Geography, Globalization, and the Problematic of Area Studies

Abstract

There has been considerable debate about the challenges and opportunities posed for geographical scholarship by globalization. In similar contexts, however, the discipline's relationship to area studies merits careful review and reworking. Three prospective pathways through this are presented here: the status of geographical knowledge in the aftermath of the critique of orientalism and associated postcolonial departures, debates about language and translation, and attention to the situatedness and operation of perspective in geographical imaginations. Charting these tracks, the article notes obstacles and highlights opportunities.

El debate sobre los retos y oportunidades que presenta la globalización a la erudición geográfica ha recibido considerable atención. Sin embargo, en contextos similares la relación de la disciplina con los estudios de áreas amerita una revisión y re-estudio cuidadosos. Aquí se presentan tres opciones prospectivas sobre el particular: el estatus del conocimiento geográfico en el período subsiguiente a la crítica del orientalismo y desvíos poscoloniales asociados, los debates sobre lenguaje y traducción, y atención a la situalidad y operación de la perspectiva en las imaginaciones geográficas. Al trazar estos derroteros, el artículo pone de presente obstáculos y destaca oportunidades.

Key Words:

• area studies
• comparative method
• globalization
• orientalism
• postcolonialism

关键词:

• 区域研究
• 比较方法
• 全球化
• 东方主义
• 后殖民主义。

Palabras clave:

• estudios de área
• método comparativo
• globalización
• orientalismo
• poscolonialismo

Acknowledgments

Lily Kong and Robina Mohammad offered encouragement to turn some sketchy ideas and jottings into what eventually became this article. I would also like to thank the anonymous referees and Audrey Kobayashi for their valuable comments on earlier drafts. In addition, the article has benefited from feedback after seminar presentations, at the National University of Singapore in January 2011, at Wageningen University in February 2011, and at Stockholm and Uppsala Universities in May 2011. At the latter presentation, Gunnar Olsson's comments proved especially challenging. The article was also presented as an inaugural professorial lecture at the University of Amsterdam in June 2011. Many colleagues have generously offered comments on earlier drafts, but in particular Christian Abrahamsson, Oliver Kramsch, and Nick Megoran helpfully suggested a range of useful references. The interpretations here and any errors are mine. In celebration of “the country game,” the article is dedicated to Jasmin Leila: http://www.rgs.org/jasminleilaaward

Notes

1. For attempts to rethink regional geography, building on some of the theoretical issues that are also being considered here, see Sayer (1989) and Thrift (1990, 1991, 1992) and, more recently, Barnes (2011) and Paasi (2011).

2. Some past and more recent examples include Brookfield (1962), Bradshaw (1990), Gibson-Graham (2004), Mead (1969), Mikesell (1973), Olds (2001), A. Smith (2002), and Wei (2006). Some of these—and a number of others—are reconsidered later in this article.

3. Thus, as Sadiki (2004, 176) noted: “Both istishraq (Orientalism) and mustashriqun (pl. of mustashriq, i.e., Orientalists) have, long before Said adverted to them, been the subject of study by Arab scholars … Said did what other disempowered Arab scholars before him could not do through Arabic.”

4. For a thoughtful review of how “the idea of Southeast Asia received extensive discussion during its definition as a field of ‘area studies'” see Evans (2002, 147). In his review essay considering some of the themes under discussion here, Evans traced this evolution and revaluated it in the light of globalization studies and postmodernism. See also Goh (2011). It is also instructive to compare Sutherland (2003) and Warren (1997).

5. A detailed account of this is beyond the scope of this article. See the Web sites of Campus Watch and the online response by the Middle East Research and Information Project. See also the chapter by Beinin (2006) and the introduction by Doumani (2006) to the set in which both appear. There is also a thoughtful consideration in Lockman (2004). The relationship with and role of military funding in contemporary geographical research has recently been debated, regarding the ethical and political issues it raises (Agnew 2010; Bryan 2010). This debate points to the more lively one in anthropology, which has recently seen several books on this theme (Lucas 2009; Kelly et al. 2010) as well as a book-length reconsideration of the American-based anthropologists' World War II and early Cold War roles (Price 2008).

6. Although geography is listed thirty-nine times in the Index to the book, Said does not foreground geography in Orientalism. He later (citing work by the historical geographer of empire, Felix Driver) came to acknowledge more fully (in Culture and Imperialism; Said 1994) the centrality of and the capacity for struggle over geography to feature in anti-imperialist discourses and postorientalist alternatives.

7. Biography of individual scholars might be a useful approach to charting the course of area studies in geography. Corbridge, Raju, and Kumar (2006, 16) described Farmer (who became the first director of Cambridge's Centre of South Asian Studies in the 1960s) as “never much interested in geography with a capital G,” but ranging (like other British geographers working on South Asia such as Oscar Spate) through anthropology and history. They go on to note that there is no detailed account of South Asia's treatment among geographers in and of the region.

8. See the set of papers on “Zomia and beyond” in the Journal of Global History (volume 5, 2010) that followed the publication of Scott's book. Michaud's (2010, 206) introduction to the set claims “not to become a flag bearer for such a new Area Studies subdivision but to stress that we have to rethink country-based research, addressing trans-border and marginal societies.” Another recent essay taking up the theme of what peoples, places, and social relations come into vision when Zomia is invoked also begs the question of what and who is obscured (Jonsson 2010).

9. A valuable account of the claims, context, and reception of ideas of Black Athena as developed by Martin Bernal can be found in Berlinerblau (1999).

10. Todorova's (1999) account of “Balkanology” is exemplary in regard of excavating the history of the term Balkans and its functions.

11. On this case, see Ferrer-Gallardo (2008) and van Houtum (2010). More widely, the intersection of states and designation of flows of people and commodities as licit or illicit can be windows into such zones (Abraham and van Schendal 2005).

12. On the incommensurability of some basic concepts in political geography across languages, see Sidaway et al. (2004). See also Kharkhordin (2001) for a thoughtful consideration of the consequences of the ways that the concept of the state is rendered in Russian as gosudarstavo (domain of a ruler), contrary to the Latin conceptual term of state. This issue of translation is relevant in all of these cases. Bassnett (2005) provided a valuable account of how cultural and literary traditions influence the strategies of translations of al-Qaida statements. As she noted, “There are historical, extra-textual reasons that determine the choices available to translators” (393). Area studies in geographical traditions other than Anglophone are also largely beyond my scope here. French-language tropical geography and extensive German geography on Africa, Asia, and the Americas (in the tradition of Alexander von Humboldt) are described in Bowd and Clayton (2005) and Wirth (1988).

13. For a book-length exploration of this interface, see the collection in Hann (2002). See also Levin's (1994) essay on reimagining Central Asia.

14. In turn, these carry assumptions about identity, community, and self-expression that turn out to be products of a very particular time and place marked by their whiteness (Tolia-Kelly 2006).

15. See McKinnon (2011) for a useful summary of this voluminous literature.

16. Perspective itself is a product of a strand of Western representation. Other ways of looking and knowing are present, for example, in the Hindu notion of darshan (Ramaswamy 2003) or icons in the Orthodox traditions, whereby viewers recognize themselves as the point of view of the object (Ware 1963). Although further exploration of these categories of being and seeing is beyond the scope of this article, they do mark its limits.

17. Arguably, for many in geography and graduate student geographers, the languages of social and cultural theory (in translation) became more central than valuing other languages. Where students wanted to utilize another vocabulary and grammar, a geographic information systems or social theory class perhaps started to look more promising (and marketable) to many than, say, one in Ukrainian, Javanese, Farsi, or Lao.