Area Studies
Area Studies
Area studies are based on a concept, are carried out with the aid of institutions called area centers, and are predicated on some measure of scholarly collaboration. The concept remains controversial; the institutions are increasing in number and vigor throughout the world; and scholars collaborate in manifold ways.
The basic concept of area studies is that the people of a definable geographical sector, acting in their society and their environment, offer an appropriate unit for scholarly attention. The concept is not a new one. Research, as distinct from speculation, demands an objective locus. When Aristotle compared the political institutions of Greek citystates and brought his conclusions to the attention of students, he engaged in activities not utterly dissimilar to those of modern area centers. Classical education, which focused on ancient Greece and Rome, may be regarded as an early form of area studies. It may even be contended that political science and perhaps other social sciences were until very recently little more than parochial studies of an area limited to western Europe and the United States, masquerading under a universal rubric.
History
During and immediately following World War ii, governments discovered an alarming shortage of individuals who were seriously acquainted with the languages, cultures, and topographical characteristics of the world areas in which troops had to fight and about which important political and social decisions had to be made.
In the United States during the war, many individuals were trained in special language programs instituted by the armed forces. These programs gave intensive instruction in Japanese, Chinese, and other languages. Shortly after the war, the delicately poised hostility between East and West necessitated the development of scholarly specialization in the study of the political, economic, and social institutions of the Soviet Union. With the aid of grants from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Rockefeller Foundation, Columbia and Harvard universities established centers for Russian studies. The organization of these centers and the productivity of their members provided models for the study of other areas. In the late 1950s the Ford Foundation gave substantial longterm support to a number of universities for the advancement of area studies.
In Great Britain institutions such as the School for Oriental and African Studies, which had been founded in 1916 chiefly for the language training of colonial officers and others, were broadened after 1945 to include cultural and social studies. The report of the Interdepartmental Commission of Enquiry on Oriental, Slavonic, East European and African Studies (Scarbrough Report) in 1947 asked the question: “What place should be made, in the post-war life of the British people, for the study of the languages and cultures of almost all the peoples of the world which are not of Western European origin?” (Great Britain … 1947, p. 6). The Commission answered by stating that the existing provision for area studies “is unworthy of our country and people … the study of the civilisations and languages of these countries is of such great importance for this and for succeeding generations that it would be harmful to the national interest to allow the present state of affairs to continue or even to deteriorate” (Great Britain … 1947, p. 8). Acting on this recommendation, the British government gave support to language departments in half a dozen universities. A related report, made in 1961, on Oriental, Slavonic, east European, and African studies (Hayter Report) emphasized the expansion of area studies outside the language departments and noted that for Great Britain there were three important lessons to be learned from the development of area studies in the United States: (1) the large scale of the effort; (2) the organization of area centers; (3) the emphasis on modern studies (Great Britain … 1961). As a result of this report, British universities were invited to apply to the University Grants Committee for funds to assist in the establishment or development of centers for area studies—known informally as “Hayter centres.” Thus, for example, the University of Hull is organizing a center for southeast Asian studies, and the University of Leeds has established a center for Chinese studies. In the United States and Great Britain, Latin America has received belated recognition; centers for Latin American studies, such as those at Cornell University and St. Antony’s College, Oxford, are beginning to find private and public support.
In France a remarkable expansion of area studies took place after 1955, when the École Pratique des Hautes Études received a Rockefeller Foundation grant for the development of studies of the Far East, Russia, India, and the Muslim world. Within two years, with the aid of matching funds from the Ministry of Education and other sources, 16 new professorial chairs assigned to area programs were established in the École. Cooperation with such institutions as the École des Langues Orientales, the Musée de l’Homme, and the Foundation des Sciences Politiques was encouraged, and a new center for African studies was established at the Sorbonne.
