the modification of cultural transfer approaches for application in a transregional setting. As

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a result, Area Studies are being brought into closer contact with each other as well as with Global History, Migration Studies, globally comparative Urban Studies, and other offshoots from traditional humanities and social sciences reacting to the same challenge of studying entanglements. My guess is that such a transregional perspective will give Area Studies the possibility to enter into dialogue in new ways with the systematic disciplines. Since it historicizes itself by deconstructing the region-making that was at the origin of Area Studies, it will not reduce this repositioning to the social sciences but will come into new contact with history as well. Transregional Studies break with one tradition that has characterized Area Studies so far: the separation from those disciplines devoted primarily to the analysis of the West and its societies and politics in contrast to Area Studies dealing with the non-Western other. The transregional approach can become the precondition for a new position in today’s knowledge production about the world—no longer marginalized as the explanation of the underdeveloped or in the worst case the uncivilized, but becoming central for the understanding of our own global projects as well as of those run by others and for the explanation of inequality resulting from the competition between these projects (Braig et al. 2013). Transregional Studies are not to be classified as minor disciplines (Kleine Fächer) to be protected like endangered species; rather they are something more and become central to the knowledge production of our times and thus should probably be institutionalized in other ways than the classical institute with one chair and a few (or many more as is the case for mass universities) students. It is not by accident that universities around the world experiment with new forms such as research centres and clusters, transnational consortia, and the like, to give Transregional Studies the appropriate institutional setting. The process addressed here is already underway: Transregional Studies are neither a totally new thing nor are they already completely established as a paradigm or a discipline. Quite the contrary, Transregional Studies have long traces back to the study of cultural encounters, becoming more prominent at least since the eighteenth century, and they are nowadays institutionalized in very different ways as part of Area Studies or in separate research centres and departments. The rising number of research projects, study programs, designation of chairs at universities, blogs, journals, and monographs using the term transregional is encouraging for the conclusion that over the past five years this process has speeded up.

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Notes 1. After some hesitation in the 1990s towards the notion of globalization there is now a lively debate in France that goes far beyond the celebration of the Braudelian heritage: see, for example, publications by Serge Gruzinski, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Romain Bertrand and many others, or the blog TRACES.  Théoriser la Recherche en Aires Culturelles/Tendances dans la Recherche par Aires Culturelles: Evolutions et Stratégies (http://trac.hypotheses.org/768). 2. By the way, the initial critical assessment of Area Studies in the USA also demonstrates much more variety than often perceived from far away: Szanton, D., ed., (2004). Politics of Knowledge. Area Studies and the Disciplines. Berkeley: University of California Press; Engerman, D. (2011). Know your enemy. The rise and fall of America’s Soviet experts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. On the role of the famous Title VI programme, see (now based on archival research) Loschke, T. (2015). Area Studies Revisited. Die Geschichte der Lateinamerikastudien in den USA und die Rolle der Wissenschaftsförderung, 1940 bis 1970. PhD. Universität Leipzig. 3. Not to speak of the parallel endeavour undertaken in the Soviet Union to order the world along its own political priorities and establish an educational offer to people from Africa, Asia, and Latin America: Saint Martin, M. de, Scarfò Ghellab, G. and Mellakh, K., eds, (2015). Etudier a l'Est. Experiences de diplomés africains. Paris: Editions Karthala. 4. The Centre for Area Studies at Leipzig University was the first focusing in transregional connections (http://cas.sozphil.uni-­ leipzig.de) but others soon followed. See the member list of the professional organization Cross-Area e. V. at www.crossarea.org. 5. http://gssc.uni-koeln.de/node/3 6. Speaking for the spirit of the times the essay by the French scholar Jean-Marie Guéhenno, “La fin de la démocratie,” Paris 1995, translated into English as “The End of the Nation-state,” Lincoln 2000. 7. Commenting on the United States National Intelligence Council report 2013 entitled “Alternative Worlds” (Available at: http:// www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/opinion/sunday/the-end-of-­ the-nation-state.html)

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8. This can be read as the consensus among the participants in a conversation on the blog of the Forum Transregionale Studien (Sebastian Conrad, Monica Juneja, Matthias Middell, Madeleine Herren-Oesch, Thomas Maissen); see, for example, Mittler, B. (2015). All Things Transregional? Available at: http://trafo. hypotheses.org/3146 [Accessed 11 Nov. 2015]: “Not unlike Monica Juneja and Sebastian Conrad, I had for a long time worked on things transregional but never consciously paid attention to the fact.” 9. As a good and at the same time specific example, Asia may be mentioned, which was never an object of a consensus held by the people living in the area and therefore was necessarily dismantled in Area Studies like East, Southeast, South, Central and West Asian Studies with Russian Studies as another piece to the puzzle. Duara, P. (2010). Asia Redux: Conceptualizing a Region for Our Times. Journal of Asian Studies, 69(4), 963–983. 10. While the classical theory building on the invented nation by Anderson, Gellner, Hobsbawm, and so on has resulted in a remarkably rich literature investigating individual cases and comparing them, there are only a few works on the emergence of Area Studies (but not a full history of the invention of the underlying areas). See, for example, Szanton, D. (Ed.). (2008). Politics of Knowledge. Area Studies and the Disciplines. Berkeley: University of California Press; Engerman, D. (2011). Know Your Enemy. The Rise and Fall of America’s Soviet Experts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Concerning the invention of areas, we can rely on critical geographers’ contributions such as, for example, Martin W. Lewis, M. & Wigen, K. (1997). The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography. Berkeley: University of California Press; Günzel, S. (Ed.). (2006). Raumwissenschaften. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp; Grataloup, C. (2009). L'invention des continents. Comment l’Europe a découpé le Monde. Paris: Larousse; Crampton, J. (2010). Mapping: A Critical Introduction to Cartography and GIS. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

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Bibliography App, U. (2010). The Birth of Orientalism. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press. Bach, O. (2007). Die Erfindung der Globalisierung. Untersuchungen zu Entstehung und Wandel eines zeitgeschichtlichen Grundbegriffs. PhD. Universität St. Gallen. Bajpaj, K. (1997). International Studies in India: Bringing Theory (Back) Home. In M. Rajan (Ed.), International and Area Studies in India (pp. 31–49). New Delhi: Lancers Books. Beck, U., Sznaider, N., & Winter, R. (Eds.). (2003). Globales Amerika? Die kulturellen Folgen der Globalisierung. Bielefeld: transcript. Bentley, J., Bridenthal, R., & Yang, A. (Eds.). (2005). Interactions. Transregional Perspectives on World History. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʼi Press. Boatca, M. (2012). Catching Up with the (New) West: The German “Excellence Initiative,” Area Studies, and the Re-Production of Inequality. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, 10(1), 17–30. Braig, M., & Costa, S. (2013). Das Ende der Biederkeit. Welche Regionalforschung braucht die außenpolitische Beratung? Internationale Politik, 68(2), 108–111. Braig, M., Costa, S., & Göbel, B. (2013). Soziale Ungleichheiten und globale Interdependenzen in Lateinamerika. desiguALdades.net Working Paper Series 4, Berlin. Burbank, J., & Cooper, F. (2010). Empires in World History. Power and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Duara, P. (2010). Asia Redux: Conceptualizing a Region for Our Times. Journal of Asian Studies, 69(4), 963–983. Eckert, A. (2013). Area Studies and the Writing of Non-European History in Europe. In M. Middell & L. Roura (Eds.), Transnational Challenges to National History Writing (pp. 140–163). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Elden, S. (2013). The Birth of Territory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Espagne, M. (2013). Comparison and Transfer: A Question of Method. In M. Middell & L. Roura (Eds.), Transnational Challenges to National History Writing (pp. 36–53). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Freitag, U., & von Oppen, A. (2010). “Translocality”: An Approach to Connection and Transfer in Area Studies. In U. Freitag & A. von Oppen (Eds.), Translocality. The Study of Globalising Processes from a Southern Perspective (pp. 1–24). Leiden: Brill. Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2002). Empire. Die neue Weltordnung. Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Hofmeyr, I., & Dhupelia-Mesthrie, U. (2007). South Africa/India: Re-Imagining the Disciplines. South African Historical Journal, 57(1), 1–11. Houben, V. (2013). The New Area Studies and Southeast Asian History. DORISEA Working Paper 4, Göttingen. Iriye, A., & Saunier, P.-Y. (2009). The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Khanna, P. (2013, October 13). The End of the Nation-State? The New York Times, p. SR5. King, C. (2015). The Decline of International Studies. Why Flying Blind Is Dangerous. Foreign Affairs, 94(4), 88–98. Mann, M. (2012). The Sources of Social Power: Globalizations, 1945–2011. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marung, S. (2013). Peculiar Encounters with the “Black Continent”: Soviet Africanists in the Global 1960s and the Expansion of the Discipline. In M. Middell (Ed.), Self-Reflexive Area Studies (pp. 103–134). Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag. Middell, M. (2013). Area Studies under the Global Condition. Debates on Where to Go with Regional or Area Studies in Germany. In M. Middell (Ed.), SelfReflexive Area Studies (pp. 7–57). Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag. Ō mae, K. (1995). The End of the Nation State. The Rise of Regional Economies. New York: Simon and Schuster. Pääbo, S. (2014). Neanderthal Man: Search of Lost Genomes. New York: Basic Books. Patel, K. (2004a, January 12). Nach der Nationalfixiertheit. Perspektiven einer transnationalen Geschichte [Inaugural Lecture]. Berlin: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Patel, K. (2004b). Überlegungen zu einer transnationalen Geschichte. Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 52(7), 626–645. Rabault-Feuerhahn, P. (2008). L’archive des origines. Sanskrit, philologie, anthropologie dans l’Allemagne du XIXe siècle. Paris: Les éditions du Cerf. Rupprecht, T. (2010). Die Sowjetunion und die Welt im Kalten Krieg: Neue Forschungsperspektiven auf eine vermeintlich hermetisch abgeschottete Gesellschaft. Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 58(3), 381–399. Rupprecht, T. (2015). Soviet Internationalism after Stalin. Interaction and Exchange between the USSR and Latin America during the Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sassen, S. (2001). The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sassen, S. (2006). Territoriy, Authority, Rights. From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Saunier, P.-Y. (2013). Transnational History. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Söderbaum, F., & Shaw, T. (Eds.). (2005). Theories of New Regionalism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Steger, M. (2009). The Rise of the Global Imaginary. Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the Global War on Terror. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vermeulen, H. (2015). Before Boas. The Genesis of Ethnography and Ethnology in the German Enlightenment. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Wissenschaftsrat. (2006). Empfehlungen zu den Regionalstudien (area studies) in den Hochschulen und außeruniversitären Forschungseinrichtungen. Mainz: Wissenschaftsrat.

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Reflecting the Moving Target of Asia Heike Holbig

When encountering each other in debates about the past, present and future of Area Studies,1 representatives from the social sciences and Cultural Studies continue to exhibit reservations and sensitivities, despite declaratory promises of and institutional incentives for interdisciplinary collaboration. This is particularly so with regard to research on Asia, where interdisciplinarity is often simply paid lip service. In this chapter, I posit that Area Studies can be developed in productive ways if we take interdisciplinarity as a serious opportunity for future collaboration between social sciences and Cultural Studies by starting from a common understanding of region not as static, territorially rooted units, but as dynamic, culturally constructed concepts. The understanding of regions as ongoing processes of culturally constructed social relations is based on the epistemological assumption that social reality is not analyzable in itself, but only in terms of its linguistic representation, and that social and political phenomena are always culturally constituted (Bachmann-Medick 2010). Correspondingly, these constructions are not inevitably anchored in territory; rather, geographical connotations are accompanied by cultural, civilizational, political, moral, and other attributions, and are often overshadowed by them (Lewis & Wigen 1997, p. 166). Like other communicative constructs, regions are also subject to open processes of negotiation and interaction between

H. Holbig (*) Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany © The Author(s) 2017 K. Mielke, A.-K. Hornidge (eds.), Area Studies at the Crossroads, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59834-9_17 [email protected]

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individuals and groups from cultures within them and outside of them. Frequently, various, and sometimes conflicting or competing, concepts coexist (Acharya 2010). Thus, regions themselves are not a research object. Rather, the construction of regional concepts has to be questioned repeatedly in the light of new theoretical approaches advanced by social sciences and Cultural Studies as well as in the light of the respective thematic selections and research designs (Huotari & Rüland 2014). There are thus no right or wrong solutions in the development of new concepts for studying regions in the academic field of regional research. Rather, the aim can only be to develop, taking into account the dynamics, the plasticity—the amorphous and malleable character—and the plurality of cultural constructs, a definition of region which is as productive as possible (Puhle in press). Using (East and Southeast) Asia as an example, this chapter argues that this process is subject to contrary movements of dissolution of old and drawing of new boundaries, of de- and reterritorialization, of entanglements and entrenchments. These movements should be examined as issues of equal empirical rank, and their mutual dynamics assessed. On the basis of these assumptions so far, the following discussion illustrates the plasticity of regions as the communicative constructs of social relationships, using the example of the region Asia and its malleable variations—East Asia, South East Asia, or Asia-Pacific. Clear-cut definitions of the relevant regions are intentionally not used, because, as is demonstrated below, any demarcations are themselves subject to dynamic changes. Instead, several approaches for the description and classification of regions are distinguished. In the real world of imaginary spatial layouts these can often exist parallel to and interact with each other. Thus, a distinction between essentialist, institutionalist/interactionist and reflectivist approaches can be drawn (Godehardt & Nabers 2011), by means of which the dynamic nature as well as the plasticity of several coexisting conceptions of Asian region(s) becomes visible.

Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Asia-Pacific: Attempts to Track a Moving Target Essentialism Essentialist approaches focus on a spatial perspective, according to which the criterion of geographic adjacency is combined with the attribution of shared historical experiences and/or shared cultural features. As recent

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publications have impressively confirmed, Asia and its sub-regions have, since the earliest use of the term in Greek literature some 2,500 years ago, not only been subject to significant geographical shifts on the map of the world but have also been subject to strongly varied civilizational and political attributions. Initially, Asia denoted the territory inhabited by Greeks east of the Aegean Sea—that is, the northwestern part of contemporary Turkey. In subsequent centuries it increasingly and gradually expanded to the southeast and the northwest to include the Levant and the Bering Strait. In 1730, Asia received its first clearly pejorative civilizational connotation: Against the background of the dominant Enlightenment narratives, Europe—including Russia under Peter I, the “Great”—was deemed the epitome of progress. Asia, in contrast, was then termed the vast territory “beyond the Ural” and was seen as the stronghold of backwardness, roamed by nomads or oppressed by “despotic” rulers who kept their subjects in ignorance and lethargy. Except for a phase of European fascination with the exotic Orient (historians’ terminological equivalent for the geographical “Asia”) in the nineteenth century, which was primarily directed at India and China, Asia, or the Orient was, in the course of the imperialist expansion of European powers, deemed a backward, “dormant,” or “weak” region, with China as the proverbial “sick man of Asia.” These characterizations seemed to be reinforced by the recurrent military defeats that Asian states suffered in conflicts with European colonial powers (Lewis & Wigen 1997; Korhonen 2012; Wagner 2011). If these geographical, civilizational and political characterizations were almost exclusively external attributions, the period around the beginning of the twentieth century saw the first politically connoted self-descriptions in the Asian region as a reaction to colonial supremacy. As Amitav Acharya has reminded us, in the early twentieth century cosmopolitan intellectuals such as the Rabindranath Tagore, Liang Qichao or José Rizal invoked a universalist idea of Asia, which in addition to India, China, Japan, and the Philippines also included Vietnam, other Southeast Asian states, and Persia (Duara 2010). Based on shared spiritual values and civilizational achievements among equals, this idea fluctuated between the decisive rejection of nation-state confines and the hope of improved chances of achieving national independence through regional solidarity. In the late 1930s and 1940s, the idea of a pan-Asian community was ultimately usurped by Japan’s imperialist endeavors. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere comprised—in addition to Japan and the Japanese-occupied territories in Korea, Taiwan, and Sakhalin—China, Manchuria, French-Indochina, and

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Indonesia. Even though the construction of a “Greater East Asia” derived its legitimacy from the spiritual and cultural claims of the pan-Asian idea, it also represented a clearly hegemonic relationship consisting of the political and civilizational subordination of the participating territories to imperial Japan (Acharya 2010; cf. Karl 1998). The end of World War II redrew the geographical and political map of Asia, which then dissolved into more or less stable national units that were fighting for the end of colonial rule and national independence, or that were proactively seeking to demarcate themselves from each other pursuant to the global logic of ideological blocks. With the separation of the Middle East based on security concerns—a region that rapidly gained significance in the diplomatic vocabulary, particularly that of the USA—what remained of Asia was only the relatively isolated sub-regions of South Asia, (North)East Asia, and Southeast Asia. The frequently invoked spirit of the Bandung Conference of 1955, which was intended to strengthen the voice of the nonaligned states against the superpowers, came to nothing after a few years due to dominant and conflicting nationalisms (cf. Korhonen 2012). The economic success of various Asian states and the increasing economic interaction within Asia as of the 1960s created incentives for the rediscovery of commonalities and shared values in East Asia and Southeast Asia and served as a template for various attempts at regional integration, in which, however, the sub-regions remained dominant. In particular, China’s rapid economic ascent, which started in the early 1990s, increased the appeal and the symbolic capital of belonging to (East) Asia—to the same extent which, within the Western perception, scenarios of the West’s own decline accumulated and the talk of a Rising Asia, and an “Asian” or “Pacific twenty-first century,” became more frequent. Essentialist and homogenizing attributions such as an “East Asian development model,” “Asian capitalism,” or “East Asia’s Confucian political culture,” as invoked recently by none other than Francis Fukuyama (2011), have increased in quantity and public resonance with the region’s growing economic and political weight at the global level. Parallel to the increasing symbolic capital of belonging to (East) Asia, the region is also growing geographically, with the USA and Russia having become formal members of some of its regional organizations (see below). As this most recent expansion of (East) Asia confirms, the region continues today to be reconstituted through the interplay of geographic, political, cultural, and other essentialist attributions.

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Institutionalism and Interactionism Two other approaches use a functional logic to delineate regions. According to Godehardt and Nabers, the institutionalist approach describes regions according to institutional processes of regional integration, based on the assumption that international institutions are voluntarily created by states in order to counter collective action issues as well as high transformation and information costs, and so on. In a more dynamic version, interactionist descriptions of regions are based on the relative density of interaction and cooperation between states (or more generally between political, economic, or social communities), assuming that in the course of increasing economic interaction density, security cooperation, and other communication, collective processes of trust, identification, and learning emerge and, in turn, shape the further conduct of the actors (Godehardt & Nabers 2011). As the example of the Asian region demonstrates, institutionalist and interactionist trajectories of regional descriptions are substantially influenced by historical caesura such as the end of the Cold War or financial crises. From an institutionalist perspective, the landscape of regional and international organizations in and around Asia since World War II has been shaped by tensions between a more geographically-culturally conceived “East (and Southeast) Asian” logic and an “Asian-Pacific” logic of economic interdependence. On the one hand, conceptions of “East (and Southeast) Asia” have developed from the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), established in 1967, which has served as a nucleus of other regional organizations. In the late 1990s, it was extended to an ASEAN+3 format, including China, Japan, and Korea, with a view to collectively handling the “Asian financial crisis.” However, geopolitical tensions between the Southeast Asian States, Japan, and China continue to dominate the organization. The insistence on nation-state sovereignty and the principle of nonintervention in internal affairs remains the ­business foundation for all its activities, so that any institutional deepening, with a concentration of supranational competencies, remains unlikely in the foreseeable future (Acharya 2010; Korhonen 2012). On the other hand, several organizational platforms for the creation of a “Pacific” community, such as the Pacific Basin Economic Council (1967) or the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (1980) developed parallel to the Southeast Asian initiative. Despite the skepticism of Southeast Asian states, this “Pacific idea” was ultimately expanded to an

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“Asian-Pacific” idea in order to overcome this conflict, and with a view to including China as a foreseeable economic heavyweight in the region. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), founded in 1989 as an intergovernmental organization, now includes 21 members (among them not only the North American countries, Australia and New Zealand, but also Chile, Peru, and Russia) and has the constructive development of economic interdependence at its center (Acharya 2010). In the meantime, the “East and Southeast Asian” logic and the “Asian-Pacific” logic seem to have been merging into one. It remains to be seen whether the East Asia Summit, which was founded in 2005 to expand the ASEAN+3 to ASEAN+6 by including India, Australia, and New Zealand, and which, since 2011, now also includes the USA and Russia as members, can be filled with life in the long run. From an interactionist perspective, numerous reinterpretations of Asia were characterized by a diverse pre-colonial history of mutual economic, social, and cultural interactions, overlaid with, rather than replaced by, the transregional trade and ideational flows of the colonial era (Duara 2010). The post-war period saw a steady and rapid increase in economic interaction, particularly since the 1970s and 1980s, when approximately a third of the trade volume of the Asian economies took place within Asia. Since then, the trade volume of Asian economies taking place within Asia has risen to over 50 % (Asian Development Bank 2008). The so-called “Asian Crisis” of 1997/98 not only provided a historical occasion for significantly increased institutional efforts towards regional integration, but can also be deemed a symbolic trigger for a strengthened sense of solidarity among Asian states. In addition to the increasingly dense economic interaction, cultural and social interaction has substantially increased since the 1990s. The transnational consumption of films, TV series, pop music, Manga comics, and other products of popular culture produced in Asia has grown substantially (Duara 2010; Heryanto 2013). Furthermore, the tremendous mobility of professional, predominantly Western-educated elites of Indian, Chinese, or Southeast Asian descent who migrate between the metropolitan centers of Asia and other world regions, has been described as a new phenomenon. According to Duara, these “extraterritorial” metropolitan centers were created and shaped by a “set of global and intra-Asian flows of labour, capital, and knowledge” (Duara 2010, p. 978). In this vein, he paints a rather optimistic scenario of Asia’s future:

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Region formation in Asia is a multipath, uneven, and pluralistic development that is significantly different from European regionalism. Moreover, the region has no external limits or territorial boundaries and does not seek to homogenize itself within. Individual nations, economic, regulatory, cultural entities, and non-governmental organizations have multiple links beyond the core, and when a country beyond the core arrives at the threshold of a sufficiently dense set of interactions and dependencies with it, it may [be] brought within the region’s framework of governance. (Duara 2010, p. 981)

As this quote suggests, “Asia” is being designed as an alternative to models of nationalistic entrenchment and regional exclusion. As a conscious contrast to a self-contained, inward-looking European regionalism, Duara invokes a redux version of a cosmopolitan Asia that is, without any external territorial borders and without any internal homogenization pressure, predestined to expand across the globe in the long run. Reflectivism Approaches for the description of regions can be described as “reflectivist” if they ask how and according to which criteria regions are intersubjectively constructed, who is included or excluded by these constructions, and how dominant interpretation patterns prevail or compete with each other. This approach rests on the assumption that regional identities are transformed by social interaction due to the fact that intersubjective meanings change in the course of ongoing cooperation and communication. In the dynamic interplay between self-attributions and external attributions, regional attributions are consistently renegotiated and reinvented. From this constructivist perspective, identity becomes a completely relational concept, and region becomes a communicative construct: a fabric of socially divided bodies of knowledge and intersubjective meanings underlying collective norms, rules, and institutions. As such, the concept of region is never fixed or absolute, but the object of an ongoing framing process in which the participating actors compete for the prerogative to interpret, demarcate, and decide who is a part or not part of the imagined community. “Regions are what actors make of them” (Godehardt & Nabers 2011, p. 9). Such construction processes for regions as imagined communities vary depending on the respective “region builders”—social actors, scientists, political representatives of individual states, and so on— who are sometimes pursuing specific political projects (Neumann 2003).

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Whereas the first three approaches have a primarily ontological character—that is, they focus on varying basic structures for the description of reality—the reflectivist approach also has considerable epistemological implications, because it asks how these descriptions of reality come into being. Essentialist attributions of a geographical, political, or civilizational nature are not taken at face value, but as specific offers for interpretation and identification in the open and ongoing negotiation of intersubjective meanings and the competition between self-attributions and external attributions. Attributions or frames can be deemed relatively influential when they are propagated by dominant actors and when, through their connection to historical narratives, traditional knowledge, or other cultural resources, they achieve elevated resonance. Essentialist and homogenizing attributions go hand in hand with mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion as well as hegemonic conflicts in the discursive sphere, as the example of the Indian state aptly illustrates, which has been framing itself as a Hindu cultural sphere at the expense of Afghanistan and Myanmar (Singh 2001). The reflectivist approach described here not only shifts essentialist approaches into a new, constructivist perspective but also transcends the previously discussed institutionalist and interactionist approaches. The interests and identities behind the interactions among the participating actors are not taken for granted, but are introduced as products of social negotiations and cultural interpretations. Interests and identities are not seen as quasi-objectifiable entities, but as relational, socially constructed categories that are subject to permanent shifts over the course of time. The plasticity of the initially “Pacific” and subsequently “Asian-Pacific” idea, described above, may serve as an example here. If the ongoing inclusion of new “members” in an institution fundamentally changes the perception and the implementation capacity of the interests involved, then the symbolic weight and the attractiveness of membership in the institution will also increase, with potentially significant geopolitical consequences: while the USA is becoming increasingly visible on the horizon as an “Asian power to be,” Europe is ultimately becoming peripheral, a territory off the map. The acronym BRIC, which was coined by Goldman Sachs in 2001 to describe the emerging economies Brazil, Russia, India, and China (O’Neill 2001), is a further example. In 2010, through the inclusion of South Africa, it was expanded to BRICS and, alternatively, with the addition of (South) Korea, to BRICK.  With the addition of Indonesia it became BRIICS, and finally, with the ASEAN states and Mexico, BRICSAM. These states have not only appropriated these constructions

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as an element of their self-perception, but have also partially used them as a template for the institutionalization of new transregional economic and political cooperation networks that challenge conventional regional affiliations. At first glance, this reflectivist approach may seem somewhat out of touch. However, it may be essential for those researchers in Area Studies who wish to take the insights of the cultural turn(s) seriously. As described above, the transnational turn, the post-colonial turn, and, in particular, the spatial turn conceive of regions and regional identities as malleable cultural constructs. At the same time, Area Studies is made able to draw upon social science approaches that take seriously the significance of language, of historical narratives, of culture as an intersubjective process of interpretation, and of discourses as the setting for competition over the prerogative of interpretation. This reflective concept certainly does not need to be made explicit in each and every research topic and analytical design. However, as a shared and fundamental epistemological stance of interdisciplinary collaboration, which appears to be constitutive for Area Studies, it is likely that it would be difficult to revert to what preceded it. If regions are “what actors make of them,” and if we acknowledge the plasticity of the ongoing cultural (re)construction of regions and sub-­ regions, then it is not the task of Area Studies to replicate or teleologically anticipate these processes, but to sensitively and flexibly reconstruct them. The previous discussion illustrates that there can be no naturalist, fixed, right or wrong definition of the region examined from the perspective of Area Studies. Rather, the aim can only be to formulate a reflective, relational (on the basis of the selected thematic focus and research question), and productive definition of the region and its sub-regions. Accordingly, it may make sense in the Asian context to place the three Northeast Asian states Japan, Korea, and China in a research context that examines the development of “entangled modernities” (Randeria 1999; cf. Werner & Zimmermann 2006) as a result of the translation, appropriation, and transformation of Western concepts, ideas, and theories since the late nineteenth century, and their implications for conceptions of modernity in contemporary East Asian societies. A focus on the Southeast Asian sub-region seems appropriate when, for example, ethnic or religious identity processes are the research interest. The delineation of the research region according to the institutional format ASEAN+3 or ASEAN+6 and its most recent additions, on the other hand, appears to be useful in assessing the surmounting of the financial crisis at the end of the 1990s or the

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most recent global financial crisis, which have not only had political and economic consequences but have also, as outlined above, impacted the self-perception of national and regional identities, solidarities, and interests. In the context of globalization, transregional and transcontinental interactions that require the transcension of the regional context will also increasingly come into view. Here, the macroperspective on cross-sectional topics of global economic and political relevance may be equally as productive as the microperspective on the interactions of migrants, floating educated elites, cultural products, academic discourses, governance concepts, and so on, within Asia or between Asian, African, Latin American, and other societies. However, in the most recent debates about the present and the future of Area Studies, there appears to be an increasing bias towards the transcension of regional contexts as an end in itself. Essentialist, culturalist approaches are deemed to be worthy of critique, as is the focus on nation-­ states, and particularly on “the state” as the central actor within hierarchical spatial orders. Instead, transnational or transregional research designs that approach cross-sectional topics comparatively or investigate processes of cultural, social, economic, and political interaction beyond conventional national or regional units have become increasingly popular and have, for several years, been rewarded with research funding. Given the progress of globalization and its inherent processes of border dissolution and deterritorialization, and given the significantly increased density of global interaction off the beaten track of economic and political relations between nation-states, economies, and national societies or cultures, this trend does indeed seem timely and adequate. Reflexive Essentialism In light of the increasing trend towards the transcension of regional contexts, however, we should also be conscious of the fact that reverse movements that are equally characteristic of the ongoing process of globalization can easily be analytically sidelined. The idea of a dialectical interplay of deand reterritorialization is by no means new. As early as 1995, Benjamin Barber described, in his book Jihad vs. McWorld, the simultaneous development of “globalism” and “tribalism”—traditional values, nationalism, religious orthodoxy, and so on, with a local or regional element—as an outcome of ongoing globalization (Barber 1995). Matthias Middell and Katja Naumann described a similar dialectic, from the perspective of a

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global history, that is equally dedicated to the flows (migration, the transfer of capital, goods and ideas, and so on) as to the attempts of political and economic actors to control these flows and interactions in order to maintain or regain their sovereignty and autonomy under the conditions of globalization. These reterritorialization and flow-control actors can be national or sub-national units such as urban metropolises or supranational structures such as intergovernmental organizations, regions, transnational networks, or multinational companies that regulate global value chains in their own favor (Middell & Naumann 2010; Middell 2013). A closer analysis of such reterritorialization trends frequently reveals a surprising phenomenon: in their efforts to maintain their room to maneuver under the conditions of globalization, the actors often do not create new sovereignty frames but instead resort to precisely those essentializations that have, as a consequence of the post-colonial turn and the spatial turn, long been deemed analytically obsolete and thus normatively scorned. Therefore, in a certain historical irony, one could say, the traditional container concepts of the European long nineteenth century, such as nation, society, culture, identity, and such like, are reproducing themselves in a non-European context and thus to some extent perpetuating a long twentieth century of reissued nation-state imaginations and an exaggerated insistence on sovereignty, within which the European twenty-first century often seems like an anachronistic element. If we take seriously the epistemological turn of a relational concept of space and describe regions as processes of culturally constructed social relations in a dynamic interplay between self-attributions and external attributions, then it seems imperative to analyze not only the transcension of regional contexts but also such re-essentialization through the back door. If we want to do j­ustice to the dialectical dynamics of the globalization process, we must not ignore the homogenizing self-attributions and external attributions, and the concomitant inclusion and exclusion strategies, of political actors. As an extension of the various approaches to the description of regions described above, I suggest the concept of “reflexive essentialism” in order to conceptualize the analytical focus on such—seemingly anachronistic—re-essentializations: The normative departure from all essentialist approaches, currently en vogue in Area Studies discourse, should not result in an analytical departure. Rather, our task should be to recognize the self-referential essentialisms of the actors involved in the globalization process as such and to reflect on them as the constitutive elements of the dynamic negotiation of flows and control.

