The Spectrum of Comparisons: A discussion

Publisher： Pacific Affairs, a division of the University of British Columbia

ISSN： 0030-851X

Source： Pacific Affairs, Vol.87, Iss.3, 2014-09, pp. : 539-556

Disclaimer: Any content in publications that violate the sovereignty, the constitution or regulations of the PRC is not accepted or approved by CNPIEC.

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Abstract

At the contested analytic core of this special issue of Pacific Affairs lie two different ways of linking enlargement to assessment. Southeast Asian studies, as a spatially limited instance of area studies (AS), are focused wholly or mainly on one part of the world and on phenomena occurring in it or directly relevant to it. In contrast, no toponym constrains the scope of comparative area studies (CAS). The editors of this issue recommend the expansion of AS into CAS. Does a convincing case for such enlargement from AS to CAS require only a nominal or taxonomic expansion—subsuming more space in which comparisons can be made—without necessarily privileging one method over another? Or does the case for CAS presuppose a negative assessment of AS as less hospitable to systematic comparison, and thus methodologically inferior to CAS? The discussion that follows is not epistemologically agnostic. Nor is it promiscuous as to methods. But it emphasizes the need for methodological pluralism and the virtues of openness and ecumenism thereby implied. A segue from AS to CAS will increase the opportunities for comparison and the scale and complexity of the items, changes and interactions that could be compared. It may be tempting to simplify all these empirics by filtering them through the lens and format of a systematically reductive technique. It would however be ironic if that understandable temptation were to reproduce in method the narrowness of scope that warranted CAS in the first place. If and as scholars expand their analytic horizons in the hope of making more sense of a globalizing world, methodological pluralism will be all the more needed to encourage creative thinking outside of any box whose efficacy depends disproportionally on closure.