Advancing Comparative Area Studies: Analytical Heterogeneity and Organizational Challenges

The book Comparative Area Studies (2018) laid out the distinctive features and value-added of "comparative area studies" (CAS) against the backdrop of ongoing methodological debates in the social sciences. Since that time, the editors of the first volume and other scholars doing comparative research have been exploring the scope and usefulness of the CAS framework in relation to their own work. Others have raised important questions about the epistemological flexibility of CAS and about the institutional pressures that could limit further extensions of CAS, especially given current trends in the academy. This new volume tackles these questions and showcases how CAS can accommodate a wider range of scholarship predicated on more varied methodological and epistemological principles. This includes not only contextualized comparisons of countries from different regions but also interpretive work, comparisons of sub-national units, as well as inter-regional comparisons addressing topics such as global human rights and the rise of regional powers that go beyond comparative politics (the focus of the first volume). This book also offers practical, realistic discussions of how our current institutional architecture can be adapted to support cross-regional comparative research and to better connect different area studies communities--while acknowledging the long-standing value of deep area expertise.

Table of Contents:
List of Contributors Prologue Comparative Area Studies: Implications for Institutional Architecture Timothy J. Power Chapter 1. Introduction Extending the Horizons of Comparative Area Studies (CAS): Analytical Heterogeneity and Organizational Challenges Patrick Köllner, Rudra Sil, and Ariel I. Ahram Part I. CAS and the Prospects for Interpretation across Contexts Chapter 2. Communicating Across Contexts: How Translation Can Benefit Comparative Area Studies Erica S. Simmons and Nicholas Rush Smith Chapter 3. Comparative Area Studies and Interpretivism: Towards an Interpretive-Comparative Research Approach Anna Fünfgeld Part II. How CAS Benefits, and Benefits from, Varied Strategies of Causal Analysis Chapter 4. Causal Explanation with Ideal Types: Opportunities for Comparative Area Studies Ryan Saylor Chapter 5. Advancing Theory Development in Comparative Area Studies: Practical Recommendations for Evaluating the Equifinality of Causal Mechanisms Marissa Brookes and Jesse Dillon Savage Chapter 6. The Best of Two Worlds? Generalizing and Individualizing through Multi-Method Research in Comparative Area Studies Matthias Basedau and David Kuehn Part III. Rethinking the Sites and Spaces of Comparison Chapter 7. Crossing the Boundaries of Comparison: Comparative Area Studies and Comparative Historical Analysis Amel Ahmed Chapter 8. Comparison as Ontology, Region as Concept: On the Synergies of Comparative Area Studies Erik Martinez Kuhonta Chapter 9. The Contextualized Comparative Sector Approach: Comparative Area Studies at the Sectoral Level of Analysis Roselyn Hsueh Part IV . CAS and the Promise of Global IR Chapter 10. The Promise of Comparative Area Studies for the Study of Human Rights Eileen Doherty-Sil Chapter 11. Revisionist (Eurasian) Powers and the West: A Comparative Area Studies Bridge between International Relations Theory and Area Expertise Nora Fisher-Onar Part V. Organizational Challenges and Institutional Frameworks for CAS Chapter 12. Comparative Area Studies: Programs, Departments, Constraints, Opportunities Sara Wallace Goodman and Thomas Pepinsky Chapter 13. Comparative Area Studies in the Great Brain Race: Institutional Legacies and Programmatic Innovation in the Global Age Ariel I. Ahram and Connie Stovall Epilogue Amrita Narlikar

About the Author :
Ariel I. Ahram is Professor at the Virginia Tech School of Public & International Affairs in Arlington. He is an Associate of the Institute of Middle East Studies of the GIGA, the German Institute for Global and Area Studies. He earned his PhD in government and MA in Arab studies at Georgetown University and BA at Brandeis University. Patrick Köllner is Vice President of the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), Director of the GIGA Institute for Asian Studies, and a professor of political science at the University of Hamburg. He studied politics and management as well as modern Japan studies at the universities of Konstanz and Essex and holds a doctorate and a habilitation in political science from Humboldt University of Berlin and the University of Trier, respectively. Rudra Sil is Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has taught since obtaining his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. His scholarly interests encompass Russian/post-communist studies, Asian studies, labor politics, international development, qualitative methodology, and philosophy of social science.