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Particularly in the Asian context, significant trends towards such re-­ essentializations are discernible. Parallel to the ongoing global integration of Asian countries, there seems to be a growing demand for nationalist reflexes and regional homogeneity, for cultural, religious, and ethnic identity affiliations, or for political legitimacy, all drawing on nation-state sovereignty and territorial integrity. An example is the formulation of national or regional development “models” from the East Asian context to accompany the economic success of various East Asian states, most recently China, as a narrative. The so-called China Model has been made prominent by Anglo-Saxon analysts since the mid-2000s. Initially, the concept was rejected by Chinese officials who reasoned that it utilized an ideologically burdened, in principle anti-Chinese, variant of the China Threat thesis. Since around 2010, however, the China Model has become acceptable among the political and intellectual elite as well as in the official Chinese discourse, as it—irrespective of the definition of its content which, by and large, has stagnated at exchangeable platitudes—is viewed as a welcome symbol of the reappropriation of “discourse hegemony” from the hitherto dominant “West” (Holbig 2010). While Chinese representatives use the China Model to invoke the particularity of the Chinese development trajectory and the superiority of “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” external discourse participants like using the term as a synonym for the “East Asian (Development) Model” (Peerenboom 2007). Recently, Francis Fukuyama referred to the China Model as evidence of a specifically East Asian “pattern” of successful authoritarian modernization, supported by a shared Confucian heritage of coherent centralized states and a meritocratic bureaucracy (Fukuyama 2011). The example of the China Model, aka the East Asian Model, illustrates how difficult it has become, in view of such essentializations, to sustain the analytical differentiation between the self and the other, between self-­attributions and external attributions, which, in past decades, were justified and inspired by the examination of non-Western regions within the social sciences and Cultural Studies in a particular way. In fact, the symbolic construction of such re-essentializations occurs via a dialectical interaction between self-attributions and external attributions—a process apparently perceived by some participants as a hegemonic struggle for discourse supremacy and a monopoly on homogenization. Overall, China’s rise to become a global player has certainly been conducive to such entrenchments, rather than eliminating their foundation. The process of regional and global integration in Southeast Asia has also

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been accompanied by new(ly invented) nationalisms, ethnic conflicts, and intensified sub-regionalisms. While, from the perspective of many researchers, the (nation-)state has increasingly lost its role as the central policy-creating actor, it has, in a sense, gained significance under the surface—whether in the arena of disputed demands for political legitimacy and societal participation, as the imposer of frames or rules concerning discourses, or as a projection surface for national dreams and counter-dreams. As the example of the “Chinese Dream,” introduced by the incoming Chinese Communist Party chief, Xi Jinping, in November 2012, illustrates most vividly, public interpretations of official dreams can turn into impressive online rows (Marquis & Yang 2013). The “New Silk Road Initiative” launched by the same Chinese leadership in late 2013 is another recent example here.2 It combines plans for an economic transaction zone across continental Eurasia, spanning China’s vast Northwest, Central Asia, the Middle East, Turkey, and Southeastern Europe to end in Venice and Rotterdam, and a maritime transaction route from the South China Sea via the Indian Ocean, the Suez Canal, and the Mediterranean Sea to Venice. As such, the initiative not only presents a symbolic vision of “good Eurasian neighborhood” but also a projection of massive trade opportunities, infrastructure investments, as well as economic integration (Godehardt 2014; Godement & Kratz 2015). Megalomaniacal or not, sustainable or not, the process of communicative construction of this New Silk Road, which is reinforced by hopes and fears in the countries along the projected routes as well as of onlookers worldwide, might create new institutions, structures, and materialities. In turn, these material structures might reify, reshape, or reverse Xi Jinping’s original symbolic vision—a dialectical process that certainly deserves in-­ depth investigation by students of social sciences and Cultural Studies, but even more so from Area Studies collaborators willing to span the two disciplinary domains. Coming to terms with such reterritorialization and entrenchment processes seems to be equally relevant in understanding the regions and sub-regions as the analytical assessment of deterritorialization processes and transregional interactions and entanglements (Mrazek 2010; Wang 2010). One could say that the challenge is to constantly and flexibly recalibrate the analysis of nationalisms and cosmopolitanizations, processes of de- and reterritorialization, entanglements and entrenchments. The aim should be to view such contrary, alternating, simultaneous, or dialectical processes as being of equal empirical rank and to examine them with an

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open mind with regard to results. Instead of adopting a subtle normative primacy of “trans” and “inter” at the outset, we should be equally aware of the sort of reflexive essentialism described above. If a single journal article by Prasenjit Duara with the self-explanatory title “Asia Redux” can incorporate almost two handfuls of programmatic word combinations with the prefix “inter”—interactions, interdependence, interfluent, interlinked, intermediate, intermingled, inter-­referencing, intersected, interstices (Duara 2010)—then the question that arises is where the actors and identities of those interactions, the spaces of those interstices, and the entrenchments of the counter-dynamics of those entanglements are. In transcending regional connections, Area Studies must not fully give up its regional traction; the latter is the basis not only for intellectual acrobatics but also for real-world encounters with colleagues from the regions.

Conclusion As this chapter has argued, a great potential for future Area Studies lies in its interdisciplinary connections, which productively adopt and implement innovative impulses originating from Cultural Studies without losing sight of the capacity to connect to the social sciences. These connections provide it with the opportunity not only to theoretically and methodologically carry out highly topical research, but also to function as the connecting link, “translator,” and provider of impulses in both directions, between linguistics, Cultural Studies, and history on the one hand and the social sciences on the other. Given the opportunities of innovative knowledge production with regard to the ongoing (re-)constructions of regions as highlighted in this chapter, the two disciplinary groupings could and should end their mutual perceptions as separate epistemic communities. The initial assumption of cultural turn(s), according to which the perception of reality is always linguistically constituted and social and political phenomena are thus always communicatively constructed, is now difficult to imagine as something foreign to the social sciences. An Area Studies that works at these interdisciplinary interfaces must face these epistemological challenges and thus gain the opportunity to identify innovative research topics and methodological approaches. In particular, topical Area Studies cannot lapse back behind the relational conceptualization of space (Middell & Naumann 2010), which, in the course of the last two decades, has prevailed against the hitherto prevalent territorial conceptualization of space.

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This can be applied most fruitfully to the concept of region, which is constitutive of Area Studies and should be understood as a malleable cultural construct that not only interprets social, economic, political, civilizational, moral, relations, and so forth, but also actively shapes them. In this sense, one can understand regions as processes involving the communicative construction of social relations. While this kind of research, for a long time, appeared to have been reserved for the domain of history and Cultural Studies, social sciences can contribute significantly by investigating when and where these processes of communicative construction translate into new institutions, structures, and materialities. It is precisely the plasticity, the amorphous and malleable character of regions that Area Studies collaborators from both domains should take into account. The various approaches to describing the sub-regions of East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Asia-Pacific that have been discussed above illustrate that the communicative construction of areas is a process subject to dialectical movements of de- and reterritorialization, which should be examined as issues of equal empirical rank. In view of the focus on transnational and transregional entanglements to capture the trend of deterritorialization, which has become so dominant over the past decade, I have argued that this primary focus should be balanced with simultaneous attention to the trends of reterritorialization, which are increasingly shaping the political, social, and cultural dynamics within Asia as well as between Asian and other global actors. I have proposed the term “reflexive essentialism” to encourage a more systematic reflection on simultaneous entrenchments and essentialist self-assurances at the regional, national, and sub-national levels. Thinking ahead, the term suggests that the need for an analytical recalibration regarding these dialectical movements may present Area Studies not only with valuable future opportunities to transfer innovative impulses to the social sciences and to Cultural Studies, but also for collaboration between these disciplines. Acknowledgements  This is a revised version of a manuscript which has been discussed with members of the Area Studies Working Group of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research-funded joint project “Africa’s Asian Options” (AFRASO) and with Prof. emer. Hans-Jürgen Puhle of Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main; with colleagues from the GIGA Institute of Asian Studies; and with participants at the “Area Studies Revisited: Connectivity, Comparison, Laterality” conference in June 2014 in Munich, and at the “Crossroads Studies: Mobilities, Immobilities and the Issue of Positionality for Rethinking Area Studies” conference in November 2014 in Bonn. I would like to thank all of them for their valuable advice. Previous,

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longer versions of this chapter are available as “Frankfurt Working Paper on East Asia” (No. 7/2013) in German and as “GIGA Working Paper” (No. 267, March 2015) in English.

Notes 1. In this chapter, Area Studies is not considered to constitute an independent discipline. Rather, it is viewed as an interdisciplinary research context that focuses on certain regions—the delineation of which is and should remain open to discussion—and transregional issues. This implies that the interacting researchers remain in their institutionally rooted yet in-flux disciplines and gain impulses from their involvement in this context. In some cases, such impulses can add to the theoretical scope and thematic range of regional research, or they can enrich empirical contributions to mainstream debates and can contribute to the examination of these debates—without creating a general obligation within the Area Studies to provide these impulses. 2. In Chinese language, the new initiative is also labeled as “One Belt One Road” (Yi lu yi dai), referring to the continental and maritime route as described below.

Bibliography Acharya, A. (2010). Asia Is Not One. Journal of Asian Studies, 69(4), 1001–1013. Asian Development Bank. (2008). Emerging Asian Regionalism: A Partnership for Shared Prosperity. Manila: ADB Publishing House. Bachmann-Medick, D. (2010). Cultural Turns. Available at: https://docupedia. de/zg/Cultural_Turns?oldid=81216 [Accessed 20 Mar. 2010]. Barber, B. (1995). Jihad versus McWorld. How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World. New York: Crown. Duara, P. (2010). Asia Redux: Conceptualizing a Region for Our Times. Journal of Asian Studies, 69(4), 963–983. Fukuyama, F. (2011). The Patterns of History. Journal of Democracy, 23(1), 14–26. Godehardt, N. (2014). Chinas “neue” Seidenstraßeninitiative: Regionale Nachbarschaft als Kern der chinesischen Außenpolitik unter Xi (SWP-Studien, 2014/S 09). Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik.

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Godehardt, N., & Nabers, D. (2011). Introduction. In N. Godehardt & D. Nabers (Eds.), Regional Powers and Regional Order (pp. 1–17). London: Routledge. Godement, F., & Kratz, A. (Eds.). (2015). “One Belt, One Road”: China’s Great Leap Outward [pdf] (European Council on Foreign Relations China Analysis June 2015) Available at: http://www.ecfr.eu/page/-/China_analysis_belt_ road.pdf [Accessed 3 Feb. 2016]. Heryanto, A. (2013). The Intimacies of Cultural Studies and Area Studies: The Case of Southeast Asia. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 16(3), 303–316. Holbig, H. (2010). Das Land hat einen Plan. Der Westen nicht. China als autokratisches Erfolgsmodell. Berliner Debatte Initial, 21(3), 67–77. Huotari, M., & Rüland, J. (2014). Context, Concepts and Comparison in Southeast Asian Studies—Introduction to the Special Issue. Pacific Affairs, 87(3), 415–439. Karl, R. (1998). Creating Asia: China in the World at the Beginning of Twentieth Century. American Historical Review, 103(4), 1096–1118. Korhonen, P. (2012). Changing Definitions of Asia. Asia Europe Journal, 10(2), 99–112. Lewis, M., & Wigen, K. (1997). The Myth of Continents. A Critique of Metageography. London: University of California Press. Marquis, C., & Yang, Z. (2013). Chinese Dream? American Dream? Available at: www.danwei.com/a.tale-of-two-dreams [Accessed 20 Dec. 2013]. Middell, M. (2013). Area Studies under the Global Condition. Debates on Where to Go with Regional or Area Studies in Germany. In M. Middell (Ed.), SelfReflective Area Studies (pp. 7–57). Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag. Middell, M., & Naumann, K. (2010). Global History and the Spatial Turn: From the Impact of Area Studies to the Study of Critical Junctures of Globalization. Journal of Global History, 5(1), 149–170. Mrazek, R. (2010). Floating. No Gears Shifting. Journal of Asian Studies, 69(4), 1021–1025. Neumann, I. (2003). A Region-Building Approach. In F. Söderbaum & T. Shaw (Eds.), Theories of New Regionalism (pp. 160–178). Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. O’Neill, J. (2001). Building Better Global Economic BRICs [pdf] (Goldman Sachs Global Economics Paper No. 66). Available at: http://www.goldmansachs. com/our-thinking/archive/archive-pdfs/build-better-brics.pdf [Accessed 22 Apr. 2014]. Peerenboom, R. (2007). China Modernizes. Threat to the West or Model for the Rest? Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Puhle, H.-J. (In Press). Area Studies in Deutschland. Neue Ansätze und Herausforderungen [Area Studies in Germany. New Approaches and Challenges]. In M. Braig (Ed.), Forthcoming Edited Volume on Transregional Area Studies. Randeria, S. (1999). Geteilte Geschichten und verwobene Moderne. In J. Rüsen (Ed.), Zukunftsentwürfe. Ideen für eine Kultur der Veränderung (pp. 87–96). Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Singh, S. (2001). Framing “South Asia”: Whose Imagined Region? RSIS [S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies] Working Paper 009, Singapore. Wagner, R. (2011). China “Asleep” and “Awakening.” A Study in Conceptualizing Asymmetry and Coping with It. Transcultural Studies, 2011(1), 4–139. Wang, H. (2010). The Idea of Asia and Its Ambiguities. Journal of Asian Studies, 69(4), 985–989. Werner, M., & Zimmermann, B. (2006). Beyond Comparison. Histoire croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity. History and Theory, 45(1), 30–50.

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Concluding Reflections: The Art of  Science Policy for 21st Century Area Studies Anna-Katharina Hornidge and Katja Mielke The neoliberalization of the system of scientific production, pointed to by Peter A.  Jackson at the beginning of this volume, lays parallel to a content-driven realization for the need to overcome disciplinary boundaries, and boundaries between different socio-politically contextualized science systems, holding humanity back in living up to the challenges posed by global environmental, climatic and socio-political pressures—all results of our own doing. The role of scientific knowledge production in and for society is being scrutinized, leading to the redefinition of science and research systems and practice for a substantial part of the science system (see Klein 2010). Area Studies so far have little engaged in this discussion, while increasingly Area Studies graduates take on positions in interdisciplinary research contexts that conduct empirical research in non-Western, non-Northern contexts (in fields such as development research, Gender Studies, conflict and peace research, marine social science and humanities, natural resource economics and so on). The material presented here draws on the above chapters in order to reflect on which role Area Studies can and should play in a system of scientific knowledge production continuously gearing towards greater integration—across disciplinary divides, as well as across divides between different science systems and their respec-

A.-K. Hornidge (*) • K. Mielke University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT), Bremen, Germany © The Author(s) 2017 K. Mielke, A.-K. Hornidge (eds.), Area Studies at the Crossroads, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59834-9_18 [email protected]

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tive epistemologies. The chapter concludes by identifying what this means for science policymaking for Area Studies in the twenty-first century.

