Advancing Comparative Area Studies

Ariel I. Ahram is Professor at the Virginia Tech School of Public & International Affairs in Arlington. He is an Associate of the Institute of Middle East Studies of the GIGA, the German Institute for Global and Area Studies. He earned his PhD in government and MA in Arab studies at Georgetown University and BA at Brandeis University. Patrick Köllner is Vice President of the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), Director of the GIGA Institute for Asian Studies, and a professor of political science at the University of Hamburg. He studied politics and management as well as modern Japan studies at the universities of Konstanz and Essex and holds a doctorate and a habilitation in political science from Humboldt University of Berlin and the University of Trier, respectively. Rudra Sil is Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has taught since obtaining his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. His scholarly interestsencompass Russian/post-communist studies, Asian studies, labor politics, international development, qualitative methodology, and philosophy of social science.

• List of Contributors Prologue Comparative Area Studies: Implications for Institutional ArchitectureTimothy J. Power Chapter 1. Introduction Extending the Horizons of Comparative Area Studies (CAS): Analytical Heterogeneity and Organizational ChallengesPatrick Köllner, Rudra Sil, and Ariel I. Ahram Part I. CAS and the Prospects for Interpretation across Contexts Chapter 2. Communicating Across Contexts: How Translation Can Benefit Comparative Area StudiesErica S. Simmons and Nicholas Rush Smith Chapter 3. Comparative Area Studies and Interpretivism: Towards an Interpretive-Comparative Research ApproachAnna Fünfgeld Part II. How CAS Benefits, and Benefits from, Varied Strategies of Causal Analysis Chapter 4. Causal Explanation with Ideal Types: Opportunities for Comparative Area Studies Ryan Saylor Chapter 5. Advancing Theory Development in Comparative Area Studies: Practical Recommendations for Evaluating the Equifinality of Causal MechanismsMarissa Brookes and Jesse Dillon Savage Chapter 6. The Best of Two Worlds? Generalizing and Individualizing through Multi-Method Research in Comparative Area StudiesMatthias Basedau and David Kuehn Part III. Rethinking the Sites and Spaces of Comparison Chapter 7. Crossing the Boundaries of Comparison: Comparative Area Studies and Comparative Historical AnalysisAmel Ahmed Chapter 8. Comparison as Ontology, Region as Concept: On the Synergies of Comparative Area StudiesErik Martinez Kuhonta Chapter 9. The Contextualized Comparative Sector Approach: Comparative Area Studies at the Sectoral Level of AnalysisRoselyn Hsueh Part IV . CAS and the Promise of Global IR Chapter 10. The Promise of Comparative Area Studies for the Study of Human RightsEileen Doherty-Sil Chapter 11. Revisionist (Eurasian) Powers and the West: A Comparative Area Studies Bridge between International Relations Theory and Area ExpertiseNora Fisher-Onar Part V. Organizational Challenges and Institutional Frameworks for CAS Chapter 12. Comparative Area Studies: Programs, Departments, Constraints, OpportunitiesSara Wallace Goodman and Thomas Pepinsky Chapter 13. Comparative Area Studies in the Great Brain Race: Institutional Legacies and Programmatic Innovation in the Global AgeAriel I. Ahram and Connie Stovall EpilogueAmrita Narlikar