How many Geertz's?

Clifford Geertz's contributions are wide-ranging, in a couple of ways. He wrote about North Africa as well as Indonesia; and he touched on Islam as well as water systems. So there was both geographical as well as topical diversity in his research life.  But here is another dimension of range: Geertz demonstrated a surprisingly wide variation of methodology and theoretical framework in his many studies of Indonesia. I am particularly struck by the conceptual distance between two important studies of Bali and Java. Both these studies are relevant to long processes of economic and social development. But the perspectives taken are quite divergent.  (Geertz provides an appealing account of his early career in Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics.)

The first is Geertz's 1963 book, Agricultural Involution: The Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia, and the second is his 1981 book, Negara: The Theatre State In Nineteenth-Century Bali. The first is a close and detailed reading of agricultural practices in Java.  Geertz examines the progression and the social and ecological settings of two major agricultural regimes -- swidden and sawah (slash and burn and rice paddy).  It is a material ethnography, spending a great deal of effort on the nature of labor practices and the ecological setting of agriculture. It is historical, looking to identify the ways in which the Dutch colonial regime and rising population produced a distinctive social-cultural response in agricultural society.  And it provides an enduring thought paradigm for understanding traditional agriculture, the idea of involution. This is basically the idea of a fine division of task to assure a place for every working adult within the farm economy.

With the steady growth of population came also the elaboration and extension of mechanisms through which agricultural product was spread, if not altogether evenly, at least relatively so, throughout the huge human horde which was obliged to subsist on it. Under the pressure of increasing numbers and limited resources Javanese village society did not bifurcate, as did that of so many other "underdeveloped" nations, into a group of large landlords and a group of oppressed near-serfs. Rather it maintained a comparatively high degree of social and economic homogeneity by dividing the economic pie into a steadily increasing number of minute pieces. (Geertz 1963:97)

The productive system of the post-traditional village developed, therefore, into a dense web of finely spun work rights and work responsibilities spread, like the reticulate veins of the hand, throughout the whole body of the village lands. (Geertz 1963:99)

This is a strikingly materialist treatment of rural Javanese society, with essentially no symbolic interpretation.  Here is how Geertz describes the book in 1991 (link):

The book was originally intended as a prolegomena to a general analysis of Indonesian society. But after I published it, such a project seemed premature, so I more or less set it aside and addressed myself to a series of other issues in Indonesian sociology.  As a result, its very close relation to my work overall has tended to go unnoticed, and the book has become something of an orphan with a special history of its own.

The second book is very different. Negara is a thoroughly symbolic interpretation of Balinese politics and local life, and organizes its gaze through interpretation of the semiotics and history of the "theatre state." Here is one passage in which Geertz describes his view:

The expressive nature of the Balinese state was apparent through the whole of its known history, for it was always pointed not toward tyranny, whose systematic concentration of power it was incompetent to effect, and not even very methodically toward government, which it pursued indifferently and hesitantly, but rather toward spectacle, toward ceremony, toward the public dramatization of the ruling obsessions of Balinese culture: social inequality and status pride. (2)

This study is a great example of symbolic or interpretive anthropology; countless aspects of Balinese social life, behavior, and architecture are interpreted in terms of the ideas associated with the theatre state. But the book also gives a lot of attention to some of the social-material aspects of social life in Bali. Particularly interesting is Geertz's treatment of the control of irrigation water through a set of channels and gates. And this part is an exquisite example of micro-analysis of social coordination. Where the two narratives come together is in the role of symbolic hierarchy in organizing both systems.

One thing that I find interesting about the pair of books, beyond the detailed content, is the remarkable distance in thought frames that they represent. They almost give the impression of being the product of different authors. So what explains this distance?