The Reordering of the Science System Since the mid-1990s and early 2000s, the systems and practices of scientific knowledge production globally have been undergoing immense processes of reorientation and reorganization (UNESCO 2015; Nowotny 1999). These include structural changes in line with neoliberal policymaking, turning universities and research institutes into privately organized and run businesses, professors and lecturers into managers and innovators, pupils into customers and funding agencies into the gatekeepers of scientific knowledge production. Yet, in addition, a content-driven restructuring on the levels of research and teaching itself is taking place, fundamentally redefining what type of research is being conducted, as well as how and what is done with it. Topic-focused and problem-oriented research conducted in inter- and transdisciplinary teams moves into the foreground, building on concepts and methods originally developed in disciplinary contexts but allowing for a more flexible combination, always determined by the research question and objective, rather than disciplinary consideration or the adherence to certain schools of thought. It also results in a more flexible mixing of research settings (laboratory, expedition or field research)—again always determined by the research focus itself— emphasizing the need for “team research” and thus the combination of very different disciplines and other forms of expertise. Finally, making research outcomes publically available, explicitly making an effort to increase chances of this research being put to societal use is much more demanded for by researchers themselves as well as by the science system as a whole (including funding agencies and publishing houses). Thus, open access versus gated publications, globally accessible data portals (big data), but also concerns of out- and upscaling through market or policy cycles, the so-called exit strategies of projects, are commonly discussed and planned for in research project design and implementation. The latter of these two processes, the restructuring of the scientific knowledge producing systems that had evolved over centuries from Leonardo da Vinci to the discipline-based science systems which are still largely in place today, cannot be seen independently from the former. Yet,

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it is also not a direct consequence of neoliberal policymaking. Instead, its roots lay in the interplay of (a) increasing complexities in times of global environmental change and socio-political and economic transformation processes, as well as (b) the shortcomings of a discipline-based, highly specialized but also highly fragmented system of scientific inquiry ill-equipped to face the former (Gibbons et  al. 1994). The discussions, analyses and suggestions presented in this volume on how to redefine or reorganize Area Studies as they are currently taught at universities in Europe, North and South America, in Asia and parts of Africa, have to be seen in the light of these larger processes of redefining the system of scientific inquiry and knowledge production itself. It is a process of content-focused reorientation and reorganization, partly even reinvention, seeking a system of scientific knowledge production that does not provide answers to the “societal grand challenges” and market needs, but that develops a range of possible, and continuously to be reflected, answers in and with society itself. The science system of the twenty-first century is therefore, despite all the problems of lived (not merely rhetorically mobilized) inter- and transdisciplinarity, increasingly moving towards a system of knowledge production in which—in line with social constructivist thought—knowledge and innovation development is about simultaneously producing knowledges and building society (Bijker & Law 1997). A core and increasingly noted risk in this redefinition of scientific knowledge production is, nevertheless, that knowledge production especially in larger interdisciplinary and possibly environment- and natural resourcesoriented projects, becomes apoliticized. It is here that the drive towards interdisciplinarity meets the neoliberalization of the science system. The pressure to produce within an output- and Hirsch (et al.)-index driven system results in a rat race for more publications in higher-ranked journals, leaving little room for creative thinking outside the box, as well as for acquired third-party funds, rather than quality project implementation. The time for context-­dependent reflection, for building up local language expertise and partnerships across culturally and epistemologically significant divides is not taken, resulting over the long-run in a dysfunctional system of, no-longer quality-controlled, but merely network-controlled in bounded communities of a very particular type of “Western/Northern” knowledge ­production. It is here that Area Studies play and have to play a significant role for assuring quality, local context depth and politically aware reflexivity for enabling cross-disciplinary and cross-epistemological integration without impeding political sensitivity and reflexivity—both key

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for dealing with the uncertainties and risks of an accelerating and increasingly mobile world.

Sustainable Development and the Need for Reflexive Knowledges In 1986, the nuclear incident in Chernobyl, a symbol for human-made unknowns and uncontrollable risks of second modernity (Beck et  al. 1996; Beck 2007), accompanied by a growing green movement in countries of Europe and North America set the stage for environmental and sustainability-­focused science policymaking. While in Europe the publishing of the Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development “Our Common Future” (also known as the Brundtland report) in 1987 can be identified as an major event influencing policy and specifically science policymaking for sustainability (and with this inter- and transdisciplinarity), the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 was a turning point towards a rethinking of the disciplinary organization of the science system in the USA (Klein 2010; Bernstein 2015). Both events and the discussions following them focused on questions of ecological, economic and social sustainability and thus development that “seeks to meet the needs and aspirations of the present without compromising the ability to meet those of the future” (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, p. 24). Sustainable development, in times characterized by looming nuclear and climatic catastrophes, the end of the Cold War, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and thus socio-­ political and economic processes of global reordering, while even still existing political borders seemed to be circumvented by the borderlessness of the worldwide web, became the guiding light of multilateral and national policy-making—especially in the fields of the environment and development cooperation, but also in science, research and teaching. Within the scientific system itself, it triggered immense debate, reflecting on the disciplinary fragmentation of the system, which over centuries had become geared towards specialization, ill-equipped for offering integrated social, ecological and economic system analyses. While Brewer (1999, p. 328), for instance, provocatively stated: “The world has problems, but universities have departments,” Max-Neef assesses (2005, p. 14): “Our relation with a complex world and a complex nature, requires complex thought.” He outlines further: “Our insistence in artificially and ingeniously simplifying our knowledge about nature and human relations, is the force behind the increasing disfunctions we are provoking in the

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systemic interrelations of both eco-systems and the social fabric”—a statement that inspired discussions on inter- and transdisciplinarity in Europe and North America. An important incubator for the conceptualization of inter- and transdisciplinarity in research and teaching at European universities and research institutes was the International Transdisciplinarity Conference in Zürich in 2001.1 The real-world problem orientation and the production of knowledges required for societies’ abilities to cope with and adapt to continuously accelerating change processes—complex problems of changing systems—called for by international science policymakers was increasingly discussed within the scientific community itself, with a clear focus on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary modes of knowledge production. Gibbons et  al. (1994) speak of “Mode 1” and “Mode 2” knowledge production, with the former being the traditional way of scientific inquiry, characterized by its homogeneity and disciplinary focus, conducted within academic institutions that are hierarchically organized. In contrast to this, the latter is characterized as reflexive, multi- and transdisciplinary and therefore dynamic and heterogeneous. Mode 2 knowledge is produced in a multiplicity of different organizations (from science, politics, society and so on), is generally highly problem oriented and is carried out in a context of application. In their work, Gibbons et al. predicted that Mode 1 will be slowly replaced by or integrated into Mode 2. This results in a socially distributed knowledge producing system which enables most members of society to take part in producing and consuming new knowledges (Gibbons et al. 1994, pp. 1–16), in effect demoting the science system from its former knowledge monopoly. This was then even further envisioned and legitimized with reference to the notion of “knowledge society” as stage of societal development following the industrial era, as here illustrated by the words of Knorr-Cetina: A knowledge society is not simply a society of more experts, more technological gadgets, and more specialist interpretations. It is a society permeated with knowledge cultures, the whole set of structures and mechanisms that serve knowledge and unfold with its articulation. (Knorr-Cetina 1999, pp. 7–8)

Under the technology-focused notion of “information society” this led to immense national-level investments in information and communication technologies, not infrequently reaffirming already existing inequalities (Hornidge 2007, 2010, 2014). On the regional level, science policymaking for the internationalization of education and research spurred, especially in Europe (the “Bologna Process”) and Southeast Asia (as part of

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the Association of Southeast Asian Nations), the setting of regional standards and encouragement of regional integration through student and staff exchange (for a critical discussion see Feuer & Hornidge 2015). Yet, within the scientific community itself, these ideas of knowledge being produced in and by society as crucial engines for any form of social, political, ecological and economic development, and education-based integration acting as a cornerstone to not just economic integration but also as a pillar of long-term peace-building, led to processes of significant self-reflection (Weingart 2010)—in effect altering the position and role of science as a world-making activity in an accelerating and mobile world.

Neither Disciplines

nor

World Regions

but

“Areas”

As part of these processes of scrutinizing the overall disciplinary organization and fragmentation of the science system, Area Studies have been critiqued for being knowledge-producing entities emerging from and reflecting Cold War-era political agendas of Euro-American hegemony, for being overly empirical, “fetishizing facts,” and for being disinterested in or even resistant to critical theoretical approaches. In much of what has become the debate on Area Studies, a black and white framing has remained dominant, while differentiation and distinctions of degree have been largely absent. This means, first, that the debate on Area Studies as an undertheorized field of knowledge generation in contrast to the systematic disciplines could rather be called a pseudo-debate because it has been highly fragmented all along. This relates to the notion of “area,” the idea of institutionalized “Area Studies” versus disciplines and the increasing demand for comparison. There has never been consensus on the definition of the boundaries of certain areas among representatives of one particular branch of Area Studies (within one country and beyond). Foci have been defined as the result of individual institutional preferences, mainly guided by the language and thematic expertise of its faculty members. Neither was there a consensus on the degree of (non-)systematicity of Area Studies, as Area Studies knowledge has been generated in interdisciplinary centers as well as small disciplinary-based departments with a focus on a subarea. An incoherent view on what constitutes Area Studies and what the studies achieve should not allow for generalizing about Area Studies’ potential to develop methodologies, relevant questions and mid-range concepts, to build up a body of literature on the basis of which it would become valid to speak

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of some as “disciplines.” Instead, the conceptual and methodological diversity of Area Studies, depending on who sits on what academic chairs, has resulted in an epistemic diversity which allows for varied and fruitful interaction with other, so-called “systematic,” disciplines. One might even realistically qualify the relevance of disciplines against this backdrop, thus rendering it unnecessary for areanists to submit themselves to disciplinary domination and subordination. The disciplines’ concepts and theories have proven only to a minor degree relevant for Area Studies research, because they are Northern-centric, and due to the only slowly changing gender imbalance in the science system, which is male by default and can be understood as Area Studies of the male North or West. Connected to the idea of male Western- or Euro-centrism is also the difficulty that arises from the contrast in positions concerning the usefulness and conducting of comparative Area Studies. Taking the binary of implicit and explicit comparison as a point of departure, the fact that all units of analysis in qualitative social science and humanities research are also social constructs, and that even single case studies thus always include an implicit comparison given that a researcher is never free of his/ her inherent biases related to academic socialization and positionality, demands have surfaced to make this inherent (implicit) comparison explicit (Zanker & Newbery 2013, p. 113). Comparative approaches vary in the nature of disciplines, and various experiences exist to apply a comparative lens in interdisciplinary research programs. More generally at stake is the question of what is valid knowledge. The divide is over theory-­determined versus theory-developing research and quantitative studies (large n) versus case-study research (small n) (Mielke & Hornidge 2014, p. 15). A commonly held assumption is that only comparative designs (no matter whether qualitative/quantitative, synchronic/diachronic, ex ante/ex post) provide a reliable learning platform for researchers (Collier 1993) and generate knowledge that can be generalized—thus advancing science. While this has generated a strong quest for comparison in general, Area Studies are additionally challenged in view of the detected pace of changes at the local level, due to globalization influences (Chou 2006, p. 132). The limits of comparison are particularly evident if entanglements are the object of study, moreover, in a historical perspective, because the beginning and end (temporal boundaries) are hard to grasp. Research on translocal/transnational phenomena in multi-sited settings seems to have been one recent approach that does successfully avoid the need for a systematic comparative perspective. Following Sidaway, the urge to compare might be comfort-

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ably offset by seeking “analytical approaches that travel the globe, not in search of comparison, but to trace genealogies of co-­production” (2013, p. 996, citing Monghia 2007, p. 411). Secondly, the fragmentation of perspectives that this pseudo-debate has generated, prevented the acknowledgement and reception of progress that the reappraisal and (self-)reflection of knowledge production by areanists has produced over the last years. A process of emancipation from apolitical funding proposals and national science policy agendas has set in and respective demands by Area Studies protagonists become increasingly visible (see Conrad Schetter, Olaf Kaltmeier, and Peter A. Jackson, in this volume). Ongoing reflexivity in Area Studies has illustrated effectively that the perception of Area Studies as theory-distant and without “proper” methodological tools is only a result of the interpretation of the world from a Euro-Amerocentric position. The hegemony of Western or Northern knowledge production renders all other knowledge “local”—if it is recognized and perceived at all (Randeria 1999, p. 380). Yet, knowledge generation in and by Area Studies has effectively illustrated the need for diversity and the acknowledgement of difference through highlighting the scope of ontological uncertainty that arises if preference-settings, epistemological perspectives and categorizations are reflected upon (Novak 2014). The choice of perspective in any research, and knowledge generation more broadly, thus becomes a normative and essentially political decision each scientist is confronted with because each choice implies the silencing of other possible perspectives. Taken further, this thought can be applied to the ontological, epistemological and theoretical view on “areas”—they have to be defined according to the research interest and question at hand (see Heike Holbig, Christoph Antweiler and Cynthia Chou, in this volume)—and this yields respective pedagogical implications (pointed out by Matthias Middell, Arnika Fuhrmann, Epifania A. Amoo-­ Adare and Cynthia Chou above). Areas should best be understood as fluid and “moving target/s” (Heike Holbig, in this volume). There is rich evidence of how container spaces have become deconstructed by Area Studies practitioners, for example through privileging smaller and/or networked units of analysis such as in Urban Studies (Sayer 1999) for city networks (Bunnell 2013), in figurational research (as carried out by the Crossroads Asia research network), with the paradigm of entanglements (Olaf Kaltmeier, in this volume), or the angle on marine spaces, the investigation of socio-cognitive spaces (Deepra Dandekar, in this volume) and a focus on positionality, the constructedness of space and places, and the

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friction between centrality and remoteness more in general (Henryk Alff, Andreas Benz, in this volume). Beyond these ontological and epistemological considerations and given the above elaborations on the reorganization of the science system, sustainable development and the need for reflexive knowledges, the random examples of buen vivir from the Andes/South Americas or the Gross National Happiness Index in Bhutan all point to crucial innovations and concepts generated outside the Euro-American realm that resemble alternative solutions to real-world problems which Area Studies are designated to mainstream in the North and West. At the same time, these two concepts are obvious examples for the potential of Area Studies to redefine areas not as territorial but through topiccentered science—which necessarily must always be context-bound and reflexive. Therefore, the main potential of Area Studies’ future lies in a shift of their subject matter from attempts to holistically study world regions or employing a single disciplinary bias to challenging the unquestioned assumptions and the blind spots of knowledge production in the disciplines by reflecting on the dominant organization of science as we know it through insights generated elsewhere. This is not only pertinent for scientific knowledge generation as self-referential business but also for mitigating the inadequacies of current approaches to solve real-world problems and overcome the continued failure of social and cultural analysis to adequately explain the contemporary world (Peter A.  Jackson, in this volume). Therefore, it is of utmost importance to systematically strengthen critical social theory in Area Studies teaching in order to encourage analytical Area Studies (Anna-­ Katharina Hornidge, Vincent Houben, Katja Mielke, and Andreas Wilde, in this volume) that will enable students to access non-EuroAmerican knowledge orders and to grasp their inherent intelligibility, that is the coherence of social action through revealing the respective situated meaning it has to those who perform it in other parts and places of the world.

