International and Language Education for a Global Future: Fifty Years of U.S. Title VI and Fulbright-Hays Programs

10. Area Studies and Academic Disciplines across Universities: A Relational Analysis with Organizational and Public Implications

How can we think about contemporary and historical relationships among disciplines and area studies in order to enhance the scholarly value of their encounters and their impact on the public good? That is the broad question I pursue in a number of ways through other scholarship , but in this chapter I will focus on the contemporary, on how disciplines organize their area studies engagements, and on potential scholarly values in the reorganization of area studies. I also offer observations on some of the ways in which that scholarly reorganization can have public impact, how area studies differ across regions, and how history should inform our focus. But for the most part, I am contemporary, disciplined, and academic in my emphasis here. Past Work and Disciplinary Influences Of course there is much that precedes this effort (e.g., Ruther, O’Meara et al., Wallerstein, Mirsepassi et al.). Most of these contributions focus on broader intellectual currents, geopolitical histories, or institutional and policy worlds. Here, I focus on the cultural politics of area studies and disciplines within the academy by relying on the insights of those who lead this conjunction within universities. My C H A P T E R 1 0 Area Studies and Academic Disciplines across Universities: A Relational Analysis with Organizational and Public Implications Michael D. Kennedy 195 analysis focuses on relationships—those between area studies and disciplines, and among them and their organizations and publics. Beyond the particular method and orientation of my research, what may also distinguish this effort are my disciplinary roots. Like all good sociologists, and like Max Weber, an exemplar of disciplinary accomplishment who appreciated area studies, I believe it quite useful to begin with conceptual clarity. What are we talking about when we speak of disciplines and area studies? According to Abbott (2001), disciplines are interactional fields based on portable abstract knowledge axes of cohesion organized through labor markets and education. Using that same framework, one might say that area studies are interactional fields based on contextual expertise and language reference organized around external funders, which in the United States over the past several decades has been most notably Title VI. Although labor markets and education might be pursued with reference to institutional logics, it is hard to approach area studies without offering a cultural political account, given the institutions that shape the knowledge practices of area studies. I understand cultural politics to be the ways in which various actors influence and transform the meanings, identities, values, and representations accompanying the exercise of power and influence (Kennedy 2008). By itself, of course, cultural politics is not enough to understand everything—one needs to think about how those cultural politics are embedded in history, networks, institutions, and the distribution of resources to explain things from the energy security policies of nations to the academic missions of universities. I expect that this larger volume will address that broader array. For now, I am limiting my own analysis to exploring how cultural politics works in this relationship between area studies and disciplines across regions and disciplines. I find such an analysis especially helpful when we are looking not only to understand these relationships for their own sake, but also to enhance their scholarly value and public good. Scholars may not control budgets or institutional priorities, but scholars can be more self-conscious about their own cultural politics and how they validate certain practices in research, teaching, and institutional leadership. That is evident even in the ways in which area studies is discussed substantively. To be sure, area studies is in essence what Tansman (2004: 184) describes as “an enterprise seeking to know, analyze, and interpret foreign cultures through a multidisciplinary lens.” Treated that way, the problem of translation is mainly a matter of hermeneutics. Of course it is also a matter of how one conducts social science. I appreciate especiallyWalder’s (2004) elaboration: that translational capacity should be understood as variable. Not every area studies expert is fluent across languages, knows relevant histories, understands contemporary and historical institutional 196 M I C H A E L D . K E N N E D Y arrays in the region, and, especially when there is national variety in that region, knows its full diversity. Sometimes, Walder notes, those inadequacies can be mitigated by collaborative work (see also Kennedy 2000). One might also, following Dirks (2004), move beyond questions of translation to historicity and...