Various forms of area centers are found in other countries as well. Since 1955 there has been a formidable development of African studies in the Soviet Union, in addition to institutes of Slavonic and Oriental research and the other area centers affiliated with the Soviet Academy of Sciences. There is a Chinese study program in the Section of Oriental Studies of the Colegio de México, and a center for Latin American studies at the University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil.
Areas for study are variously delimited; the more that is known about an area, the smaller the area under institutionalized study is likely to be. For example, there is a relatively substantial amount of systematic information about Japanese society; consequently there are specialized centers for Japanese studies. But there are centers for southeast Asia as a whole, rather than for Indonesia or Thailand. The usual areas are Latin America, southeast Asia, south Asia, the Soviet Union, eastern Europe, east Asia—with a tendency toward separation of Japan and China—Africa south of the Sahara, and the Middle East, including north Africa. There are, however, other areas, such as the Caribbean islands and western Europe, that are given attention in the United States. Similarly, there are centers for American studies in European countries. The problem of dividing the world into “areas” is a continuing one, changing as the international situation creates new research needs. For example, there are 20 countries in Latin America, which differ greatly in size, language, racial composition, and other characteristics. Can such an area, having a certain geographical continuity, provide a satisfactory unit for scholarly research? Oceans used to be more readily crossed than mountain ranges and isthmuses, but since the beginning of the air age, traditional definitions of areas have shown a remarkable capacity for survival. Is the “Atlantic community” less an area, even including Turkey, than the “American states”? Do area centers that are selective within a region on the basis of former colonial connections retain utility?
Organization of area programs
Area centers are formed on the theory that collaboration is more effective than isolation in advancing knowledge about foreign areas through research, publication, and teaching. Collaboration is multiform, partly because the scholars generally hold their appointments and enjoy tenure in university departments or faculties, rather than in the area center. The majority of area courses are offered by departments or faculties and only listed by centers. However, centers may persuade departments to offer new courses or engage new faculty members; foreign scholars may give special courses as visiting lecturers at centers; and interdisciplinary seminars may be negotiated at a center’s initiative.
The experience of area centers in the past 15 years demonstrates the importance of taking pains to enhance the many forms of scholarly communication. Many centers possess separate headquarters, with faculty office space, specialized libraries, and common rooms. Former students of the Russian Research Center at Harvard University recall with pleasure the interchanges afforded at the center’s lunchroom, which served graduate students and faculty members together.
Area centers vary greatly in the kind of training and research offered and the degree to which programs are effectively planned and integrated. The Committee on World Area Research of the Social Science Research Council (Bennett 1951) has characterized the most desirable features of area programs: (1) intensive language instruction, including control of teaching by a linguistic scientist and scientific descriptive analysis of the language in question; (2) joint seminars, with participation by more than one faculty member; (3) group research; (4) combined study in humanities and social sciences; (5) availability of specialized materials, including newspapers, official records, maps, and other sources; (6) participation of foreign students and faculty members.
Probably the feature most difficult of realization is group research; the preparation of a substantial number of monographs may take several years, and some attempt is made at covering important subjects by publishing individual dissertations and other scholarly works. Another type of group research is that performed under contract with a governmental agency.
In addition, the integrated area centers may provide opportunities for field research and study visits by members of the faculties of centers. In 1951, when Bennett’s report was written, financial support for such opportunities could rarely be found, and politics made it impossible to travel to some countries. More recently, however, greatly increased funds have become available for scholarly travel, and Russia has become hospitable to certain types of study by foreign scholars. In the United States, awards made under the Fulbright-Hayes Act, grants made by private foundations to both universities and national councils, and fellowships such as those provided by the Foreign Area Fellowship Program and the National Defense Education Act have enabled a very large proportion of students (probably the majority of those competent to complete doctoral work as area specialists) to spend at least one graduate year abroad. Such research is usually done in preparation for the doctoral dissertation. Similarly, these and other sources provide a still increasing number of opportunities for faculty members to pursue research in a foreign country. In Great Britain and France the need for field research is equally recognized, although financial resources (especially from nongovernmental agencies) are limited.
