Country Studies: A Team with No Coach? Problems of Composition, Methodology and Development

A. I. Treivish ()

Outlines of global transformations: politics, economics, law, 2022, vol. 14, issue 6

Abstract: The article raises and discusses six “provocative†questions about country studies in order to review, once more, its headings, facilities and, above all, its problems. The questions are as follows: (1) A discipline lacking its exact name, object and composition? (2) A science or...? (implicitly, not just science); (3) A theory-free science? (4) Сountry or state? (the question of the key object); (5) Degeneration or regeneration? (the nature of the evolution); and (6) Who and why needs it? (the fields of application). The answers are ambiguous and open to criticism. A finding from the reviewed problems of country studies is that they are numerous and serious. This is a truly interdisciplinary squad composed “from geology to ideology†, lacking a head coach, owner or even an internationally proprietary name, with a goal depending on the type (genre) of activity: research, informational, promotional or educational. Country studies as a science lacks clear understanding of its object, as well as its own theory (simplified reductions excluded), and self-confidence resulting in frequent tacks and relabeling. At the same time, its role is still great not as an “idiographer†and collector of any country information, but as a laboratory for searching and checking new development trends. The demand for a country scholar in the shape of a social order, not always explicit, is diverse and relatively stable. Hence the diagnosis: the patient is more alive than dead, and unlikely to die in the near future.

Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ccs:journl:y:2022:id:912

DOI: 10.23932/2542-0240-2021-14-6-2

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