Area Studies in the Global Age: Community, Place, Identity eds. by Edith W. Clowes and Shelly Jarrett Bromberg (review)

Geographers are accustomed to having to explain what they do. This often involves dispelling notions that we all make maps or received our degrees after memorizing the capitals of the 50 states. In fact, geographers such as Alexander B. Murphy and the late Harm de Blij have written works making the case for why geography matters.1 Key elements of their respective arguments for the discipline’s relevance share quite a bit with those advanced for area studies in Edith W. Clowes and Shelly Jarrett Bromberg’s Area Studies in the Global Age. For example, both area studies and geography are deeply concerned with “truth on the ground” and therefore focus on the changing physical and social composition of the world. Each must consider interrelations between environmental change and demographic, social, political, and economic change. Moreover, both fields employ the notion of liminality. Both geography and area studies of varied disciplinary perspectives consider how the structures, ideologies, and identities of the past remain visible and influential within societies, economies, polities, and environments today. Perhaps one of the foremost criticisms leveled at geography during the 20th century is echoed in critiques of area studies today. Both have been accused of failing to engage across disciplines, conversing only within specific regional specializations, and of being unfocused, descriptive, and lacking an interpretive framework (xiii). A strong case against this critique may be found within Area Studies in the Global Age. Composed by literary critics, geographers, international relations experts, and cultural, social, and art historians, the chapters of this volume evocatively speak to the multiplicity and simultaneity of the past and present, of the traditional and the modern, as well as the “global,” “regional,” and “local.” Contributors undertake this task with deep knowledge of the historical, linguistic, and sociopolitical/cultural contexts of which they write. These include chapters about places, processes, and people within Africa, Central, East, and North Asia, Eastern and East-Central Europe, and Latin America. The book usefully elucidates the challenges of juxtaposing varied epistemological approaches and methods. This is carried out in the introduction and in four section-introductions that should prove particularly valuable to graduate students considering which approaches to employ in their studies. The