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In this pioneering volume, leading scholars from a diversity of backgrounds in the humanities, social sciences, and different area studies argue for a more differentiated and self-reflected role of area-based science in global knowledge production. Considering that the mobility of people, goods, and ideas make the world more complex and geographically fixed categories increasingly obsolete, the authors call for a reflection of this new dynamism in research, teaching, and theorizing. The book thus moves beyond the constructed divide between area studies and systematic disciplines and instead proposes methodological and conceptual ways for encouraging the integration of marginalized and often overseen epistemologies. Essays on the ontological, theoretical, and pedagogical dimension of area studies highlight how people's everyday practices of mobility challenge scholars, students, and practitioners of inter- and transdisciplinary area studies to transcend the cognitive boundaries that scholarly minds currently operate in. Foreword: A Third Wave of Area Studies -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- Notes on Contributors -- List of Figures -- Part I: Area Studies at the Crossroads -- Introduction: Knowledge Production, Area Studies and the Mobility Turn -- Looking Back at the Debate on Area Studies -- Recent Reinterpretations and Thematic Innovations -- Comparative Insights -- Looking Ahead: The Future of Area Studies -- Organization of the Book -- Bibliography -- The Neoliberal University and Global Immobilities of Theory -- A Multiplication of World Powers: Area Studies in the Context of Proliferating Hegemonies -- The Disciplines as Disguised Forms of Western Area Studies -- Dilemmas in Challenging Euro-Amerocentrism -- Area Studies under Global Capitalism: The Role of the Neoliberal University in Entrenching the Global Immobility of Theory Production -- Bordered Geographies of Global Academic "Quality" under Neoliberalism -- Neoliberal Externalities as Barriers to Theoretical Innovation: Why Critique of Eurocentrism Is Not Enough -- Strategic Responses: Researching, Collaborating and Publishing beyond Euro-America -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Part II: To Be or Not to Be Is Not the Question. Rethinking Area Studies in Its Own Right -- Doing Area Studies in the Americas and Beyond: Towards Reciprocal Methodologies and the Decolonization of Knowledge -- Geopolitics of Knowledge and Area Studies -- Reciprocal Methodologies -- The Research Topic -- Co-Presence and Dialogue -- "Sources" and Their Lecture -- Authority and Representation -- Public and Publication -- An Example: Area Studies in the Academic Field -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Area Studies Southeast Asia: Alternative Areas versus Alternatives to Areas -- Area Studies without Areas? -- Current Alternatives to Areas -- Southeast Asia as Constructed, Euro-Centric and Strategic: Critiques Criticized Recent Concepts and Their Implicit Spatiality -- A Proposal: Area as Family Resemblances Plus Network -- Bibliography -- Between Ignoring and Romanticizing: The Position of Area Studies in Policy Advice -- Institutional Settings of PCS Think Tanks -- The Example of Local Politics in Afghanistan -- Ignoring Area Expertise -- Romanticizing Area Expertise -- From "Colonializing Area Studies" to the "Subjectivity of the Local" -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Part III: Knowledge Production after the Mobility Turn -- Positionality and the Relational Production of Place in the Context of Student Migration to Gilgit, Pakistan -- Positionality and the Relational Production of Place -- The Places of Student Migration to Gilgit -- Home: The Village Context in Gojal -- Gilgit: The Migration Context -- Providing Safe Havens: The Girls' Hostel Place -- Encounters on New Ground: The Campus Place of Karakorum International University -- Conclusion: Gendered Lifeworlds, Shifting Positionalities and the Relational Production of Place -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Red Lines for Uncivilized Trade? Fixity, Mobility and Positionality on Almaty's Changing Bazaars -- The Fixity-Mobility-Positionality Nexus -- Mobility and Fixity in the Transformation of Barakholka -- Negotiating Positionality: Central and Remote -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Margins or Center? Konkani Sufis, India and "Arabastan" -- Political and Intellectual Context in Maharashtra -- Ethnographical Context -- Concluding Remarks -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Part IV: From Local Realities to Concepts and Theorizing -- The Role of Area Studies in Theory Production: A Differentiation of Mid-Range Concepts and the Example of Social Order -- From Social Theorizing to Concept Development -- Differentiating Mid-Range Concepts -- Social Order as Lens for Understanding Local Politics, Order, and Change Processes Understanding Authority and Politics in Transoxania (Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century) -- Understanding Local Politics in Northeast Afghanistan Post-2001 -- Reflection: Enabling Conditions for Concept Development and Area Studies Theorizing -- Notes -- Bibliography -- The Production of Knowledge in the Field of Development and Area Studies: From Systems of Ignorance to Mid-Range Concepts for Global Ethnography -- Production of Knowledge for Development and Area Studies -- Methodological Challenges -- Bureaucratic Knowledge Management and Lack of a Critical Public Sphere: Constitution of "Systems of Ignorance" -- Linking Area and Development Studies to "Global Ethnography" and Empirically Grounded Theory Building -- Bibliography -- New Area Studies, Translation and Mid-Range Concepts -- The State of Area Studies Revisited -- Outlining New Area Studies -- Towards Situational Analysis, Translation and Mid-Range Concepts -- Bibliography -- Mid-Range Concepts-The Lego Bricks of Meaning-Making: An Example from Khorezm, Uzbekistan -- Area Studies: The Study of Meaning and Being -- Meaning-Making and Areas -- Negotiating Realities in Uzbek Water Management -- Formal Practices -- Strategic Practices -- Discursive Practices -- Concluding Thoughts: The "Areas" in Our Minds -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Part V: De-Streamlining Academic Society: Pedagogy and Teaching -- The Case for Reconceptualizing Southeast Asian Studies -- Controversies -- Globalization -- Reconceptualizing Area Studies: Southeast Asian Studies as a Case Study -- Adopting a Heuristic Approach -- Pedagogy -- Conclusion -- Note -- Bibliography -- This Area Is [NOT] under Quarantine: Rethinking Southeast/Asia through Studies of the Cinema -- Area Studies Temporalities -- Re-Envisioning Southeast/Asia in Studies of the Cinema -- Primitive -- "There Was No Nation Queer Sociality and Ordinariness -- Temporalities of Buddhism -- This Time in This Place/This Place at This Time -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Teaching to Transgress: Crossroads Perspective and Adventures in (?)-Disciplinarity -- Why I Write: Beyond Legacies of Epistemic Violence within Transmodern Complexity -- Where I Write From: Crossroads Asia and Feminist Embodiments of Spatiality -- What I Write For: Teaching to Transgress as an Adventure in (?)-Disciplinarity -- In Conclusion: Deschooling Academic Society and Other Decolonial Becomings -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Part VI: Anticipating the Future of Area Studies -- Are Transregional Studies the Future of Area Studies? -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Reflecting the Moving Target of Asia -- Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Asia-Pacific: Attempts to Track a Moving Target -- Essentialism -- Institutionalism and Interactionism -- Reflectivism -- Reflexive Essentialism -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Concluding Reflections: The Art of Science Policy for 21st Century Area Studies -- The Reordering of the Science System -- Sustainable Development and the Need for Reflexive Knowledges -- Neither Disciplines nor World Regions but "Areas" -- Area Studies in a World of Interdisciplinarity -- Science Policymaking for Area Studies -- Analytical, Emancipatory Area Studies -- Mobile, Transregional Area Studies -- Area Studies for and in Interdisciplinarity -- Note -- Bibliography -- Index
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