Area Studies and the Development of Global Labor History

Abstract

During the 1980s and 1990s, area studies and labor history both experienced a period of “baisse” and were given numerous obituaries. Harry Harootunian, a historian of Japan, labeled area studies a “dinosaur” and regarded, for instance, Asian studies as an illusion because, as he argued, there is no such thing as “Asia.”1 David Ludden, a specialist of South Asia, lamented that “there is no theory of area studies or of area-specific knowledge, only a set of institutional, personal, and fragmented disciplinary, market and professional interests that converge chaotically in questions of funding.”2 Mahmood Mamdani, a political scientist from Uganda teaching in New York, stated that the area studies enterprise is underpinned by two problematic core methodological claims. “The first sees state boundaries as boundaries of knowledge, thereby turning political into epistemological boundaries.” This led to the rule that every area studies specialist “must cultivate his or her own ‘local’ patch.” The second methodological claim he criticized is “that knowledge is about the production of facts. This view translates into a stubborn resistance to theory in the name of valorizing the fact.” However, “the single most important failing of area studies is that it has failed to frame the study of the ‘third world’ in broad intellectual terms.”3 After 9/11, Middle Eastern Studies in particular were suspected of cooperating