One piece of the answer is simply time. Agricultural Involution was researched and written in the 1960s, drawing on fieldwork from the 1950s, when Geertz was a young anthropologist. Negara was written in the 1980s, following the extensive development of Geertz's pathbreaking ethnographic ideas of the 1970s.  So a part of the difference between the two books is simply the result of the growth and development of Geertz's ideas.  But I think the two books support something else as well: that really great social scientists are not captive to their own intellectual presuppositions.  It is possible for a Geertz or a Sahlins to treat a topic in a way that represents a fresh approach, an innovative set of ideas.

Another book of Geertz's that I find very interesting is Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia (1968). This work is different from each of these examples -- and again provides a strikingly original contribution to the task of thinking culture.  Here again there is also a critical contribution that is useful in many areas of the social sciences: Islam is not a single, unified "thing" across the many Islamic societies and communities in which it exists.  It is valuable to probe in specific detail some of the distinguishing characteristics of Islam in North Africa and in Indonesia; and the finding of heterogeneity is one that applies to a much wider swath of behavior, consciousness, and culture than simply religion.

Here is a superb archive of almost all of Geertz's corpus (link). (Thanks to Isaac for the link!)

How many Geertz's?

Clifford Geertz's contributions are wide-ranging, in a couple of ways. He wrote about North Africa as well as Indonesia; and he touched on Islam as well as water systems. So there was both geographical as well as topical diversity in his research life.  But here is another dimension of range: Geertz demonstrated a surprisingly wide variation of methodology and theoretical framework in his many studies of Indonesia. I am particularly struck by the conceptual distance between two important studies of Bali and Java. Both these studies are relevant to long processes of economic and social development. But the perspectives taken are quite divergent.  (Geertz provides an appealing account of his early career in Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics.)

The first is Geertz's 1963 book, Agricultural Involution: The Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia, and the second is his 1981 book, Negara: The Theatre State In Nineteenth-Century Bali. The first is a close and detailed reading of agricultural practices in Java.  Geertz examines the progression and the social and ecological settings of two major agricultural regimes -- swidden and sawah (slash and burn and rice paddy).  It is a material ethnography, spending a great deal of effort on the nature of labor practices and the ecological setting of agriculture. It is historical, looking to identify the ways in which the Dutch colonial regime and rising population produced a distinctive social-cultural response in agricultural society.  And it provides an enduring thought paradigm for understanding traditional agriculture, the idea of involution. This is basically the idea of a fine division of task to assure a place for every working adult within the farm economy.

With the steady growth of population came also the elaboration and extension of mechanisms through which agricultural product was spread, if not altogether evenly, at least relatively so, throughout the huge human horde which was obliged to subsist on it. Under the pressure of increasing numbers and limited resources Javanese village society did not bifurcate, as did that of so many other "underdeveloped" nations, into a group of large landlords and a group of oppressed near-serfs. Rather it maintained a comparatively high degree of social and economic homogeneity by dividing the economic pie into a steadily increasing number of minute pieces. (Geertz 1963:97)

The productive system of the post-traditional village developed, therefore, into a dense web of finely spun work rights and work responsibilities spread, like the reticulate veins of the hand, throughout the whole body of the village lands. (Geertz 1963:99)

This is a strikingly materialist treatment of rural Javanese society, with essentially no symbolic interpretation.  Here is how Geertz describes the book in 1991 (link):

The book was originally intended as a prolegomena to a general analysis of Indonesian society. But after I published it, such a project seemed premature, so I more or less set it aside and addressed myself to a series of other issues in Indonesian sociology.  As a result, its very close relation to my work overall has tended to go unnoticed, and the book has become something of an orphan with a special history of its own.

