Representatives from the social sciences and cultural studies continue to exhibit mutual reservations and sensitivities when they encounter each other in the field of area studies. This is particularly so with regard to research on East and Southeast Asia. Given this background and with the...

This paper suggests that area studies and economics have a better chance to be married successfully if we shift our attention from the exclusive emphasis on economic growth towards improvements in human development, especially the much broadened version of that concept. Different areas are shown...

The paper discusses how current methodological debates on the potential of comparative area studies intersect with current trends in transitional justice research. As the field of transitional justice studies is approaching saturation, academic efforts in this field are in-creasingly focused on...

In Switzerland, Latin American Studies are in a paradoxical situation in which most professors/researchers of the country in particular in the French speaking part are very pessimistic about their status, while the situation in the German speaking part seems to improve. It is important to keep...

Area studies in India have evolved as a discipline within public institutions, reflecting the plurality of discourses that define the profile of institutions in the country. Many Area studies experts share the policy narratives of the state, but there are many who do not subscribe to them and...

Formal and informal politics from an institutional perspective: An analytical approach for comparative area studies Formal and informal politics as an object of social science analysis are connected in this paper with an institutional perspective. First, we survey the existing comparatively...