Transcript Area Studies

제목
Chatper 5: Why Area Studies ?
서강대학교 교수학습센터
부소장 12,
정유성
October
2015
Prof. Dr. Kyu Young LEE
Objectives of Area Studies – (1)
# Area Studies
To coordinate the efforts of all these disciplines in foreign area research would
require mutual understanding on many fundamental points.
First, it would be necessary to obtain agreement on the general objectives of
area programs, which determine the selection of specific problems and research
methods.
Second, there would have to be some generally accepted concept of "area"
which would make it more than the "sum of the parts" or features in which the
disciplines have traditionally been interested.
Third, methods would have to be devised to facilitate interdisciplinary research
and to integrate its results.
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(3) objectives of Area Studies – (2)
OBJECTIVES OF AREA RESEARCH (1)
(1) To provide knowledge of practical value about important world areas;
(2) To give students and scholars an awareness of cultural relativity;
(3) To provide understanding of social and cultural wholes as they exist in
areas ;
(4) To further the development of a universal social science.
(Julian H. Steward, Area Research: Theory and Practice, New York: Social
Science Research Council, 1950, p. 2. )
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(3) objectives of Area Studies – (3)
All four goals carry the implication that an area can be understood only
through the cooperation of several disciplines. The last three carry the
implication that area "wholes' cannot be understood unless relevant
knowledge of social science phenomena is integrated, and consequently
they raise the question of the nature of that integration.
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(3) objectives of Area Studies – (4)
(1) To accumulate and make available a body of knowledge of practical
utility regarding the principal areas of the world could require
investigations of every conceivable kind.
During the war there was an enormous demand for hundreds of different
kinds of spot information. So far as this demand is concerned, it can
undoubtedly be expected that any area specialist will make available
whatever miscellaneous knowledge he happens to possess when it is
needed
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(3) objectives of Area Studies – (5)
It is not conceivable, however, that one could predict the many kinds of
physical, biological, social, and cultural knowledge that will be needed in
the future, let alone devise and finance a research program that could
gather all such knowledge. Research in any field of investigation has always
had to choose from among many possible subjects.
Area research programs are striving to achieve some central purpose, but
they cannot cover everything. They cannot even give proportionate
attention to the many prevalent scientific and practical interests.
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(3) objectives of Area Studies – (6)
Structural geology, foreign trade, military geography, economic potentials,
prehistoric fauna, political ideologies, and social classes, for example, may
all present legitimate area problems, but these and all other phenomena
having area distinctiveness can scarcely be included in an area research
program.
As a matter of practical procedure, area studies now center attention on
the social sciences and humanities, and this is probably because
international affairs have acquired such overwhelming importance since
World War II that emphasis has to be placed on human relations.
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(3) objectives of Area Studies – (7)
(2) A deepened recognition of cultural relativity means that one knows
enough about foreign cultures to understand that each has a selfconsistent and distinctive pattern, that each has developed its own
solutions to life out of a unique past, and that none is absolute or
inherently superior to the others.
Such understanding gives the layman greater tolerance of peoples of other
areas, and it gives the scholar an objectivity which will help him avoid the
methodological fallacy of ethnocentrism, that is, of using the
presuppositions of his own culture in dealing with other cultures.
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(3) objectives of Area Studies – (8)
(3) An understanding of social and cultural wholes as they exist in areas is
a third object.
The concept that each area is organized as a whole is a necessary corollary of
the concept of cultural relativity. When cultures of different areas are viewed
relatively, each is necessarily recognized as an entity which differs from our
own culture in its entirety as well as in many of its particulars.
Any one who becomes familiar with a new and different culture experiences
what has been called a "cultural shock" - an awareness that everything about
the new culture is somehow unfamiliar but also part of a self-consistent and
intelligible whole.
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(3) objectives of Area Studies – (9)
In attempting to understand a foreign area he finds that to
compartmentalize knowledge among the highly specialized disciplines,
which have become the orthodox means of studying our society and
culture and which are sometimes regarded as evidence of scientific
progress, seems somewhat inadequate.
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(3) objectives of Area Studies – (10)
(4) The objective of furthering the development of a universal social science
is at present little more than a hope, and an area approach is but one possible
means to this end.
This objective presupposes, from an area viewpoint, that there are modes of
behavior, institutions, patterns, and processes that are universal- that is, which
recur cross-culturally or cross-areally. In current thinking, however, there are
certain conceptual obstacles to arriving at such universals.
The concept of cultural relativity has often been stated by anthropologists as if
all the particulars of behavior patterns and processes differed so completely in
each society or area that findings concerning any one society were valid for it
alone.
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(3) objectives of Area Studies – (11)
Some economists, sociologists, and political scientists, on the other hand,
have assumed that human beings are so fundamentally the same
everywhere that rules of behavior which obtain in any one society - for
example, our own, which has been the principal object of their
investigations - will hold for all other societies so that a cross-cultural
approach is scarcely necessary.
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(3) objectives of Area Studies – (12)
OBJECTIVES OF AREA RESEARCH (2)
Robert B. Hall, Area Studies: With Special Reference to their Implications for
Research in the Social Sciences (Michigan: Edward Brothers, 1949)
Based on the dual competencies of sound training in a discipline or
disciplines and the experience of a broad and unified approach to the
understanding of a particular area,
a substantial improvement and extension in research can be expected in the
several social science fields.
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(3) objectives of Area Studies – (13)
the objective or desirable directions of area research
(1) toward total world knowledge
(2) toward cooperative research and the integration of knowledge
(3) toward cross-cultural understanding
(4) toward the elimination of handicaps in social research
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(3) objectives of Area Studies – (14)
1. To increase the present fund of knowledge about the world and its
various parts is a primary objective of area research.
The vertical specialization of the past has produced great discoveries and
accumulation of knowledge, but its failures have been equally important.
Area studies should provide the data by which the alleged universality of
theories can be tested and thence modified to be made truly universal. In the
social sciences and in the humanities as well, the need for comparative studies
is deeply felt. But comparison of social phenomena in difficult parts of the
earth will not be possible until we have a thorough knowledge of the parts.
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(3) objectives of Area Studies – (15)
2. The need for the integration of knowledge has become increasingly
acute with the trend, in all major countries regardless of political ideology,
toward internal integration and centralization of authority.
We cannot get complete information from isolated fields. This can only be
achieved through bringing together the facts and findings of all pertinent
scientific fields, social, humanistic, and natural, and viewing their
interrelations.
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(3) objectives of Area Studies – (16)
3. Scholarship has been applied quite unequally the different parts of
the earth. We know some few limited areas relatively well while others of a
vast extent have been almost completely neglected.
One important objective of area research should be to make the detailed
and systematic studies of cultures which are necessary for the advancement
of intercultural understanding. We need a s many frames of reference drawn
from the cultures of other peoples as possible, in order that we may better
understand our own culture.
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(3) objectives of Area Studies – (17)
4. The intensive study of areas, and especially interdisciplinary studies,
should help to overcome at least some of the handicaps under which
social research has been laboring.
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