The second book is very different. Negara is a thoroughly symbolic interpretation of Balinese politics and local life, and organizes its gaze through interpretation of the semiotics and history of the "theatre state." Here is one passage in which Geertz describes his view:

The expressive nature of the Balinese state was apparent through the whole of its known history, for it was always pointed not toward tyranny, whose systematic concentration of power it was incompetent to effect, and not even very methodically toward government, which it pursued indifferently and hesitantly, but rather toward spectacle, toward ceremony, toward the public dramatization of the ruling obsessions of Balinese culture: social inequality and status pride. (2)

This study is a great example of symbolic or interpretive anthropology; countless aspects of Balinese social life, behavior, and architecture are interpreted in terms of the ideas associated with the theatre state. But the book also gives a lot of attention to some of the social-material aspects of social life in Bali. Particularly interesting is Geertz's treatment of the control of irrigation water through a set of channels and gates. And this part is an exquisite example of micro-analysis of social coordination. Where the two narratives come together is in the role of symbolic hierarchy in organizing both systems.

One thing that I find interesting about the pair of books, beyond the detailed content, is the remarkable distance in thought frames that they represent. They almost give the impression of being the product of different authors. So what explains this distance?

One piece of the answer is simply time. Agricultural Involution was researched and written in the 1960s, drawing on fieldwork from the 1950s, when Geertz was a young anthropologist. Negara was written in the 1980s, following the extensive development of Geertz's pathbreaking ethnographic ideas of the 1970s.  So a part of the difference between the two books is simply the result of the growth and development of Geertz's ideas.  But I think the two books support something else as well: that really great social scientists are not captive to their own intellectual presuppositions.  It is possible for a Geertz or a Sahlins to treat a topic in a way that represents a fresh approach, an innovative set of ideas.

Another book of Geertz's that I find very interesting is Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia (1968). This work is different from each of these examples -- and again provides a strikingly original contribution to the task of thinking culture.  Here again there is also a critical contribution that is useful in many areas of the social sciences: Islam is not a single, unified "thing" across the many Islamic societies and communities in which it exists.  It is valuable to probe in specific detail some of the distinguishing characteristics of Islam in North Africa and in Indonesia; and the finding of heterogeneity is one that applies to a much wider swath of behavior, consciousness, and culture than simply religion.

Here is a superb archive of almost all of Geertz's corpus (link). (Thanks to Isaac for the link!)

How many Geertz's?

Clifford Geertz's contributions are wide-ranging, in a couple of ways. He wrote about North Africa as well as Indonesia; and he touched on Islam as well as water systems. So there was both geographical as well as topical diversity in his research life.  But here is another dimension of range: Geertz demonstrated a surprisingly wide variation of methodology and theoretical framework in his many studies of Indonesia. I am particularly struck by the conceptual distance between two important studies of Bali and Java. Both these studies are relevant to long processes of economic and social development. But the perspectives taken are quite divergent.  (Geertz provides an appealing account of his early career in Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics.)

The first is Geertz's 1963 book, Agricultural Involution: The Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia, and the second is his 1981 book, Negara: The Theatre State In Nineteenth-Century Bali. The first is a close and detailed reading of agricultural practices in Java.  Geertz examines the progression and the social and ecological settings of two major agricultural regimes -- swidden and sawah (slash and burn and rice paddy).  It is a material ethnography, spending a great deal of effort on the nature of labor practices and the ecological setting of agriculture. It is historical, looking to identify the ways in which the Dutch colonial regime and rising population produced a distinctive social-cultural response in agricultural society.  And it provides an enduring thought paradigm for understanding traditional agriculture, the idea of involution. This is basically the idea of a fine division of task to assure a place for every working adult within the farm economy.

With the steady growth of population came also the elaboration and extension of mechanisms through which agricultural product was spread, if not altogether evenly, at least relatively so, throughout the huge human horde which was obliged to subsist on it. Under the pressure of increasing numbers and limited resources Javanese village society did not bifurcate, as did that of so many other "underdeveloped" nations, into a group of large landlords and a group of oppressed near-serfs. Rather it maintained a comparatively high degree of social and economic homogeneity by dividing the economic pie into a steadily increasing number of minute pieces. (Geertz 1963:97)

The productive system of the post-traditional village developed, therefore, into a dense web of finely spun work rights and work responsibilities spread, like the reticulate veins of the hand, throughout the whole body of the village lands. (Geertz 1963:99)

This is a strikingly materialist treatment of rural Javanese society, with essentially no symbolic interpretation.  Here is how Geertz describes the book in 1991 (link):

The book was originally intended as a prolegomena to a general analysis of Indonesian society. But after I published it, such a project seemed premature, so I more or less set it aside and addressed myself to a series of other issues in Indonesian sociology.  As a result, its very close relation to my work overall has tended to go unnoticed, and the book has become something of an orphan with a special history of its own.