There are only one or two area centers extant in the United States that offer the doctoral degree in “area studies.” However, there are a fair number of centers or universities that confer bachelor of arts degrees in area studies, and some universities offer special intermediate degrees, such as master of international affairs, with a certificate from an area center. Doctoral degrees, however, are almost universally conferred by a department of economics, history, or other discipline. This has two fundamental advantages—maintaining high standards in disciplinary preparation, and qualifying graduates for established career patterns in teaching and the civil service.
The chief educational contribution of area centers is to add area specialization to, but not substitute it for, the regular degree requirements established in each department or faculty. An area specialist, therefore, is not a specialist in “Chinese studies” or “Latin American studies.” He is first of all the recipient of a degree in a basic discipline such as geography, linguistics, one of the social sciences or arts, or possibly law or journalism. But because of his area specialization, he has passed examinations on subjects in several disciplines other than his own. He has linguistic competence appropriate to his research needs, as determined by his university’s requirements, and this may mean study of more than one foreign language. He has engaged in research within his chosen foreign region or country for at least a year and often longer. If he has received his doctorate, he will have spent from one to four years more on his studies than those who are not area specialists, the length of time depending largely on the difficulty of the languages attacked.
Field research may, of course, vary greatly. For a historian, it may involve poring over records in London and Ibadan; for a political scientist it may require foreign residence for substantial periods of time and systematic interviewing; for an economist, briefer contacts for gathering of data.
The range of subjects of field research is unlimited, with the important exception that in many centers emphasis is principally, but not exclusively, on the modern period. However, even this may differ from country to country. Thus, in Paris, France, the Division des Aires Culturelles, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Centre des Recherches Historiques, VIe Section, includes such titles as Documents and Research on the Economy of Byzantine, Islamic and Slav Countries and Their Commercial Relations in the Middle Ages in its lists of publications. The line between modern and premodern is of course an issue in sharp dispute among scholars, some of whom assert, for example, that the contemporary Islamic world cannot be understood without an understanding of the Islamic world since the seventh century a.d.; while others say that Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt is a reasonably good starting point for social scientists in the twentieth century. For some areas the great difference between classical and contemporary languages is a significant one, as in the case of India, and few scholars who are concerned with the dynamics of modern societies will take the time to learn Sanskrit, although they will probably be required to have an acquaintance with Hindi.
In effect, the range of research undertaken by students at area centers is influenced by current disciplinary fashions, by directions of concern exhibited by governmental agencies, and by problems of access to sources of data. In the case of certain European countries and Japan, during and immediately after World War II, special techniques were developed for “research at a distance”; in Hong Kong, interviewing of refugees from the Chinese mainland has become a regular practice by social scientists and others. Even in areas less formally closed, scholarly inquirers from a foreign country or different subculture, no matter how apolitical their aims and sponsorship, may have to be no less wary in the field than the local tax collectors, and even then they may run afoul of officials who suspect their motives.
There is a strong tendency for research by area specialists to be aimed principally at specific problems, such as the cause and control of inflation, changing political patterns, the modification of systems of land tenure, etc. The desire of government officials to be advised on day-to-day issues is, on the whole, resisted by social scientists, who prefer to deal painstakingly with data rather than offhandedly with hunches, but the scholars’ interests in contemporary phenomena are relevant to the issues as they are faced by officials.