Area Studies

in a World of Interdisciplinarity

What this leads to is the quest and mandate for Area Studies to become a much-needed corrective for existing social science disciplines because the former bear the potential to renew and expand the latters’ epistemological, theoretical and pedagogical foundations (Rehbein 2013, p. 26). Learning

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to unlearn and the establishment of new modes of thinking—and ultimately of practicing—can best be produced from topic-focused insights that are generated in extra-Northern contexts, for example through practices of border thinking (Mignolo & Tlostanova 2006; Mignolo 2011, 2012; Grosfoguel 2008), of constitutive critique in the sense of epistemic disobedience (Lorey 2008; Lorey 2010; Butler 2002) that questions conventional epistemic categorizations and their particular positionalities and rationales, and a subsequent decentering of conventional social science and humanities’ paradigms as we know them (Epifania A. Amoo-Adare, in this volume). Randeria (1999, p.  380) has rightfully pointed to the difficulties implied in such endeavors outside the Euro-American realm because a decentering of Northern perspectives necessarily also relies on a “decolonization of imagination” in the Global South that has often adopted Northern epistemological foundations, albeit uncomfortably so and without having found an own language of articulation. Moreover, following Peter A. Jackson’s argument in this volume, Area Studies are determined to promote reciprocal dialogue and (re-)coupling. He finds that the sites of theory production about observed increasing mobilities remain insistently immobile and centered in Western metropolitan universities, which translates into the fact that even in today’s more multicentric world the distances between these centers and the peripheries are still increasing and large population groups remain uncoupled from involvement in social, political and knowledge-generating processes (Rehbein 2013, p.  28) as local—let alone global or universal—world-­ making activity. Olaf Kaltmeier and Gudrun Lachenmann (both in this volume) have illustrated different ways in which this giving voice to otherwise silenced perspectives and systems of current ignorance can be undertaken. For such dialogue and mutual intelligibility, language and cultural competences are deemed of utmost importance. They can prevent the proliferating tendency in the disciplines of “locking in, out and up” (Sidaway 2013, p. 996), which furthers the common, very selective—if it happens at all— reception of knowledge generation by Area Studies in the so-called systematic disciplines. It is important to stress that these competences are not intended to be limited to facilitating mere translation; instead they ought to be used to understand “other” societal discourses and narration patterns (Diskurszusammenhänge) thereby facilitating a true pluralism of perspectives which enables the negotiation of differences through interaction and dialogue and treats the respective partners as equals. Thus, the “Area” in Area Studies is no longer a territorial unit defining the world region to

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be studied, but instead it is the cognitive framing of a particular theme or epistemology, studied in its spatial, temporal and cultural context. To sum up, the often-heard call for mainstreaming Area Studies to exploit their suitability for context-sensitive research/data generation and their inherent awareness of entanglements and increasing global connectedness falls short of the actual potential of Area Studies for know­ ledge production after the mobility turn (and its other predecessors). Area Studies research and knowledge production should not only be afforded the chance to irritate and to be selectively noted by the systematic disciplines, but instead must take on a much bigger role for the latter’s revision and expansion in order to produce insights that offer valid solutions to global problems in local contexts. Departing from the initial criticism in the debate, Area Studies have proven to be highly self-critical and innovative over the last years by reflecting on their epistemological, methodological and conceptual vantage points in producing scientific knowledge on largely non-Western, non-Northern societies. The chapters in this book have illustrated these processes of thought and discussion—in argumentative, protective but also constructive forms of self-reflection aware of the need to partly reinvent and at least position themselves better within a world troubled by bipolar movements, towards the building of walls and strengthening borders on the one side (see latest speeches by US presidential candidate Donald Trump) and strong tendencies towards debordering on the other (see migratory flows to Europe; but also the discussions on the need to weaken disciplinary boundaries for more problem-oriented interdisciplinary knowledge production). For understanding the increasingly more complex world in Weber’s sense, what is required is more, increasingly differentiated and contextualized knowledge production in more diverse local contexts worldwide and produced in a range of inherently unique systems of (non-)scientific knowledge production and by different types of knowledge-producing actors (who is the one telling the story?). Traditional, so-called systematic, disciplines, caught in their disciplinary, male and Northern-focused epistemologies and sedentary bias (Bauman 2000), can contribute to this, but are ill-equipped to do so by themselves. Instead, area study expertise and an ethical-political mandate for Area Studies become more pressingly needed than ever before. This is not to argue that Area Studies are meant to replace the disciplines or themselves become disciplines. If we view science as a process that is moreover dynamic, Area Studies—as a field of study and sub-field of

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science as world-making activity—are better conceptualized as in a permanent process of becoming. They are never complete, always situated within and part and product of society. The topic focus and embracing of difference and multiplicity argued for above pre-empts any holistic consensus—as this would mean the end of dialogue (Olaf Kaltmeier, in this volume).

Science Policymaking

for Area

Studies

Area Studies research and teaching is the epistemological glue, the boundary work, that makes possible the integration across disciplinary divides and boundaries which characterize different systems of scientific practice, enabling the production of politically aware, reflexive and future-oriented knowledges for a world society characterized by accelerated environmental and socio-political change. Hence, Area Studies, as corrective to the conventional disciplines, enable us to be cognitively mobile enough to live with and constantly adjust to accelerating degrees of geographic and social mobilities of risks and opportunities. Assuring this role of Area Studies in the future requires the strengthening of Area Studies (a) in their own right, as well as (b) in interdisciplinary contexts. This has to be done following their own logic of quality control, such as encouraging the publishing in  local languages and with local partners in journals of non-Western/non-Northern science systems, rather than subduing Area Studies towards a system of quality control that encourages the strengthening of the (within the logic of Hirsch and comparable indices) global epistemic power houses, reaffirming and widening imbalances regarding epistemic authority in a globalized science system. In consequence, for Area Studies to thrive in a globalized, further accelerated world of tomorrow, today’s science policy should adhere to three ideals: (a) Analytical, emancipatory Area Studies; (b) Mobile, transregional Area Studies; and (c) Area Studies for and in interdisciplinarity. Analytical, Emancipatory Area Studies These are Area Studies that enable the scholar to critically and self-­ reflectively study to understand people, their lifeworlds and everyday practices in spatially and temporally contextualized manners, abstract

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from the empirical, self-confidentially conceptualizing. Building up this analytical strength is crucial for, first, successively decolonizing the science system, by developing a more differentiated understanding of the world’s diversity—one of its core beauties—and integrating non-Western epistemologies into the dominant discourses narrating and thus authoritatively “explaining” the world. Yet there is a second emancipatory element involved: By explicitly designing science policies that support Area Studies that give non-Western, non-Northern epistemologies a voice in the canon of the global, neoliberally organized publishing system, a contribution is made for the overall science system to emancipate itself from normatively oriented output production, favoring short, authoritative articles written in English over books in which space for self-reflection, greater differentiation, ethical concerns and so on is given. Science policymaking for emancipatory Area Studies therefore also means that research and science—not large publishing houses—are put in the position to determine what is valued to a degree that it is regarded worth publishing. Mobile, Transregional Area Studies With the increasing geographic, social and cognitive mobility of people, goods, viruses, symbols and knowledges the focus on studying the mobile has moved (and will move even more so in the future) into the center of Area Studies research and teaching. Regional focus will have to be diluted, opening the “borders” of “areas” and, in funding programs and lines, encouraging transregional or multiregional assessments, also including Area Studies research in, for example, communities with migratory backgrounds in Western and Northern societies, where respective language and cultural expertise is required. On the level of methodology, mobile methods such as multi-sited and “follow the” methods (i.e. follow the water, follow the innovation, follow the migrant) have to be included far more prominently in Area Studies teaching and research practice. Meanwhile, on the conceptual level, relational concepts of space, encouraging the analysis of entanglements, interdependences and figurations rather than the creation of (at best) relational typologies (common in several “systematic” social science and humanities disciplines) have to form part of the conceptual backbone of any Area Studies course. While today people migrate due to conflicts and poverty in their countries of origin, in 50 years, people will migrate because the coastlines along which two thirds of the world population live will have changed such that living in the many coastal megacities

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of the tropics, or on small island states directly affected by sea-level change, will no longer be possible. The 29 % land mass of our planet will no longer suffice; instead people already increasingly identify the remaining 71 % covered by water not only as a resource provider but also living space. The movement and rhythms of the sea create an analogy to the geographic, social and cognitive mobilities discussed above and are followed in order to understand the in-betweens and their role in defining areas and Area Studies in dynamic relation with the immobile. With increasing mobilities on land and sea, Area Studies will benefit conceptually and methodologically from also looking at marine social science and humanities, studying areas (also marine) in the rhythms and currents of the everyday, yet structured by the solid—and changing over time—fringes of the coasts. Area Studies for and in Interdisciplinarity Societies’ adaptive capacities—necessary for dealing with increasing uncertainties, risks and the unknown unknowns in rapidly changing nature-­ culture configurations—will require the system of scientific knowledge production to overcome disciplinary boundaries and produce reflexive and spatially, temporally and culturally contextualized knowledges more than ever before. Problem-oriented knowledge production in interdisciplinary teams will become the standard regarding all research questions addressing the grand societal challenges ahead. Here, Area Studies expertise as a crucial element, making collaboration between the conventional disciplines possible, will have to be included in every interdisciplinary project team. With the notion of the anthropocene reminding us of the temporal and spatial finiteness of our planet, no longer space, but instead our earth’s own seas move to the center of human attention. Already today, imaginaries of floating cities above submarine fresh water springs, for example, inspire the building of artificial islands off the coast of Dubai, Jakarta or Singapore. Relational concepts of space come to mind, which originally contributed to the decision to critically reflect the spatial concepts on which Area Studies were based (container space). Similarly, geopolitical interests—which in the first place belonged to the core drivers for ­establishing Area Studies after World War II—will continue to contribute to a shift in which “areas” move to the center of world attention. For instance, geopolitical interest in mining deep sea resources is currently moving the South Pacific region—otherwise mainly known for the increasing risks of sea level rise there—from the margins of the world map into the center of

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geopolitical interest. Thus, science policymaking for Area Studies of the future should always assure great regional diversity, and as to which Area Studies expertise exactly will be required in the future depends on shifts in world politics and economies not predictable today. Finally, politically aware, differentiated, emancipatory, analytical Area Studies in mobile and multi-sited interdisciplinary contexts, with the language expertise and long-term field research stays required for assuring empirical and analytical depth, the interdisciplinary integration and the emancipatory contribution to several (not just the one dominant) scientific systems will of course require a certain amount of resources. It is necessary to allocate funding not only to PhD research. Instead, what needs funding is research on the level of senior researchers on permanent contracts, with the ability to build long-term partnerships on the same level, develop multiple local language expertise, regularly invest the required time in the field, with the level of health, ethical, security and safety awareness required in often challenging environments (characterized by open conflict or surveillance through a highly repressive, authoritarian system). Science policymaking for twenty-first century Area Studies has to be aware of the crucial importance of Area Studies research for peace-building in a troubled world—and has to invest in large-scale, well-funded and well-­secured, long-term Area Studies collaborative research projects, as well as in research groups and positions in interdisciplinary, conflict-, environmentally- or technology-/innovationfocused research endeavors. Only if this is given can Area Studies fulfill their role as reflexive, analytical and integrative corrective to social science and humanities research in a rapidly changing world.

Note 1. From the early 1990s onwards, the discussions led in Germany to the founding of a range of interdisciplinary research institutes in the field of agricultural development and marine research (1991: Leibniz-­ Center for Tropical Marine Research, Bremen; 1997: Center for Development Research, Bonn; 2007: Institute for Advanced Sustainability Sciences, Potsdam), as well as a number of ten-year long, large-scale interdisciplinary projects funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany in the field of sustainable natural resources management in countries of the Global South (including Western Africa, Central Asia, Island Southeast Asia).

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Bibliography Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Beck, U., Giddens, A., & Lash, S. (1996). Reflexive Modernisierung. Eine Kontroverse. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Beck, U. (2007). Weltrisikogesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Bernstein, J. (2015). Transdisciplinarity: A Review of Its Origins, Development, and Current Issues. Journal of Research Practice, 11(1), 1–20. Bijker, W., & Law, J. (Eds.). (1997). Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge: MIT Press. Brewer, G. (1999). The Challenges of Interdisciplinarity. Policy Sciences, 32, 327–337. Bunnell, T. (2013). City Networks as Alternative Geographies of Southeast Asia. TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia, 1(1), 27–43. Butler, J. (2002). Was ist Kritik? Ein Essay über Foucaults Tugend. Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 50(2), 249–265. Chou, C., & Houben, V. (Eds.). (2006). Southeast Asian Studies: Debates and New Directions. Leiden: International Institute for Asian Studies. Collier, D. (1993). The Comparative Method. In A. Finifter (Ed.), Political Science. The State of the Discipline II (pp. 105–119). Washington DC: American Political Science Association. Feuer, H., & Hornidge, A.-K. (2015). Higher Education Cooperation in ASEAN: Building Towards Integration or Manufacturing Consent? Comparative Education, 51(3), 327–352. Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwarzman, S., Scott, P., & Trow, M. (1994). The New Production of Knowledge. Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage Publications. Grosfoguel, R. (2008). Transmodernity, Border Thinking, and Global Coloniality. Eurozine. Available at: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-07-04-grosfoguel-en.html [Accessed 12 Jan. 2015]. Hornidge, A.-K. (2007). Knowledge Society. Vision and Social Construction of Reality in Germany and Singapore. Münster: Lit. Hornidge, A.-K. (2010). An Uncertain Future—Singapore’s Search for a New Focal Point of Collective Identity and Its Drive Towards “Knowledge Society.” Asian Journal of Social Sciences, 38(5), 785–818. Hornidge, A.-K. (2014). Wissensdiskurse: Normativ, Faktisch, Hegemonial. Soziale Welt, 65(1), 7–24. Klein, J. (2010). Creating Interdisciplinary Campus Cultures. A Model for Strength and Sustainability. San Francisco: John Wiley and Sons. Knorr-Cetina, K. (1999). Epistemic Cultures—How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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Lorey, I. (2008). Versuch, das Plebejische zu denken. Exodus und Konstituierung als Kritik. Available at: http://eipcp.net/transversal/0808/lorey/de [Accessed 20 Feb. 2015]. Lorey, I. (2010). Konstituierende Kritik. Die Kunst, den Kategorien zu entgehen. In B. Mennel, S. Nowotny, & G. Raunig (Eds.), Kunst der Kritik (pp. 47–64). Wien: Turia + Kant. Max-Neef, M. (2005). Foundations of Transdisciplinarity. Ecological Economics, 53(1), 5–16. Mielke, K., & Hornidge, A.-K. (2014). Crossroads Studies: From Spatial Containers to Interactions in Differentiated Spatialities. Crossroads Asia Working Paper Series 15, Bonn. Mignolo, W., & Tlostanova, M. (2006). Theorizing from the Borders. Shifting to Geo- and Body-Politics of Knowledge. European Journal of Social Theory, 9(2), 205–221. Mignolo, W. (2011). Epistemischer Ungehorsam. Rhetorik der Moderne, Logik der Kolonialität und Grammatik der Dekolonialität. Wien: Turia + Kant. Mignolo, W. (2012). Local Histories/Global Designs. Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Monghia, R. (2007). Historicizing State Sovereignty. Inequality and the Form of Equivalence. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 49(2), 384–411. Novak, P. (2014). Tracing Connections and Their Politics. In H. Alff & A. Benz (Eds.), Tracing Connections: Explorations of Spaces and Places in Asian Contexts (pp. 21–40). Berlin: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Berlin. Nowotny, H. (1999). Es ist so. Es könnte auch anders sein. Über das veränderte Verhältnis von Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Randeria, S. (1999). Jenseits von Soziologie und soziokultureller Anthropologie: Zur Ortsbestimmung der nichtwestlichen Welt in einer zukünftigen Sozialtheorie. Soziale Welt, 50(4), 373–382. Rehbein, B. (2013). Kaleidoskopische Dialektik: Kritische Theorie nach dem Aufstieg des globalen Südens. Konstanz: Universitätsverlag Konstanz. Sayer, A. (1999). Long Live Postdisciplinary Studies! Sociology and the Curse of Disciplinaryparochialism/Imperialism [pdf]. Available at: http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/resources/sociology-online-papers/papers/sayer-long-livepostdisciplinary-studies.pdf [Accessed 21 Dec. 2012]. Sidaway, J. (2013). Geography, Globalization, and the Problematic of Area Studies. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 103(4), 984–1002. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). (2015). Towards 2030 [pdf] (UNESCO Science Report). Available at: http:// unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002354/235406e.pdf [Accessed 13 Apr. 2016].