The second book is very different. Negara is a thoroughly symbolic interpretation of Balinese politics and local life, and organizes its gaze through interpretation of the semiotics and history of the "theatre state." Here is one passage in which Geertz describes his view:

The expressive nature of the Balinese state was apparent through the whole of its known history, for it was always pointed not toward tyranny, whose systematic concentration of power it was incompetent to effect, and not even very methodically toward government, which it pursued indifferently and hesitantly, but rather toward spectacle, toward ceremony, toward the public dramatization of the ruling obsessions of Balinese culture: social inequality and status pride. (2)

This study is a great example of symbolic or interpretive anthropology; countless aspects of Balinese social life, behavior, and architecture are interpreted in terms of the ideas associated with the theatre state. But the book also gives a lot of attention to some of the social-material aspects of social life in Bali. Particularly interesting is Geertz's treatment of the control of irrigation water through a set of channels and gates. And this part is an exquisite example of micro-analysis of social coordination. Where the two narratives come together is in the role of symbolic hierarchy in organizing both systems.

One thing that I find interesting about the pair of books, beyond the detailed content, is the remarkable distance in thought frames that they represent. They almost give the impression of being the product of different authors. So what explains this distance?

One piece of the answer is simply time. Agricultural Involution was researched and written in the 1960s, drawing on fieldwork from the 1950s, when Geertz was a young anthropologist. Negara was written in the 1980s, following the extensive development of Geertz's pathbreaking ethnographic ideas of the 1970s.  So a part of the difference between the two books is simply the result of the growth and development of Geertz's ideas.  But I think the two books support something else as well: that really great social scientists are not captive to their own intellectual presuppositions.  It is possible for a Geertz or a Sahlins to treat a topic in a way that represents a fresh approach, an innovative set of ideas.

Another book of Geertz's that I find very interesting is Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia (1968). This work is different from each of these examples -- and again provides a strikingly original contribution to the task of thinking culture.  Here again there is also a critical contribution that is useful in many areas of the social sciences: Islam is not a single, unified "thing" across the many Islamic societies and communities in which it exists.  It is valuable to probe in specific detail some of the distinguishing characteristics of Islam in North Africa and in Indonesia; and the finding of heterogeneity is one that applies to a much wider swath of behavior, consciousness, and culture than simply religion.

Here is a superb archive of almost all of Geertz's corpus (link). (Thanks to Isaac for the link!)

Movements for social justice

It was argued in an earlier post that social progress is best pursued through incremental, gradual steps that can be evaluated as we go along (post). It was also suggested that programs of change that are bent on achieving huge systemic change and the establishment of a complex new set of institutions are unwise, because of the contingency and unpredictability of social processes (post).

How should these ideas be tested against historical cases of large struggles for social justice -- for example, the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa or the Civil Rights movement in the early 1960s in the United States?

Several things are clear. First, both of these movements for racial justice aimed at -- and achieved -- large, discontinuous change in their home societies. Second, each involved strategies and struggles that were inherently risky: the probability of failure and suffering for participants was high. But third, the end state towards which these struggles aimed was not a highly complex, untested and novel set of institutions. Rather, each movement aimed at securing a system of law that treated black people equally and democratically -- a system whose properties we understand well. So no one could argue in 1955 in South Africa or Alabama that a system of democratic equality within a racially neutral system of law could have catastrophic unforeseen consequences.