Although area studies in United States universities were largely created on a “know-your-enemy” basis (“With World War ii came a sudden and great demand for exact information about places.” Hall 1947, p. 1), an important justification has been found in the system of liberal education. More recently, acquaintance with the cultures of other peoples has been promoted as an important element of training for potential government officials concerned with the administration of programs of technical and educational assistance; this is currently an explicit justification for area studies in France. Finally, studies of foreign areas by scholars qualified by disciplinary training have received an intellectual accolade: they are becoming more and more acceptable as scientifically interesting because they offer comparative data significant for the advancement of a discipline. The post-World War ii expansion of the scope of foreign policy into propaganda, education, and technical aid has created a demand for government personnel with specialized knowledge of foreign cultures and languages. Concomitantly, scholarly interest in comparative studies in the several social science disciplines has developed to such an extent that, for example, analyses of urbanization in Africa are considered as necessary as analyses of metropolitan sprawl in the United States. Political science has come to recognize studies of the bureaucracies of Burma or Mexico as being almost equal in scholarly interest to studies of the civil services of West Germany and Belgium, and as having equal theoretical relevance. Economists are beginning to be interested in the explanation of rates of inflation that Chileans and Brazilians experience and endure but which appear fantastically impractical in theories based on sober Swedish rates of growth. In this direction, scholarly respectability may happily coincide with governmental demands for worldwide comparative studies of contemporary human phenomena.
The acceptance by universities in the United States of responsibility for offering specialized training on foreign areas of a type initiated by the military services created complex sets of issues.
The first issue in the establishment of recognized area programs in United States universities was the relative importance of linguistic and social science studies. Immediately after World War II the viewpoint tended toward equating language training with area training. In practice, most of the new “area specialists” learned modern, “newspaper” Arabic or Japanese, for example, with special emphasis on one or more oral forms. Linguists developed new methods for more rapid language learning. For many of the men and women who are known as area specialists, the thorough mastery of a foreign language is not looked upon as the fundamental prerequisite for understanding a foreign culture. Language “competence” is seen, rather, as an instrument for serving various specialized requirements, for which different vocabularies and minor competences are sufficient. In an earlier day the scholarship of persons most closely qualifying as area specialists was largely philological, calligraphical, and broadly humanistic. The present generation of area specialists, in the United States at least, includes an increasingly greater proportion of social scientists and modern historians (Foreign Area Fellowship Program 1964).
It should be noted, however, that the expression “language and area studies” persists in competition with “area studies.” The reason for the survival of the first term lies in the fact that language competence is often regarded as sufficient qualification for an area specialist. It is only recently, for example, that the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State has initiated “area studies” courses in addition to its comprehensive language training.
A second and associated problem is the differences in judgment as to the relevant factors to be studied in understanding a foreign society. The issue is presented most sharply when an area center emphasizes “the modern Middle East,” “contemporary China,” or “postindependence Latin America.” In post-Kemal Turkey how much of Byzantium remains? How deeply should Pekingologists study Confucius? These are samples of questions that continue to be debated, not without heat, by those who regard themselves as interpreters of great traditions of still-living societies and those who see little that is significant therein for the evaluation of irrigation projects, for example, or the solution of housing problems. This suggests extremes, of course, but there are many less extreme opportunities for serious difference of opinion before one reaches a middle point of accommodation and perhaps of cooperation.
A third issue is the relationship between area studies and the social sciences. The work of the historian or literary critic is relatively particularistic; it is area-bound and tradition-bound, and sometimes rather strictly so—for example, Spanish rather than Iberian. The work of the economist, at its most prestigious, is relatively universalistic, theoretical, and systematic and aims at fairly specific goals, such as maximization of gross national product. Economies are not as independent of national boundaries as are units of electrical energy, but citizens in aggregate economic behavior can be treated more collectively than can, say, novelists. It is suggested that there have been four stages in the development of relationships between area studies and the social sciences; that is to say—naming the extremes—between the gathering of data and its ordering by theoretical constructs. In the first stage, data about foreign areas were collected through field research by area specialists. A second stage saw the comparison of similar problems in different areas through the broadening of training of area specialists. In the third stage, data from several areas were used by social scientists to develop new theories and to overcome the parochial basis of much existing theory in the social sciences. In the present, fourth stage, the development of theory begins to influence the types of problems area specialists investigate and the kinds of questions they begin to ask as they undertake field research, in part because, more than ever before, the training of area specialists is becoming assimilated to the training of social scientists. This is bound to have effects on both, and we may look forward to the time when the question “What know ye of -ology who only Ruritania know?” will be a real one.