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Weingart, P. (2010). Wissenschaftssoziologie. In D. Simon, A. Knie, S. Hornbostel, & K. Zimmermann (Eds.), Handbuch Wissenschaftspolitik (pp. 118–129). Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. World Commission on Environment and Development. (1987). Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future [pdf]. Available at: http://www.un-documents.net/our-common-future.pdf [Accessed 8 Feb. 2016]. Zanker, F., & Newbery, K. (2013). Comparison Re-Invented: Adaptation of Universal Methods to African Studies [Conference Report]. Africa Spectrum, 48(2), 107–115.

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Index

A abstractions, first-level, 20, 215–16, 225–6 academia, economization of, 4 academic(s) activism, 34 capitalism, 58 colonization, 281 imagination, 244 academic quality, 34–5, 37–8 assessment, 4, 34, 36, 38 academy decolonization of the, 13 Sinophone, 32 advice, political-/policy, 16–17, 83–98, 293, 296 aesthetics, 148, 251–2, 257–8, 263, 265–6, 266n1 Africa, 5–6, 9–10, 12–13, 87, 148, 150–2, 178, 187, 195, 209, 254, 291, 304n3, 316, 329, 341n1 African philosophy, 7 African sociology, 7

African Studies, 7, 9–10, 12, 98n6, 296 agency, 40, 84, 88, 123–4, 179, 181, 183, 185–6, 206, 220–1, 225, 254, 264, 292, 295, 328 alignment, 85, 134, 136 American hegemony, 28, 41, 332 Americanization, 33 analysis, mid-level, 19 analytical categories, 246 anthropocene, 340 anti-national, 149 APEC. See Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) approaches inter, 12, 243, 273 multi, 12, 243 post-disciplinary, 20, 270, 273 transdisciplinary, 12, 273 approach, heuristic, 11, 20–1, 234, 242–4, 247 Arabastan, 17–18, 141–55 Arabia, 97n4, 148, 150

Note: Page numbers followed by “n” denote notes; boldface indicate illustrations.

© The Author(s) 2017 K. Mielke, A.-K. Hornidge (eds.), Area Studies at the Crossroads, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59834-9 [email protected]

345

346  

INDEX

Arabic studies, 234 area based theory, 205 (de-)constructed-dispositions, 8 definition of, 301 European, 198 expertise, 12, 84–96, 200 experts, 17, 89–91, 94–7, 196, 203 as flexible heuristic instrument, 202 of the future, 3, 341 knowledge, 84–6, 89, 92–4, 200, 209 notion of, 70, 198, 332 in our minds, 223–6 post, 72–3, 197, 204, 274 Science, 16, 65 specialists, 13, 89, 206–9 trans, 199, 204 area lineages, 6 areanists, 9, 11, 14, 203, 214–15, 226, 333–4 area studies analytical, 225, 335, 341 architecture, 7 colonializing, 94–7 comparative, 333 crisis of, 8, 237 critical, 58, 72–3 critique of, 195, 235, 254 dialogical, 56 emancipatory, 338–9, 341 ethical-political mandate for, 337 geopolitics of, 48–51, 235 hermeneutic circle of, 201 highpoint of, vi in-to-outside perspective of, 204 mainstreaming, 22, 337 as mode of inquiry, 235 new, 18–19, 21, 72, 195–210, 253 pluri-topic, 16 post, 72–3, 197, 274 re-envisioning, 252

reparative strategy for, 254 rethinking of, 15, 20, 277 specialists, 10, 205 teaching, 244 traditional, 8, 202, 296 traditional-style, 207 usefulness of, 6, 195 area study programs, 233–4, 244–5 arena/s, translocal, 180, 183 transnational, 180, 183 ASEAN. See Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Asia, moving target of, 21, 309–24 Asian history, 30 Asianized Asian Studies, 196–7 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), 314 Asia-Pacific Studies, 196 Asia Studies, 239, 252, 256 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 72, 238, 313–14, 316–17, 332 B Balkan Studies, 233 barriers, regional, 18 bases pedagogical, 13 theoretical, 182, 198 becoming, 4, 31, 134, 181, 186, 196, 215, 237–8, 270, 278, 280–1, 290, 294, 299, 303, 316, 338 being, 5, 7–8, 10, 12–14, 17, 27–8, 30–1, 35–6, 38, 53, 65, 71, 75, 89–91, 93, 95–6, 98n6, 104–5, 107–9, 111–15, 124–5, 130–1, 134, 141, 145, 148, 153, 163, 165, 171, 196, 199–200, 203–5, 208, 213–18, 220, 224–6, 234, 236, 243, 253–4, 260, 270, 272–3, 275–6, 278–9, 282n8,

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INDEX  

291, 295, 297, 299, 301, 303, 315–16, 321, 327–8, 331–2 remote, 125 big data, 328 binary oppositions, 40, 135 bipolar world, 3, 5 Black Atlantic, vii blind spots, 335 border consciousness, 21, 270, 272, 280 borderland, academic, 270 borderlands, transgressing, 73 border/s civilization, 237 nation, 237 national, 19, 178, 189, 252, 262–3 regional, 184 regions, 179 border thinking, critical epistemological method of, 39 boundary(ies) cognitive, 5 crossing, 14, 41, 244 cultural, 8, 197, 207 denominational, 18 disciplinary, 10, 12, 15, 20, 276, 327, 337, 340 drawing, 5, 20, 200, 214, 310 epistemological, 36–7, 41, 214 ethnicity-based, 4 ethno-linguistic, 18 geopolitical, 196, 243 making, 109, 122, 216 national, 189, 252, 262–3 negotiations, 20, 216 production, 14 regional, 4, 13, 18, 187 religion-based, 4 renegotiating, 216 shifting, 179 social, 18, 109, 123, 163 socially constructed nature of, 214

347

socio-cultural, 4 transgression of, 196 transnational, 199 weakening, 14 boundary crossing, epistemological, 41 boundary work, 338 boundedness, 18, 29 Brazil, Russia, India, China (BRIC), 316 Brazil, Russia, India, China; Korea (BRICK), 213–26 Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China, South Africa (BRIICS), 316 Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS), 316 Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, ASEAN, Mexico (BRICSAM), 316 Buddhism, 264–5 buen vivir, 335 building blocks of sense- and meaning making, 20, 216 Burmese Studies, 7 C capitalism academic, 58 historical, 30 neoliberal, 15, 27, 36 Carnegie Foundation, 292 case studies, 17, 74, 177, 179, 183, 187, 333 center, 8–9, 15, 48, 54, 59, 76, 90, 92, 123, 133–4, 136, 141–74, 295, 314, 339–40, 341n1 Central Asia, 5, 13, 98n6, 129, 141, 160, 208, 321, 341n1 centrality, 14, 18, 123, 125, 132–3, 136, 147, 153, 299, 335 change-processes, 331 China Model, 320

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INDEX

Chinese Studies, 296 Chistiya brotherhood, 142 chronological depth, 202 chronotopes, 255–7, 266 of contemporary Southeast Asian cinema, 21, 252 cinema, global arthouse, 252 civilization, 6, 69, 73, 121, 162, 177, 237–8, 272, 296, 298 Civilizational Studies, 196 Clash of Cultures, 72 co-constructions, 20 code/s, 88, 104, 109, 181 coexisting conceptions, 310 Cold War, 4, 6, 10, 12, 27–8, 72, 97n6, 252, 254–5, 258, 292, 294, 313, 330, 332 academic legacies, 12 collaborative research projects, 58, 341 colonial, 5–6, 10, 16, 36, 38, 40, 49, 51, 54–6, 59–60, 72, 84, 95, 103, 153, 168, 208, 255, 257, 262, 272–3, 277, 281, 296, 311, 314 colonial difference, 235, 273 colonial encounter, 48, 196 colonialism, 15, 28, 49–50, 72, 160, 165 coloniality of power, 40, 49, 235, 237 colonializing Area Studies, 94–7 commercial hub, 136 communicative action, 217, 223 communicative construction, 21, 321, 323 communicative constructs, 309–10 community, 58, 90, 92, 97n6, 109, 113–15, 145, 149, 155n2, 167, 172, 177–9, 182, 217, 280, 311, 313, 315, 331–2 comparability, 206 comparative political theory, 197 comparative research, 12, 68, 70, 177

comparative studies, 8 comparison, interdisciplinary, 200, 309, 317, 322, 338, 341 complexes power-knowledge, 48–9, 217–18 concept/s analytical, 180, 207, 270 diffusion of, 180 of metageography, 199 mid-range, 18–20, 159–74, 177–89, 195–210, 213–26, 332 travelling, 188, 208 travelling of, 180 universally applied, 180 conditions extra-epistemological, 33, 38 configurations, reflexive, 21 conflict and peace research, 327 connections, diasporic, 8 connectivity, 125, 187 in motion, 73 connectivity, transregional, 187, 296, 304n4 constitutive critique, 336 construction of reality, processes of social, communicative and discursive, 214 construction of regional concepts, 310 constructs, social, 12, 333 container community, culture, region as-concepts, 179 concepts, 66, 179, 319 deconstructing–concepts, 179 focus, 8 space, 218, 334, 340 thinking, 49, 52 context, 10, 15, 17, 19–20, 22, 28–9, 48, 50, 54, 59, 74, 87, 93–4, 103–18, 122, 125, 135, 144–52, 155n1, 160, 164, 166, 168, 171–3, 177, 182, 187–8, 195,

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INDEX  

197–8, 205, 208, 218, 224, 237, 255, 259, 261, 275, 293, 297, 301, 317–20, 324n1, 329, 331, 335, 337 context-sensitive research, 22, 337 contextual resistance, 136 contract research, 7 contrapunctual lecture, 56 co-presence, 54–6 cosmologies, 224 cosmopolitanization, 321 counter-ontologies, 14 crisis, 3, 8–10, 168, 233, 236–7, 273, 290, 293, 298, 313, 314, 317–18 crisis-debate, 13 cross-categorical translation, 207 cross-disciplinary, 243, 246, 329 Crossroads Asia, 14, 68, 95, 136n3, 182, 270, 273–5, 278, 334 cultural block, 178 competences, 6, 89, 336 encounters, 50, 303 homogenization, 33 practices, 50, 95, 166 sphere, 277, 302, 316 Cultural Studies, 31, 52, 66, 70, 72–3, 141, 196–8, 277, 293, 309–10, 320–3 cultural turn, 7, 185, 317, 322 culture, Islamicate, 144, 146–9, 152, 154–5n1 curricula/-um, 6, 15, 20, 76, 173, 245, 280, 281n1 D data portals, 328 debate/s, 5–9, 12–13, 15, 21, 40–1, 50–1, 58–9, 60–1, 69, 83, 89–90, 95, 133, 136, 146–7, 159, 165, 177, 181–2, 184, 186–8, 195,

349

199, 208, 214, 226, 244, 246, 277, 289–91, 293–4, 298–301, 304n1, 309, 318, 330, 332, 337 debordering, 337 decentering, 16, 70 of Northern perspectives, 336 decoloniality, 270, 272, 277 decolonial thinking, 272, 279 decolonization of imagination, 336 of knowledge, 15–16, 47–61 deschooling, academic, 15, 20 despatialization of social life, 33 despatialized, 27 deterritorialization, 48, 318, 321, 323 tendencies, 8 devaluation of place, 124 development research, 177, 189, 327 theories, 6, 11 uneven, 254 development policy, 6, 94, 181, 184 Development Studies, 8, 186–9 dialectic movements, 21, 323 dialogue, 31, 42n1, 48–9, 51–61, 174n1, 244, 280, 303, 336, 338 diaspora, 10 Diaspora Studies, 196–7 dichotomy, 12, 14, 160 differentiation, social, 216 dimensions, epistemological, 13, 166, 278 dimensions, ontological, 13, 278 disciplinarians, 9, 11, 203 disciplinary departments, 244 disciplinary inertia, 244 discipline/s decentring of, 197 systematic, 8–9, 13–15, 19–20, 22, 29, 160, 178, 224, 293, 303, 332–3, 336–7

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350  

INDEX

discourse, doxographic, 58 discursive action, 217 disintegration, 10 disjuncture, 238 Diskurszusammenhänge, 336 disobedience, epistemic, 21, 270, 336 disorder, 130, 133, 168 distance, 54, 66, 73, 76, 110, 133, 149, 185, 195, 198, 203, 206, 209, 218, 254, 289, 299, 336 diversity, 15, 28, 69–70, 74, 89, 108, 111, 159, 162, 165, 181, 189, 198, 205, 239, 241, 243, 247, 252, 279, 333–4, 339, 341 divides between different science systems, 327–8 disciplinary, 327, 338 epistemological, 30, 38 double-layered hermeneutic, 19, 201 dynamic/s, regional, 12 E East Asia, 67, 69, 71, 240, 310–23 East European Studies, 9, 11 East or West Africa, 5, 178 economy female, 184–5 moral, 11, 165, 246 shadow, 184 education, 13–15, 18, 36, 51, 61, 95, 103, 107, 110–13, 117n2, 234, 272, 275–7, 279–80, 281n1, 291, 294–5, 302, 304n3, 331–2 efforts, rethinking, 15 emancipatory claims, 32 enlightenment, 31, 311 entangled, 16, 29, 48–9, 52, 54, 59, 61, 73, 183, 237, 244–5, 317 entanglements, 16, 22, 48–9, 51, 58–61, 73, 125, 160, 163, 246,

291, 298, 299, 303, 310, 321–4, 337, 339 entrenchments, 22, 310, 315, 320–3 epistemes, theory-making, 236, 239 epistemic approach, 178 epistemic authority, 34, 338 epistemic communities, 39, 177–8, 182–3, 187, 322 epistemic core, 197 epistemic disobedience, 21, 270, 336 epistemic racism/sexism, 272 epistemic violence, 271–3, 280 epistemological barriers, 34 epistemology(ies) indigenous, 50 spatialized, 28, 30 Western, 204, 339 epistemology, racist, 196 Eskimology, 233 essentialism ethno-centric, 51 reflexive, 21, 318–23 essentialist, 9, 22, 30, 51, 136, 300, 310, 312, 316, 318–19, 323 ethnography global, 18–19, 66, 177–89 unbound, 66, 186 ethnology, 182 Euro-American knowledge production, 239 Euro-Amerocentrism, 30–41 Eurocentrism, 29, 37–40, 196 Europe, 4–5, 7, 9–12, 20, 28–9, 35–6, 39–40, 48, 59, 87, 195, 198, 240, 272, 291, 297, 300, 311, 316, 321, 329–31, 337 European regionalism, 315 exclusion, 115, 235, 275, 295, 315–16, 319 extra-epistemological strategic responses, 34 extra-Northern contexts, 336