In other words, the major civil rights struggles were risky with respect to strategies but low-risk with respect to possible outcomes. Racial equality is not a hazardous social reality.

But here is another salient point. Even if the range of possible outcomes of a struggle against apartheid or Jim Crow might include some social disasters, it is inconceivable that we would conclude that the black population should simply accept and endure its oppression. People who are subject to enduring injustice have a right to demand justice and to mobilize so as to bringing justice about.

One of the constraints I mentioned on social change in an earlier post is that we need to test proposed new institutions in terms of how they would work, given people as they are (post). But this is slightly questionable, in that it takes existing social consciousness as a given rather than being itself an object of change.

In particular, a successful outcome of either of these struggles entailed changing more than laws and institutions; each required a change of consciousness and morality in the white population of power-holders. If the majority of the white population had remained violently racist, then democratic racial equality may not have been a sustainable social order. (This is the kind of scenario that Michael Mann takes up in The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing.) So a strategy for change required changing both structures and consciousness. And this means that we have to be reflective about what sorts of factors we take as fixed rather than changeable.

This also implies a change of emphasis in the analysis of social progress argued previously. Some crucial advances in social justice have been anything but continuous and gradual; but have rather been daring, improbable, and crucial. Being deliberative about strategies of social change does not imply being slow to act or reluctant to take on large challenges.

The Real Utopias project has done really interesting and important work on new ideas about democracy and new thinking about ending economic exploitation and class power (link, link). What this project hasn't done yet is to address issues of racism and persistent racial inequity. And yet this is a pressing issue, in the United States and other countries. It would be great to see some of these activist-scholars turn their attention to racial progress.

Movements for social justice

It was argued in an earlier post that social progress is best pursued through incremental, gradual steps that can be evaluated as we go along (post). It was also suggested that programs of change that are bent on achieving huge systemic change and the establishment of a complex new set of institutions are unwise, because of the contingency and unpredictability of social processes (post).

How should these ideas be tested against historical cases of large struggles for social justice -- for example, the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa or the Civil Rights movement in the early 1960s in the United States?

Several things are clear. First, both of these movements for racial justice aimed at -- and achieved -- large, discontinuous change in their home societies. Second, each involved strategies and struggles that were inherently risky: the probability of failure and suffering for participants was high. But third, the end state towards which these struggles aimed was not a highly complex, untested and novel set of institutions. Rather, each movement aimed at securing a system of law that treated black people equally and democratically -- a system whose properties we understand well. So no one could argue in 1955 in South Africa or Alabama that a system of democratic equality within a racially neutral system of law could have catastrophic unforeseen consequences.

In other words, the major civil rights struggles were risky with respect to strategies but low-risk with respect to possible outcomes. Racial equality is not a hazardous social reality.

But here is another salient point. Even if the range of possible outcomes of a struggle against apartheid or Jim Crow might include some social disasters, it is inconceivable that we would conclude that the black population should simply accept and endure its oppression. People who are subject to enduring injustice have a right to demand justice and to mobilize so as to bringing justice about.

One of the constraints I mentioned on social change in an earlier post is that we need to test proposed new institutions in terms of how they would work, given people as they are (post). But this is slightly questionable, in that it takes existing social consciousness as a given rather than being itself an object of change.

In particular, a successful outcome of either of these struggles entailed changing more than laws and institutions; each required a change of consciousness and morality in the white population of power-holders. If the majority of the white population had remained violently racist, then democratic racial equality may not have been a sustainable social order. (This is the kind of scenario that Michael Mann takes up in The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing.) So a strategy for change required changing both structures and consciousness. And this means that we have to be reflective about what sorts of factors we take as fixed rather than changeable.

This also implies a change of emphasis in the analysis of social progress argued previously. Some crucial advances in social justice have been anything but continuous and gradual; but have rather been daring, improbable, and crucial. Being deliberative about strategies of social change does not imply being slow to act or reluctant to take on large challenges.

