<Event Review> Mega-Asia: A New Perspective on Asia

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Keynote Speech by Prof. Dr. Patrick Köllner

“The Revitalization of Area Studies and the Role of Comparative Area Studies”

One aspect of the pragmatic turn supporting the recent revitalization of area studies (including Asian studies) is the increased compatibility of area-focused qualitative inquiry and comparative analyses within, between and across world regions. Comparative area studies (CAS) plays a crucial role here. As a self-conscious effort, CAS does two things at the same time. First, it balances deep sensitivity to context in each of the locales being examined with the use of some variant of the comparative method. The aim here is to surface causal linkages that are portable across world regions. Second, CAS has dialogical benefits by engaging research and scholarly discourse in two or more area studies communities against the backdrop of more general concepts and theoretical debates within a social science discipline.