Finally, there is an issue with respect to the differential availability of funds for research. In the United States, for example, the National Science Foundation does not offer grants for research in history except the history of science. Special programs of grants for postdoctoral scholars are offered under the joint auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council for research on, for example, contemporary (post-1948) China and on Latin America (chiefly the period since 1830). However, scholars interested in research on earlier periods are not excluded, since they may apply in general grants programs. In addition, it should be noted that substantial support for premodern studies in a number of areas has been given to universities by private foundations and individual donors.
Future developments
Area centers are here to stay. Area centers satisfy direct governmental needs for area specialists. These needs in foreign-aid, educational, technical, and other programs and in intelligence and military services have grown in the last decade, and it is likely that they will not greatly decrease in the next. In Britain and France, with the disappearance of the colonial training services themselves, the training of area specialists in university centers and through field research becomes more essential than ever.
No less important, an intellectual commitment to research on a foreign area is becoming scientifically respected as the social sciences gradually emerge from parochialism. The increasing interest of political scientists and sociologists, for example, in comparative, cross-national empirical research bids fair to give durability to a professional, scholarly demand for area training. There is a semantic problem here: political scientists prefer to call themselves specialists in comparative politics, however enthusiastically they continue research on one area or maintain their relationship with an area center. There is also a growing demand for the study of foreign cultures and languages at educational levels lower than that for area specialists; notable is the fact that more than one-third of all colleges and universities in the United States offer at least one year’s training in Russian.
The transfer of rationale for area studies from military capabilities to other capabilities, such as that for economic development or even for susceptibility to subversion, further solidifies the place of area centers in education in the humanities and social sciences.
An area-center function as yet undeveloped is that of supplementing the training of foreign students who attend universities in advanced countries. More ample collections of printed materials exist in the great libraries of Europe and the United States than in the archives of many underdeveloped countries, and scholars commanding extensive, effectively organized information can be found at principal Western universities. This inequity is, hopefully, a temporary situation; yet while it exists, certain foreign students in many fields of study may be persuaded to take advantage of it. A concomitant result might be the awakening of an appreciation on their part of the role of scholarship in the social sciences—the gathering of data and the establishment of islands of objective social analysis—as part of the very process of social and economic development.
One of the principal developments to be expected in the next decade is the establishment of new types of facilities for field research. One of these is the new Universities Service Center in Hong Kong. The Centro Latino Americano de Pesquisas em Ciências Sociais, founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1958 by UNESCO and Latin American governments, has demonstrated the possibility of collaboration. In association with local institutions, area centers can utilize diverse ways of bringing together foreign and local scholars in all countries in fruitful research collaboration.
Further, the jet airplane has made possible a quantum shift in scholarly communications. International associations in the social sciences, formed at the initiative of UNESCO, are able to hold congresses, and new national associations have been formed in Europe and elsewhere. Foreign areas are easy to reach; they presumably will become more accessible to research, particularly as an area’s local scholars in history and the social sciences increase in number. (The Institute of Economics of the University of Chile is an outstanding example in the Americas of an institution, developed by local initiative with the assistance of North American scholars, that has been hospitable to visiting scholars from other countries.) With the contracts entered into by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which provide funds for educational cooperation between local and foreign universities, special types of communication have emerged. Some private interuniversity arrangements have developed and may be expected to expand (such as those between the University of Costa Rica and the University of Kansas; the latter recently issued a publication describing the Latin American interests of some two hundred of its faculty members).
Area studies, responsive to governmental needs, embedded in university structures, increasingly acceptable as satisfying the intellectual curiosity of scholars, strongly supported by private and public funds, are likely to flourish in the visible future.
Bryce Wood
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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