Organizer and Chair: Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, University of California, Santa Cruz
Discussants: Itty Abraham, Social Science Research Council; Paul R. Greenough, University of Iowa; Christopher L. Connery, University of California, Santa Cruz; Gail Hershatter, University of California, Santa Cruz; Toby Volkman, Ford Foundation
How are regions configured and configuring in the everyday habits of scholarship? This roundtable examines the implications of the call to revitalize area studies for scholarly frameworks and practices. Presenters discuss the challenges of simultaneously rethinking regionality and rethinking the scholarly methods with which we construct scholarly genealogies, units of analysis, places, and social and political subjects.
An opening presentation argues that the heritage of the notion of civilization haunts area studies and all forms of scholarship involved in analyzing and reproducing regional cultural histories, including that of "the West." Our ability to imagine regions is bound up with civilizational frameworks of genealogy, development, and the progressive layering of knowledge. Conversely, disciplinary intellectual habits are shaped by "civilizational thinking." These issues will be introduced in a joint presentation by Chris Connery, Gail Hershatter, and Anna Tsing. This will be placed in a context of other approaches to rethinking regionality by key participants in the national discussion on revitalizing area studies. Toby Volkman of the Ford Foundation’s program in "Crossing Borders" will talk about the intellectual and institutional challenges of revitalizing area studies. Itty Abraham of the Social Science Research Council will discuss trajectories and experiments in rethinking areas at SSRC. Paul Greenough will describe a pilot graduate training project at the University of Iowa that tries to optimize "area studies" within a framework of "globalization." We hope to open discussion about the results and challenges of mutual attention to how regions are made and how scholarship is made.