The Real Utopias project has done really interesting and important work on new ideas about democracy and new thinking about ending economic exploitation and class power (link, link). What this project hasn't done yet is to address issues of racism and persistent racial inequity. And yet this is a pressing issue, in the United States and other countries. It would be great to see some of these activist-scholars turn their attention to racial progress.

Movements for social justice

It was argued in an earlier post that social progress is best pursued through incremental, gradual steps that can be evaluated as we go along (post). It was also suggested that programs of change that are bent on achieving huge systemic change and the establishment of a complex new set of institutions are unwise, because of the contingency and unpredictability of social processes (post).

How should these ideas be tested against historical cases of large struggles for social justice -- for example, the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa or the Civil Rights movement in the early 1960s in the United States?

Several things are clear. First, both of these movements for racial justice aimed at -- and achieved -- large, discontinuous change in their home societies. Second, each involved strategies and struggles that were inherently risky: the probability of failure and suffering for participants was high. But third, the end state towards which these struggles aimed was not a highly complex, untested and novel set of institutions. Rather, each movement aimed at securing a system of law that treated black people equally and democratically -- a system whose properties we understand well. So no one could argue in 1955 in South Africa or Alabama that a system of democratic equality within a racially neutral system of law could have catastrophic unforeseen consequences.

In other words, the major civil rights struggles were risky with respect to strategies but low-risk with respect to possible outcomes. Racial equality is not a hazardous social reality.

But here is another salient point. Even if the range of possible outcomes of a struggle against apartheid or Jim Crow might include some social disasters, it is inconceivable that we would conclude that the black population should simply accept and endure its oppression. People who are subject to enduring injustice have a right to demand justice and to mobilize so as to bringing justice about.

One of the constraints I mentioned on social change in an earlier post is that we need to test proposed new institutions in terms of how they would work, given people as they are (post). But this is slightly questionable, in that it takes existing social consciousness as a given rather than being itself an object of change.

In particular, a successful outcome of either of these struggles entailed changing more than laws and institutions; each required a change of consciousness and morality in the white population of power-holders. If the majority of the white population had remained violently racist, then democratic racial equality may not have been a sustainable social order. (This is the kind of scenario that Michael Mann takes up in The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing.) So a strategy for change required changing both structures and consciousness. And this means that we have to be reflective about what sorts of factors we take as fixed rather than changeable.

This also implies a change of emphasis in the analysis of social progress argued previously. Some crucial advances in social justice have been anything but continuous and gradual; but have rather been daring, improbable, and crucial. Being deliberative about strategies of social change does not imply being slow to act or reluctant to take on large challenges.

The Real Utopias project has done really interesting and important work on new ideas about democracy and new thinking about ending economic exploitation and class power (link, link). What this project hasn't done yet is to address issues of racism and persistent racial inequity. And yet this is a pressing issue, in the United States and other countries. It would be great to see some of these activist-scholars turn their attention to racial progress.

Area studies and social science theories

image: The ruins of Bagan, Myanmar

Understanding a particular place seems to involve a very specific kind of knowledge and research. It involves understanding the unique combination of historical circumstances, social processes, cultural formations, and unique institutions that give rise to the current complex social reality. And yet it also involves an effort to understand and explain the developments that are observed -- which implies some sort of appeal to social science theory.  For the past four decades this space has been occupied by "area studies" -- Latin American studies, Asian studies, African studies.

