Area Studies at the Crossroads: Knowledge Production after the Mobility Turn

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.

Katja Mielke (Dr. phil.) is Senior Researcher at the Germany-based think tank BICC, a peace and conflict research institute in Bonn. Trained in Social Sciences, East European, and Central Asian Studies, she was one of the initiators of the Germany-wide research network ‘Crossroads Asia’ for rethinking area studies. 

Anna-Katharina Hornidge (Dr. phil.) is Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Bremen, Germany, as well as Head of Department of Social Sciences and of the Working Group ‘Development and Knowledge Sociology’ at the Leibniz-Center for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT), Germany. Trained in Sociology and Southeast Asian Studies, she scientifically coordinated ‘Crossroads Asia’ from 2012 to 2014 and was responsible for designing the networks strategy for synthesizing the conducted research. Today, she remains part of the Executive Board of the network.