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INDEX  

F family resemblance, 17, 65, 74–6 feminism, 125, 187–9, 252–3, 273–5 field research, 19, 67, 85, 94, 111, 117n2, 123, 182, 186, 328, 341 figuration, 68, 90, 95, 204, 265, 275, 278, 339 fixity, 17–18, 121–37 flows borderless, 195 global, 8, 178, 238, 297 trans-cultural, 65 translocal, 104, 179 fluidity, 9, 93, 154 Ford Foundation, 53, 195, 392 formal, 107, 148, 172, 180, 183, 185, 201, 220–5, 312 sphere, 223 funding agencies, 84, 292, 328 funding, mechanisms of, 252 future, 3–4, 7, 12–15, 21, 40, 121–2, 130, 133, 217, 224, 233, 239, 251, 260–1, 264, 289–305, 309, 313–14, 318, 322–3, 330, 335, 338–9, 341 G gated publications, 328 gender, 18, 32, 42n1, 75, 104, 107, 179, 182, 185, 188–9, 198, 225, 257, 263, 272–4, 327, 333 order, 183 gendered, 18, 107, 109, 115–17, 184–5, 188, 256–7, 271, 273, 275 gender studies, 327 genealogies of co-production, 334 genesis, 72 geographies of power, 6 geography

351

global, 35, 38, 199 imaginative, 71 geography of knowledge, 244 geometry, variable, 48 geopolitical, 6, 16, 28, 31, 47–8, 59–60, 72, 95, 196, 243, 291, 313, 316, 340–1 geopolitics, hegemonic, 16, 50, 54 geopolitics of knowledge, 16, 48–52, 54 German Council for Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat), 294 Gilgit-Baltistan, 103, 106, 112 global flows, 8, 178, 238, 297 geography, 35, 38, 199 global aid architecture, 178 global cities, 299 global entanglements, 61 global ethnography, 18–19, 66, 177–89 Global History, 8, 21, 302–3, 319 global immobilities, 16, 27–42 global immobility of theory production, 33–4 globality, 187–8 globalization first-wave, 27 theory, 33, 187, 293 Global North, 3, 35, 178–9 global order, 28, 34 Global South, 54–5, 57, 177–8, 186, 270, 272, 294–5, 336, 341n1 Global Studies, 8, 21, 66, 183, 290, 302 global university, neoliberalization of the, 38 glocal, 8 glocalization, 187, 189 going naïve, 54 Golden Triangle, 67

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352  

INDEX

good governance, 89–90 governance, 8, 92, 171, 178, 183, 215–16, 258, 263, 299, 315, 318 green movement, 330 Gross National Happiness Index, 335 H hagiography, 150–2 hegemonic centres, 180, 183 interpretations, 183 structure, 178 hegemonies, proliferating, 28–9 hermeneutics, pluritopic, 56 heuristic approach, 11, 20–1, 234, 242–4, 247 heuristic devices, 8, 12, 76, 164 Hindutva, 141, 145, 147, 149, 154, 154n1 Hirsch-index, 329, 338 historicity, 185 historiography, 170, 236, 256, 258, 262, 265 history comparative, 198 entangled, 49 global, 8, 21, 302–3, 319 oral, 55 transnational, 265, 301 homogenization, 33, 189, 237, 315, 320 homogenizing project, 7 humanities, 35, 94, 123, 159–60, 164, 173, 200, 204, 225, 233, 252, 257, 277, 290–2, 294, 296–7, 303, 327, 333, 336, 339–41 hybridity, 33, 42n2, 252 I identity, 9, 10, 12, 49, 51, 72, 105, 106, 108, 114, 144, 147–9, 179,

235, 236, 238, 295, 315, 317, 319, 320 ignorance growth of, 179, 180 systems of, 18, 177–89 imagination, 11, 16, 40, 47, 57, 59, 60, 66, 71, 84, 116, 125, 130, 133, 186, 240, 244, 302, 319, 336 geopolitical, 47, 59 imaginations colonial, 16, 84 cultural, 16, 84 imagined area communities, 6 imagined communities, 11, 164, 246, 315 impact studies, 184 in-betweenness, 14, 278, 279 inclusion, 58, 85, 89, 96, 202, 235, 316, 319 Indian Ocean Studies, 197 Indigenous Studies, 196, 197 Indology, 6, 233, 292 inequalities epistemic, 280 global, 15, 16, 34 ontological, 280 informal forms of economy, 184 sphere, 220, 223 information society, 331 innovations, 7–9, 12, 37–9, 165, 256, 329, 335, 339 institutionalism, 167, 313–15 institutional resistance, 40 institutional setting, 84–8, 303 institutions global, 19, 179 local, 19, 90, 179 translocal, 19, 179 intellectual dominance, 35 intellectual labour, 33, 34 inter, 12, 13, 60, 61, 73, 105, 107, 116, 160, 167, 169, 179, 188, 243, 273, 276, 322, 328–31

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INDEX  

interactionism, 313–15 interaction/s, 3, 14, 18, 48, 53, 55–7, 73, 85, 104, 107, 113–17, 122, 124, 129, 135, 140–2, 151, 168, 170, 173, 178, 179, 181, 184, 189, 197, 207, 209, 240, 245, 246, 275, 298–300, 309, 310, 312–16, 318–22, 333, 336 transmaritime, 197 interactive approach, 19, 179 Inter-Asian Cultural Studies, 72, 73 interconnectedness, 180, 215, 216, 219, 224 interdisciplinarity, 22, 178, 309, 329, 335, 338, 340–1 interdisciplinary, 5, 7, 8, 11, 14, 20, 22, 48, 60, 66, 160, 178, 180, 196, 200, 244, 253, 270, 278, 294, 309, 317, 322, 324n1, 327, 329, 331–3, 337, 338, 340, 341, 341n1 interface/s encounters at, 179, 182 of knowledge systems, 182 international development community, 178 internationalization, 165, 233, 291, 292, 331 international organizations, 87, 88, 178, 301, 313 international relations, 10, 179, 294, 299 intersectionality, 198 interventions, 34, 36, 53, 84, 85, 88–94, 123, 134, 179, 182, 256, 267, 302, 313 invalidation of categories, 299 Islamicate culture, 144, 146–9, 152, 154, 155n1 K key concepts in social sciences, 246 knowledge(s)

353

access to, 185, 273, 335 acquisition, 189 area, 84–6, 89, 92–4, 200, 209 arenas, 184, 189 artefacts, 186 authority of, 189 battle, 182 co-construction of, 21, 270 communities, 189 decolonization of, 15, 16, 47–61 economy, 35, 36 emic, 17 environmental, 182 erosion of, 184 etic, 17 exchange, 186 expert, 179, 185 fields of, 159, 182 future-oriented, 338 for development, 177–80 gendered structure of, 185 geographies of, 27 geopolitics of, 16, 48–52, 54 global, 35, 50, 180 globalized–arenas, 189 glocalization of, 189 incomplete, 241 indigenous, 181 interdisciplinary, 278, 329, 337, 340 local, 17, 51, 58, 85, 88, 89, 94, 180, 181, 185, 188 mainstream expert, 185 management, 183–6 multinodal, 41 networks, 184 Northern, 329, 334 order of disciplines, 294 orders, 15, 179, 294, 335 place-based, 207 platforms, 180, 183 politics of, 239, 270, 277 production of, 17–19, 48, 52, 54, 177–89, 269, 331

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354  

INDEX

knowledge(s) (cont.) reflexive praxis for transforming, 20 situating, 177, 278 society/ies, 50, 58, 179, 331 sociology of, 19, 178, 179, 217 special, 181, 188 stock of, 182 thick, 95 uniform platforms, 180, 183 universality of, 17 valid, 57, 202, 333 Western, 40, 50, 51 knowledge generation, 6, 12, 159, 161, 165, 278, 332, 334–6 policy-relevant, 12 knowledge orders, 15, 179, 294 Euroamerican, 335 knowledge production decolonizing, 61, 280 mediatedness of, 253 Mode 1, 331 Mode 2, 331 non-Euro-Amerocentric, 14 sites of, 56, 180 theoretical, 246, 278 westernized, 272 Konkani Sufi/s, 17, 18, 141–55 Kulturkreise, 72 L laboratory, 65, 70, 328 for social and cultural studies, 70 language skills, 88, 215 learning processes, 183, 184 to unlearn, 335–6 lecture, 13, 55–6, 328 contrapunctual, 56 legibility transnational, 251 level grassroots, 186

mid, 19, 181, 206, 207 regional, 331 subnational, 183, 323 life-world(s) perspective, 182 gendered, 18, 115–17 linguistic expertise need for development of, 247 linguists, 10, 12 literary theory, 277 lived realities, 239, 241, 246, 247 local, 7, 11–14, 17–19, 30, 34, 36, 38, 51, 56, 58, 68, 74, 84, 85, 88–90, 92–4, 103, 110, 116, 124, 125, 128, 144–51, 153, 155n4, 160, 166–72, 178–85, 188, 189, 196, 199, 200, 202, 204, 206–9, 215, 216, 223, 225, 226, 237, 239, 243, 246, 251–3, 258, 264, 265, 294, 296, 297, 299, 300, 318, 329, 333, 334, 336–8 in the global, 187 local experiences, 243 localism, 65 localization, 179, 180, 187 processes, 180 local language/s, 88, 173, 200, 215, 225, 338, 341 expertise, 329 local ownership, 94 local researchers, 166, 179, 184, 226 local vocabularies, 208 locatedness, 29, 266 location, 27, 29, 34, 39, 87, 127, 130, 136, 200, 202, 258, 261, 262, 274, 277, 278, 291 M Maharashtra, 18, 141, 142, 144–7, 149, 151, 154, 154n1, 155n3 Maphilindo, 67

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INDEX  

Marathi, 144, 145, 147–9, 152, 154, 154n1, 155n4 world, 154 margins, 17, 18, 36, 39, 69, 141–55, 340 marine social science, 327, 340 meaning cultural, 181 making, 18, 20, 122, 213–26 negotiating, 181 processes of making, 214 social, 161, 179, 181 meaning-making, 18, 20, 122, 213– 26 mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, 316 Media Studies, 277 meeting place, 105 Mekong Region, 67 mestiza, 270 methodological approach, 165, 178, 180, 182, 241, 278, 302, 322 challenges, 179–83, 189 methodological nationalism, 49, 52, 65, 71, 178, 183, 301 methodologies dialogical, 16 dynamic, 178 of encounter, 55 entangled, 16, 61 “follow-the,” 187, 339 indigenous, 51 metropolitan centers, 314 micro-macro divide, 181 Middle Eastern Studies, 7 middle range, 160, 163, 180, 210, 215 social theories of the, 160 mid-range concept/s, 18–20, 159–74, 177–89, 195–210, 213–26, 332

355

processual, 209 mid-range theories, 163, 164, 183 migration, 5, 17, 33, 68, 76, 84, 93, 103–18, 146, 147, 178, 183, 184, 187, 275, 298, 303, 319 circular, 183 Migration Studies, 183, 303 minor disciplines, 245, 303 minoritization, 141, 145, 154 political, 154 mobility/ies accelerating, 16, 38, 330, 332 cognitive, 166, 339, 340 cross-border, 204 ontological, 251 temporal, 105, 251 transregional, 298 mobility lens, 17 mobilization processes, 14 Modern Indian Studies, 233 modernist project, 48 modernities entangled, 183, 317 multiple, 183, 295 modernity epistemic privilege of, 40 modernization, 6, 11, 107, 134–6, 196, 208, 237, 271, 274, 293, 320 state-imposed, 135 monopolization of economic control of the global circulation of academic knowledge, 36 moral economy, 11, 165, 246 multi-disciplinary approach, 243 multinodal, 28, 29, 41 multipolar world, 296 multi-sited, 8, 13, 41, 56, 186, 333, 339, 341 Muslim reformists, 148–50 Muslim South Asia, 141, 146

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356  

INDEX

N naïve, 57, 146, 290 going, 54 narratives, 18, 57, 107, 122, 123, 133–5, 145, 147, 149–52, 161, 167, 170, 187, 202, 206, 259, 260, 264, 271, 274, 293, 311, 316, 317, 320 national, 9, 11, 19, 28, 36, 39, 67, 73, 84, 88, 93, 121, 128, 174n1, 178, 183, 184, 187–9, 196, 199, 202, 203, 219, 234, 252, 256–8, 262, 263, 265, 294, 296, 297, 299, 301, 311, 312, 318–21, 323, 330, 331, 334, 335 lens, 196 nationalism, 154, 318 methodological, 49, 52, 65, 71, 178, 183, 301 nation state, 27, 33, 38, 88, 271, 274, 275, 297–9, 304n6, 311, 313, 319–21 nativist isolationism, 31 uniqueness, 31 negotiation local/regional, 183 of meanings, 19 neocolonialism, 28 neoimperialism, 34, 35 neoliberalization, 38, 329 of the system of scientific production, 327 neoliberal university, 15, 27–42 networking, 19, 178, 183, 187 transnational, 188 network/s family, 185 multi-scaled, 68 trading, 18, 185 translocal, 107, 116, 128 NGO/s, 61, 89, 184–6, 188 Nizari Ismaili, 107

non-Northern, 19, 22, 166, 327, 337–9 non-places, 124 non-spatial, 10 non-Western, 16, 22, 30–2, 36, 39, 164, 165, 198, 208, 303, 320, 327, 337–9 world, 293, 294 North, 3, 15, 17, 19, 47, 60, 142, 297, 333 North American Area Studies, 293 North Indian Islamicates, 149 North-South divide, 178 North-South transfer, 178 O Occidentalist perspective, 236 Oceanic Studies, 197 oceans, 4, 148, 197, 199, 321 oceanspaces, vii ontology/ontologies, 3, 14–16, 196, 216 Western, 196 open access publications, 328 order(s) spatial, 289, 297–300, 318 temporal, 253, 254 ordering practices, 122 symbolics of, 18 ordinariness, 263–5 orientalism, 5, 49, 165, 198, 235, 241, 291 imperialist, 28 Oriental Studies, 5, 7, 290, 291 Ostforschung, 10 “the other,” 5, 48 othering, 3, 49, 71, 125 P Pacific, 69, 196, 197, 310–22, 340

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INDEX  

partnerships, 39, 329, 341 peace-building, 332, 341 pedagogy, 20, 51, 245, 257, 258, 264, 271, 274–7, 279, 280, 282n8 transforming, 245 performativity, 271, 279 peripheries, 27, 125, 336 peripheries of peripheries, 184 Persianate world, xx perspectives post-colonial, 7 subaltern, 32 phenomenological research, 242 pitfalls, 51, 181 place devaluation of, 124 meeting, 105 relational production of, 17, 103–18, 125 place-based analysis, 197, 202, 204 placelessness production of, 124 plasticity, 310, 316, 317, 323 plural histories, 245 plurality, 50, 108, 116, 163, 165, 310 temporal and spatial, 253 policy advice, 16, 17, 83–98, 296 policy/-ies development, 6, 94, 181, 184 domain/s, 180 embeddedness of, 181 results, 184 policy-making, 330 political, minoritization, 154 political borders, 4, 5, 8, 330 political geography, 214 political science, 11, 70, 159, 160, 197, 198, 203, 225, 277, 281n6, 299 politics of critique multidirectional, 29 politics of knowledge production, 239

