Area Studies in the Social Sciences

In the last decades, area studies have been subject to substantial criticism by the most mainstream social sciences. Area specialists are perceived as lacking the knowledge of modern research methodology and rather following the interests of humanities than social sciences. At the same time, studying individual regions and countries certainly requires the accumulation of specific knowledge, which would most likely be lost without area studies research. This paper discusses the main directions of criticism of area studies and possible suggestions towards modernization of this research tradition. The criticism towards area studies can be linked to three issues: the excessive dominance of the humanities in most area studies communities; insufficient consideration of modern theoretical and empirical approaches; and implicit normativity, i.e., the substitution of scientific analysis with value assertions. The modernization of area studies as an academic field is related to the application of alternative approaches to regional and country studies within three research projects: Comparative Area Studies (CAS), Transregional Studies, and regional specialization within individual disciplines