Localizing Knowledge in a Globalizing World: Recasting the Area Studies Debate (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780815629634)

The essays in this collection address the current crisis in area studies, a crisis that differs from its perennial struggle with the established academic disciplines. This crisis stems from the confluence of three related circumstances: the end of the Cold War; greater economic and cultural fluidity across political borders; and contradictory intellectual trends in the academy, which include on the one hand a renaissance of universalizing thinking in the social sciences and on the other .hand, the rise of post-colonial studies and debates about modernity, postmodernity, and cultural hybridization.

Although the essays differ markedly in their focus and strategies, the authors all demonstrate that local knowledge, including serious study of individual cultures and proficiency in foreign languages, which are vital to understanding rapidly changing global patterns and to countering universal claims by the social sciences. While the authors also agree that area studies must reject their enthnocentric heritages and adopt inventive new contours, they present a diversity

Author: Ali Mirsepassi
ISBN-10: 081562963X
ISBN-13: 9780815629634
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Language: English
Published: 01/01/2003
Pages: 282
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.14lbs
Size: 9.68h x 6.30w x 0.82d