357

politics of space, 273, 274, 279 polyphony, 56–8 positionalities, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 27, 30, 84, 97n4, 103–18, 121–37, 164, 200, 209, 216, 226, 269, 270, 273, 275, 278, 323, 333, 334, 336 shifting, 105, 115 positionality central, 14, 132–5 conscious, 21, 270 remote, 132–5 re-negotiation of, 135 post-Area Studies, 72, 73, 197, 274 Postcolonial Studies, 42n1, 59, 196, 225 postcolonial turn, 265 postcolonial world, 31, 239 post-development, 7 post-disciplinary, 20, 21, 269, 270, 273–6, 279, 280, 281n2 post-structuralism, 7, 71 post-structuralist, 50, 57, 204, 293 power constellations, 57, 186, 187 disciplinary power, 279 global hegemonies of, 15 global–structures, 186 relations, 3, 16, 28, 49, 56, 60, 104, 169, 181, 205 power asymmetries, 49, 124 power-balance, 57 epistemological, 57 power-knowledge complexes, 48, 49, 217 power-knowledge systems, 270, 273 power relations, 3, 16, 28, 49, 56, 60, 104, 109, 181, 205 practice(s) discourses as, 217 discursive, 206, 217, 218, 220, 222–3, 225

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358  

INDEX

practice(s) (cont.) formal, 220, 221, 223 strategic, 221–3, 271 praxes, 20, 41, 61, 269, 270, 275 critical research, 269 problem-orientation, 331 processes, 8, 10–12, 14–22, 29, 33, 38, 40, 48, 51, 52, 54, 57, 60, 62, 71, 84, 85, 88, 90, 93–7, 106, 109, 116, 121, 122, 125, 129, 131, 133–6, 141, 148, 159, 162, 167–72, 177, 179–84, 187, 189, 195, 196, 199, 200, 209, 210, 214, 216–19, 221, 222, 226, 236–8, 242, 245, 258, 259, 270–2, 274–8, 280, 289–91, 295–9, 301–3, 309, 310, 313, 315, 317–21, 323, 328–32, 334, 336–8 global, 21, 245, 290, 296, 301, 302 process-geographies, 8, 199, 277 production, 3–22, 29–31, 33–6, 38–41, 48–50, 52, 54, 56, 58–61, 98n6, 103–18, 123, 124, 129, 135, 136, 159–74, 177–89, 195–7, 199, 200, 205, 218, 219, 224, 235, 239–41, 243, 246, 247, 253, 254, 257, 264, 269–73, 276, 278, 280, 281n2, 291, 298, 302, 303, 322, 327–9, 331, 334–40 of placelessness, 124 projects, 5, 7, 10, 13–15, 31, 32, 40, 41, 48, 50–3, 55, 58–61, 66, 68, 76, 89, 94, 95, 131, 136n3, 160, 171, 176n2, 182, 187, 196, 204, 245, 253, 257–60, 262, 263, 266n6, 272, 281, 290, 295, 300, 303, 315, 323, 328, 329, 340, 341n1 colonial, 5, 48

properties, 21, 58, 134–6, 148, 250, 266 spatiotemporal, 252 proximity, 66, 75, 125, 209 public sphere, 108, 149, 166, 188, 189, 209, 276 critical, 183–6 publishing houses, 35, 36, 39, 328, 339 purification, 57, 95 Q Qadiri brotherhood, 142, 151 quality academic knowledge, 37 quality assessment, 4, 16, 34–8, 41 quality project implementation, 329 quantitative studies, 333 queer cinema, 256 sociality, 263–5 studies, 32, 34 quotation market, 58 R real-world problems, 331, 335 reciprocal methodologies, 16, 47–61 reconceptualizing, 20, 233–47 reconfigurations, 9, 289, 297 of space, time, and scholarship, vi redefinition, 224, 327, 329 re-essentialization, 319, 320 reflectivism, 315–18 reflexive essentialism, 21, 318–23 reflexive knowledges, 330–2, 335 reflexivity, 57, 166, 181, 183, 187, 278, 329, 334 region, 5, 6, 11, 12, 20, 21, 65, 67, 69–72, 76, 88, 103, 104, 107, 108, 111, 142, 144, 146, 152, 154n1, 179, 185, 205, 234,

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INDEX  

238–44, 247, 252, 257, 262, 263, 266, 290, 291, 294, 296, 298, 301, 303, 305n9, 309–15, 317, 323, 336, 340 as communicative construct, 309, 310 regional, 5, 8, 11–13, 18, 21, 48, 60, 66, 67, 69, 70, 72, 84, 85, 87, 125, 144, 145, 148, 149, 153, 160, 173, 174n1, 177, 178, 181–5, 187–9, 199, 202, 219, 234, 238, 242, 252, 257, 290, 292, 294, 301, 310–15, 317–20, 322, 323, 324n1, 331, 332, 339, 341 regional connections, 322 regional exclusion, 315 regional integration, 312–14, 332 regionalization, 116, 179, 291 regional orders, 8 regional organizations, 238, 312, 313 regional research, 310, 324n1 regional science/s, 66 regional studies, 21, 160, 182, 290, 294 region-making, 303 relational approach, 76, 181 relational production of place, 17, 103–18, 125 relativism, 65, 66 remote, 47, 122, 132–6, 315 being, 125 remoteness, 18, 123, 125, 133, 136, 137n4, 335 re-negotiation/s, 4, 17, 106, 115, 122, 135, 214, 219 of positionality, 135 research beyond areas, 73 biographic, 187 centers, 8, 12, 84 comparative, 12, 68, 70, 177

359

context-sensitive, 22, 337 empirical, 14, 41, 56, 67, 70, 152, 159, 163, 164, 182–4, 219, 244, 300, 327 ethnographic research, 215 field, 19, 67, 85, 94, 111, 117n2, 123, 182, 186, 328, 341 field of, 66, 178 fundamental, 12 multi-sited, 8, 41 object of, 50 place-bound, 199 qualitative, 165, 205, 242, 247n1 scientific, 189 researching back, 50 researchers post-structuralist, 50 resistance contextual, 136 institutional, 40 respatialization, 289, 297, 302 reterritorialization, 21, 310, 318, 319, 321, 323 rethinking science, 269 science pedagogy, 280 rhizome, 66, 275 risks, 4, 30, 31, 93, 94, 111, 129, 132, 186, 222, 225, 238, 242, 294, 296, 297, 329, 330, 338, 340 Rockefeller Foundation, 53, 292 Russian Studies, 290, 305n9 S scale, 15, 17, 20, 47, 66–8, 105, 116, 124, 134, 169, 172, 199, 200, 202–5, 209, 214, 218, 224, 300, 341, 341n1 geographic, 199 scape, 67

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360  

INDEX

schooling, 275, 276, 279, 281n1 science as world-making activity, 338 disunity of, 15 topic-centered, 335 science policy-making logic of, 15 models of, 15 science policy/-ies, 3, 9, 13, 15, 16, 327–41 national, 9, 334 science system national, 294 transnational, 294 scientific community, 331, 332 scientific language, 206 sedentary bias, 337 segregation, 104, 106, 113 self-assurance, 22, 323 self-referential, 6, 160, 319, 335 self-reflection, 57, 224, 226, 332, 337, 339 self-reflexive social sciences, 294 self-reflexivity, 57 sense-making, 171 processes of making, 226n1 settings, 13, 31, 32, 38, 84–8, 91, 92, 166–8, 173, 208, 209, 223, 263, 302, 303, 317, 328, 332, 334 multi-sited, 13, 333 shifting positionalities, 105, 115–17 shrine-carers, 153 Silk Road, 76, 321 Sinology, 6, 292 situated difference, 200 situated knowledges, 50, 280 situatedness, 19, 104, 105, 116, 123, 125, 200, 205, 216, 224, 270 situational analysis, 19, 204–10 Slavic Studies, v social anthropology, 50, 53, 59, 125, 177, 178, 182

social construction of reality, 179, 181 social constructivism, 184 social embeddedness, 184 social order, Social Order, 8, 18, 19, 95, 96, 159–74, 183 social reality, 161, 185–7, 280, 309 social science/s, 7, 11, 21, 66, 70, 84, 123, 159–66, 173, 174n1, 177, 181, 197, 200, 204, 208, 225, 233, 239, 246, 276, 277, 290, 291, 293, 294, 296, 297, 302, 303, 309, 310, 317, 320–3, 327, 333, 335, 336, 339–41 social seclusion, 106 social situatedness, 104, 105, 125, 216, 224 social theory, 20, 159, 161–5, 174n1, 216, 225, 335 critical, 20, 216, 225, 335 social world/s, 179, 181, 187, 205, 217 society/ies Islamic, 147, 186 local, 19, 144, 189, 215, 216 Western, 186 sociology of development, 179 of knowledge, 19, 178, 179, 217 South America, 59, 60, 329, 335 South Asia, 5–7, 14, 67, 69, 74, 117n10, 141, 142, 146, 151–3, 312 South Asian Studies, 7 Southeast Asia, 11, 16, 17, 20, 21, 65–76, 188, 209, 234, 238–41, 243, 244, 247, 251–67, 291, 310, 312, 320, 323, 331, 341n1 Southeast Asian Studies, 9, 11, 20, 21, 66, 70, 71, 209, 233–47, 258 South-South relations, 295 Soviet bloc, 6 space(s)

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INDEX  

alternative, 152, 154 cognitive, 18, 218, 219 discursive, 218 of entanglement, 16, 48, 60 epistemological, 270 geographic, 199, 224 inter-connected, 73 marine, 3, 334 multidimensionality of, 15, 20, 274 multiple spaces, 180, 183 of negotiation, 182 ontological, 270 physical, 218, 219 reconfiguring, 237 regional, 189 social, 218, 219 socio-cognitive, 334 territorial/physical, 179 transient, 73 translocal social, 179 transnational, 19, 183, 299 transnational migratory, 187 space-time, 255, 271, 281n4 spatial containers, 27, 49 spatialities of intellectual prestige, 38 of knowledge, 33, 36 spatialization of the world, 196 spatial literacy, 274 spatially fixed, 6 spatial turn, 7, 70, 277, 290, 297, 317, 319 specialization, 330 standardized studies, 186 standards, 49, 95, 207, 241, 265, 332, 340 state elite, 134, 225 state-imposed, 135 static, 14, 87, 122, 141, 147, 154, 243, 309 structuration, 181, 183

361

structure/agency, 181 student exchange, 113, 332 study programs, 6, 11, 233, 234, 244, 245, 303 subaltern, 32, 54–6, 58, 277, 280 subjectivity of the local, 94–7 sub-regionalism, 321 sub-regions, 21, 69, 311, 312, 317, 321, 323 Sufi, 17, 18, 141–55 spirituality, 152 Sulu Archipelago, 67 sustainable development, 330, 335 symbolic capital of belonging, 312 symbols, 4, 37, 105, 330, 339 synergies, 178 systems of ignorance, 18, 19, 177–89 T talking back, 50 teaching, 14, 15, 20, 21, 28, 61, 71, 117, 173, 184, 216, 225, 244, 252, 253, 261, 264, 269–82, 295, 328, 330, 331, 335, 338, 339 academic, 71, 184 technology, 85, 182, 199, 234, 271, 331, 341 teleology of development, 297 temporalities, 254–5 coexistence of multiple, 253, 255–8, 260, 264–6 temporality, 21, 202, 251, 253–6, 259, 264 tenured positions, 294, 295 territorially fixed, 5, 215 territorial trap, 66 territory, 15, 20, 95, 116, 136, 155n1, 167, 218, 275, 302, 309, 311, 316 textbook, 34, 95, 234

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362  

INDEX

textual analysis, 242 theatre state, 11, 164, 208, 246 theories of the middle range, 160, 163, 180, 215 theory/-ies building, 178, 181, 186–9, 305n10 disciplinary, 203 distant, 9, 334 empirically grounded, 181, 186–9 globalization, 27, 33, 66, 178, 187, 188, 293 grounded, 19, 164, 165, 178, 180, 181, 183, 186–9, 205, 225, 242 mid-range, 163, 164, 183 modernization, 196, 271, 293 thick description, 11, 165, 246 thick knowledge, 95 third-party funds, 329 third wave, v–vii Third World, 6, 10, 12, 34, 54, 61, 182, 235, 272, 293, 296 Third World identity, 12 Tibetology, 233 time-space compression, 123 time-space configuration, 202 trade transcontinental, 185 transnational, 185 uncivilized, 17, 18, 121–37 trait geography/-ies, 8 trans, 8, 14, 18, 273, 276, 302, 322 transaction route, 321 zone, 321 trans-culturalism, 8 transcultural ties, 151 transdisciplinarity, 329–31 transdisciplinary studies, 195 transfer of concepts, 186 transfers/diffusion North to South, 19

transformation, 11, 41, 48, 125–32, 135, 148, 177, 178, 180, 181, 189, 199, 217, 237, 241, 244, 276, 279, 291, 313, 317, 329 epistemological, 48 transformative approach, 181 transformative sciences, 214 transgender, 32 transgression, 196, 278 academic, 270, 279 translation, 12, 18, 19, 54, 61, 179, 195–210, 273, 280, 295, 317, 336 translocality, 8, 73, 178, 186, 187, 271, 300 transmodern complexity, 271–3 transnationalism, 8, 123, 182, 189, 299–301 transnationalization, 178 Transnationalization Studies, 178 transnational turn, 317 trans-regionalism, 8 transregional political movements, 302 transregional studies, 21, 187, 289–305 tribalism, 167, 318 tribal turn, 92 truth claims, 20 Turkic world, vii turn/s, 3–22, 50, 53, 70, 92, 93, 142, 147, 151, 152, 185, 198, 199, 251, 257, 273, 277, 290–2, 297, 313, 317, 319, 321, 322, 337 typification, 214, 217 typologies, 68, 183, 187, 188, 225, 339 U uncertainty/-ies, 116, 163, 173, 270, 279, 293, 330, 334, 340 ontological, 334

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INDEX  

the uncivilized, 6, 303 uncivilized trade, 17, 18, 121–37 understanding, 4, 10, 17, 18, 27–9, 32, 49, 52, 54, 59–61, 84, 87, 88, 90, 92–5, 104, 105, 117, 122, 124, 125, 129, 142, 147, 152, 161, 162, 168–72, 189, 198, 200, 204–8, 210, 213, 215, 216, 224, 225, 235, 236, 238, 239, 243, 245–7, 266, 271, 273–5, 290, 295, 298, 300, 301, 303, 309, 321, 337, 339 unit of analysis, 294 universalism, 30, 50, 203 university/-ies, 7, 8, 11, 14–16, 27–42, 95, 97n6, 98n6, 103, 111–15, 160, 199, 233, 234, 244, 245, 269, 272, 292, 294–6, 303, 304n2 university ranking systems, 36 V validity, 9, 40, 72, 142, 164, 166, 181, 185, 246 variable geometry, 48 Verstehen, 198, 238 vicinity, 66, 128, 150 viewpoints emic, 20 etic, 20 visual representation, 252

363

W Wakhi Ismaili lifeworlds of the, 18 weapons of the weak, 11, 164, 246 Western academy, 28 Western Africa, 5, 341n1 Western Area Studies, 29–30 Western intellectual imperialism, 234 Western knowledge, 40, 50, 51 West-Rest divide, 11 world contemporary, 16, 27, 39, 196, 236, 280, 335 mobile, 20, 216, 271, 330, 332 world empires, 6 world-making, 4, 226, 332, 336, 338 world order, 3, 5, 41, 42n1, 292 world region/s, 4, 5, 14, 214, 224, 254, 289–91, 294, 300–2, 314, 332–6 world society, 338 World-System Studies, 178 world view, 278 local, 185 writing back, 50 Z Zomia/s, 67, 184, 199, 277

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