Knowledge Production, Area Studies and Global Cooperation

While the areas conventionally studied in Area Studies or Comparative Area Studies are demarcated primarily by geographical boundaries, areas serving the idea of the good life in an emotional sense are hardly comprehended as such. The fact of pluri-local connectivity should, however, be integrated into the production of knowledge about different areas of the world and the behavioural dimension of global cooperation. "

Knowledge Production, Area Studies and Global Cooperation" examines why theories, methods, and concepts originate in one place rather than another, how they travel, and what position the scholar adopts while doing research particularly in the field and in diverse surroundings. Through case studies from Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, it argues that conventional area knowledge merits to be contested. A shift of perspective is achieved when cooperation is examined at the trans-local and individual rather than the formal international and collective level. The book shifts the view from the collective to the individual and from the formal, visible to the emotional and oftentimes invisible patterns of connectedness. It re-assesses the knowledge about areas and global cooperation that has been produced and disseminated throughout decades in the so-called global north. "