Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

Political science 191
2. Area studies
In most advanced countries there now exist centres of area studies, created to
encourage teaching and research about particular regions of the world. The
study of Islam and the study of the British Commonwealth (which might be
described informally as area studies) cut across the boundaries of geographical
regions : but most ‘area study centres’ are geographically based, being con-
cerned with areas such as Latin America, Africa south of the Sahara, the Medi-
terranean, South East Asia, the USSR and Eastern Europe, China and Japan, the
Pacific.
These centres in most cases grew out of demand; a particular area became
important to foreign policy and to public opinion in a given country; it was
observed that the country was poorly equipped with experts and with training
resources; and centres were established to train experts who could in due course
conduct research and train a wider circle of students. Such centres generally
provide facilities for language training: and they include historians, geographers,
economists, sociologists and social anthropologists, political scientists, and
sometimes also theoretical linguists, social psychologists and students of art and
literature.
It must be confessed that this way of proceeding does not commend itself
strongly to socia1 scientists. The objects of such institutions are generally politi-
caP rather than scientific. In teaching they are apt to give students an acquain-
tance with many disciplines and mastery of none; British experience is that
such area study centres work best if they are established alongside strong
centres of original work in at least some of the disciplines concerned. Given
such support, a centre can then serve as a testing ground for experiments in
interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary research, with facilities adequate to the
experiment. Such centres can also contribute greatly to the development of
scholarly resources for the study of various regions, so that step by step a
‘world library’ of the social sciences and their data is built up in each of the
wealthier States.
The work produced by Area Study Centres is in fact essential for the student
of international relations and comparative politics. Social scientists take note,
in jest, that each author in each centre believes ‘his’ country or ‘his’ region to
be unique: but the scholarly level is in general high, and the resulting mono-
graphs must be read and thoroughly considered by anyone who seeks to achieve
‘nomothetic’ standing in comparative politics. A specialist service of this kind
is necessary for the advance of comparative politics, and this is sometimes not
emphasized enough by model builders and general theorists.
3. Political unification
These words indicate a topic which links the world system to regional systems,
to State systems, and to sub-systems within the State. Diversity and cleavages
are in part due to divergencies of class, caste and sectional interest which are
more or less independent of a territorial basis, and the importance of these
factors is not on any account to be underrated.
Nevertheless, States are territorially defined units; their creation, absorption