Area Studies became increasingly common after World War II as a means of responding to perceived 'external threats' from the Soviet Union and China. After the Cold War and in the face of increasingly rapid globalisation, it seemed inevitable that Area Studies – institutionally and intellectually – would slowly degenerate. But this has not been the case, and there has recently been a resurgence of interest in it as an effective and positive research paradigm. Responding to this renewed interest, this book brings together an esteemed group of contributors at the cutting edge of the field to consider the state of Area Studies today and its prospects for the future. The Rebirth of Area Studies demonstrates that numerous aspects of the research paradigm in fact recommend it as well-suited for the present moment and the challenges posed by globalisation, both as a means to overcome disciplinary limitations and to increase self-reflexivity. Area Studies research is grounded in place-specific knowledge, yet by definition it transcends nation as the basic unit of analysis and thus empowers comparative and trans-national approaches. This book outlines a new, critical Area Studies for the 21st century – self-reflexive, aware of its limitations and conscious of its origins in geopolitical, strategic or ideological considerations – and is essential reading for historians, geographers and political scientists.

In the post-World War II era, the emergence of 'area studies' marked a signal development in the social sciences. As the social sciences evolved methodologically, however, many dismissed area studies as favoring narrow description over general theory. Still, area studies continues to plays a key, if unacknowledged, role in bringing new data, new theories, and valuable policy-relevant insights to social sciences. In Comparative Area Studies, three leading figures in the field have gathered an international group of scholars in a volume that promises to be a landmark in a resurgent field. The book upholds two basic convictions: that intensive regional research remains indispensable to the social sciences and that this research needs to employ comparative referents from other regions to demonstrate its broader relevance. Comparative Area Studies (CAS) combines the context-specific insights from traditional area studies and the logic of cross- and inter-regional empirical research. This first book devoted to CAS explores methodological rationales and illustrative applications to demonstrate how area-based expertise can be fruitfully integrated with cutting-edge comparative analytical frameworks.

Afrasian Transformations explores a dynamic nexus of transregional interactions that is reshaping political relations, economic flows and increasingly mobile lifeworlds on the one hand, and academic practices in African and Asian Studies as well as transregional research on the other.

Why is it that we so readily accept the boundary lines drawn around nations or around regions like ‘Asia’ as though they were natural and self-evident, when in fact they are so mutable and often so very arbitrary? What happens to people not only when the borders they seek to cross become heavily guarded, but also when new borders are drawn straight through the middle of their lives? The essays in this book address these questions by starting from small places on the borderlands of East Asia and looking outwards from the small towards the large, asking what these ‘minor pasts’ tell us about the grand narratives of history. In the process, it takes the reader on a journey from Renaissance European visions of ‘Tartary’, through nineteenth-century racial theorising, imperial cartography and indigenous experiences of modernity, to contemporary debates about Big History in an age of environmental crisis.

Stories of desert landscapes, cutting-edge production facilities, and lavish festivals often dominate narratives about film and digital media on the Arabian Peninsula. However, there is a more complicated history that reflects long-standing interconnections between the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean. Just as these waters are fluid spaces, so too is the flow of film and digital media between cultures in East Africa, Europe, North Africa, South Asia, Southwest Asia, and Southeast Asia. Reorienting the Middle East examines past and contemporary aspects of film and digital media in the Gulf that might not otherwise be apparent in dominant frameworks. Contributors consider oil companies that brought film exhibition to this area in the 1930s, the first Indian film produced on the Arabian Peninsula in the late 1970s, blackness in Iranian films, the role of Western funding in reshaping stories, Dubai's emergence in global film production, uses of online platforms for performance art, the development of film festivals and cinemas, and short films made by citizens and migrants that turn a lens on racism, sexism, national identity, and other rarely discussed social issues. Reorienting the Middle East offers new methods to analyze the often-neglected littoral spaces between nation-states and regions and to understand the role of film and digital media in shaping dialogue between area studies and film and media studies. Readers will find new pathways to rethink the limitations of dominant categories and frameworks in both fields.

Conflicts are everyday situations and experiences with which people have to cope. Focusing on particularly conflict-prone parts of Asia, the contributions to this book analyze the dynamics of conflicts from the perspectives of the actors involved, and pay particular attention to aspects like mobilization, exclusion, segregation, the role of institutions and the construction of antagonistic identities. The book gathers case studies based on long-term fieldwork from conflicts in Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Kashmir.

Whereas Area Studies and cross-border cooperation research conventionally demarcates groups of people by geographical boundaries, individuals might in fact feel more connected by shared values and principles than by conventional spatial dimensions. Knowledge Production, Area Studies and Global Cooperation asks what norms and principles lead to the creation of knowledge about cross-border cooperation and connection. It studies why theories, methods, and concepts originate in one place rather than another, how they travel, and what position the scholar adopts while doing research, particularly ‘in the field’. Taking case studies from Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, the book links the production of alternative epistemologies to the notion of global cooperation and reassesses the ways in which the concept of connectedness can be applied at the translocal and individual rather than the formal international and collective level. Knowledge Production, Area Studies and Global Cooperation provides an innovative and critical approach towards established means of producing knowledge about different areas of the world, demonstrating that an understanding of pluri-local connectivity should be integrated into the production of knowledge about different areas of the world and the behavioural dimension of global cooperation. By shifting the view from the collective to the individual and from the formal to often invisible patterns of connectedness, this book provides an important fresh perspective which will be of interest to scholars and students of Area Studies, Politics, International Relations and Development Studies.

This book analyses the discourse on Pakistan by exploring the knowledge production processes through which the International Relations community, Asian and South Asian area study centres, and think-tanks construct Pakistan’s identity. This book does not attempt to trace how Pakistan has been historically defined, explained, or understood by the International Relations interpretive communities or to supplant these understandings with the author’s version of what Pakistan is. Instead, this study focuses on investigating how the identity of Pakistan is fixed or stabilized via practices of the interpretive communities. In other words, this book attempts to address the following questions: How is the knowledge on Pakistan produced discursively? How is this knowledge represented in the writings on Pakistan? What are the conditions under which it is possible to make authoritative claims about Pakistan?

Area Studies - Regional Sustainable Development Review: Russia theme is a component of Encyclopedia of Area Studies - Regional Sustainable Development Review in the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias. This two-volume publication on Area Studies - Regional Sustainable Development Review: Russia reviews initiatives and activities towards sustainable development in Russia such as: Natural Resources as a Basis for Sustainable Development: Bioresourses - Russia; Water Resources for Sustainable Development, With Particular Reference to Russia; Protection of the Atmosphere in the Russian Federation; Protection of the Oceans and Their Living Resources; General Approach to Planning and Management of Land Resources; Combat Desertification, Deforestation and Drought; Biodiversity Conservation in Russia; Wastes as Resources for Sustainable Development; Wastes and Problems of Sustainable Development; Safe and Environmentally Sound Management of Radioactive Wastes in Russia; Economic Reform and Integration of Environmental; Protection and Promotion of Human Health-Russia; Combating Poverty in Russia; Global Action for Women Towards Sustainable and Equitable Development; Children and Youth in Sustainable Development in Russia; Recognizing and Strengthening the Role of Indigenous Peoples and Their Communities; Education, Public Awareness and Training in Russia; Development of Industrial Ecology in Russia; Strengthening the Role of Workers and Their Trade Unions; Technological Progress for Sustainable Development in Russia; Telecommunications Infrastructure Changes for Sustainable Development of Russia; High Technology and Health Care in Russia; Technology of Exploration and Management of Natural Resources; Promoting Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development in Russia; Protection of Intellectual Property and Commercialization of Technology; International Institutional Arrangements and Financial Assistance; International Legal Instruments and Mechanisms on the Environment; The Interaction of Branches of Power in the Transition to Sustainable Development in Russia; Management Responses to the Challenge of Sustainable Development in Russia. Although these presentations are with specific reference to Russia, they provide potentially useful lessons for other regions as well. These two volumes are aimed at the following five major target audiences: University and College Students Educators, Professional Practitioners, Research Personnel and Policy Analysts, Managers, and Decision Makers, NGOs and GOs.

Area Studies - Regional Sustainable Development Review: Canada and USA theme is a component of Encyclopedia of Area Studies - Regional Sustainable Development Review in the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias. This theme on Area Studies - Regional Sustainable Development Review: Canada and USA reviews, in two volumes, initiatives and activities towards sustainable development in Canada and USA such as: International Cooperation in Sustainable Development; Canada and USA: Demographic Dynamics and Sustainability; Promotion and Protection of Human Health in the Context of Sustainable Development; Integration of Environment and Development in Decision Making; Protection of the Atmosphere, with Particular Reference to North America; Deforestation in North America; Protection of Fresh Water Resources - Canada and the United States of America; Hazardous Waste Management; Safe and Environmentally Sound Management of Radioactive Wastes in Canada and the USA; Global Action for Women Towards Sustainable and Equitable Development: A Canada-US Perspective; Children, Youth and Sustainable Development; Strengthening the Role of Indigenous People and Their Communities in the Context of Sustainable Development; Strengthening the Role of NGOs; Local Authorities Initiatives in Support of Agenda 21 - Canada and USA; Strengthening the Role of Workers and Their Trade Unions; Technology Transfer and Sustainable Development; Collaboration for Sustainable Innovation; Information for Decision Making in Sustainable Development; Climate Change and Sustainable Development Canada. Although these presentations are with specific reference to Canada and USA, they provide potentially useful lessons for other regions as well. These two volumes are aimed at the following five major target audiences: University and College Students Educators, Professional Practitioners, Research Personnel and Policy Analysts, Managers, and Decision Makers, NGOs and GOs.