Here is a nice 1998 paper by South Asian historian and former president of the Association for Asian Studies David Luddens on the epistemic foundations of area studies (link).  Here is how Luddens formulates the issue:

The production of area-specific knowledge about the world has no firm theoretical foundation. It seems to be an intellectual by-product of modern state territorialism and of those state-supported institutions of area studies which became prominent during the heyday of the nation state, in the decades between 1945 and 1990. Area studies in the university find their official justification in itself because they effectively serve disciplines, professions, business and national interests. The rationale for area studies for itself derives from the need to understand the diversity of human experience, which is increasingly embroiled in identity politics and debates about cultural pluralism. University administrators, legislators, and funding agencies now find the old rationale for area studies less compelling and institutional support for the production of area-specific knowledge depends more and more on its utility for academic globalization, as the university, like business and government, seeks to expand its operations around the world and to establish it own authority in global culture. Though scholars who produce area-specific knowledge are well endowed with talent and resources, they find it hard to adapt to this trend without sacrificing their old intellectual commitments, because they have such a weak theoretical justification for doing what they do. To sustain their enterprise, they need to theorize area-studies in relation to globalization. This is the first in a set of essays that work in that direction. It focuses on the institutional history of area studies in the long-term process of globalization. (1)

Here I'd like to focus on the relationship between area knowledge and disciplinary knowledge.

Area studies is in its nature an interdisciplinary assemblage, at two levels -- institutional and individual. For example, centers for Latin American studies commonly involve political scientists, anthropologists, literary specialists, art historians, and sociologists, each bringing a specific body of knowledge and inquiry to the collective effort. But furthermore, each individual area specialist is expected to show some degree of interdisciplinary knowledge in his or her research. This is the value-added provided by a center: individuals come together and gain insight from colleagues in other disciplines.  It is commonly believed among area specialists that excessive focus on a single disciplinary perspective is likely to create a form of "aspect blindness" in the investigator -- the economic historian of China overlooks the cultural forces at work, the political scientist who studies Latin American populism may fail to see the influence of religious traditions, and so forth.

How should area studies specialists and historians employ general social theories in attempting to understand particular social and historical examples? How, for example, is social science theory pertinent to explaining the historical experience of India or Burma?  In other words, how can we bring together the specific knowledge of area specialists and the more general knowledge of discipline-based social scientists?

Some theoretical frameworks -- the study of social movements, analysis of land tenure relations, analysis of local political power practices, analysis of local political traditions -- are plainly useful across studies of various societies. They offer good common questions -- so long as we recall that there are very different answers to these questions in different places and times.  And they can provide suggestive ideas about the causal processes that may be underway in particular periods of social change.

One important goal of the use of social science theories is to help the researcher to arrive at descriptions of the particular institutions, traditions, mentalities, etc., through which various general factors are worked out -- to mediate the particular and the general. Social science theories provide developed conceptual schemes and vocabularies in terms of which to analyze the concrete social phenomena. What is a revolution? How does it differ from a coup or a fall of government?  So social science theory is valuable as a source of ideas about how to organize and conceptualize the social given in a particular area.

Another critical contribution of the social sciences to area studies is the growing collection of common social mechanisms and processes that political scientists, sociologists, and economists have studied in detail. Social scientists aren't able to provide comprehensive theories of society that can simply be "applied" to specific areas; there is no general theory of the state that would permit the Middle East specialist to understand and predict the behavior of the Syrian regime. But social scientists are able to identify mundane mid-level mechanisms that arise in politics, economies, and social movements; and these theories of specific mechanisms can be of great value to the area specialist. (This is a crucial contribution of Chuck Tilly's work; for example, Tilly and Tarrow, Contentious Politics.)

Consider one particular example -- the China area specialist who is trying to get a better understanding of changes in China's economic structure between 1980 and 2000. Findings having to do with the mechanisms of rent-seeking and corruption will probably shed important light on the developments; the mechanism of "bureaucratic clientelism" will be helpful; and mechanisms of social movements and labor mobilization will prove helpful as well. In one sense China's sudden economic transformation after the reforms of the early 1980s was sui generis. But it also consisted of a number of component processes that have been identified and studied in very different historical and cultural settings.  (Jean Oi's State and Peasant in Contemporary China: The Political Economy of Village Government provides a good example.)

So there is an important sense in which the social sciences permit a basis for generalizing and explaining when we consider specific areas. But it is crucial to avoid the mistake of over-generalizing.

One such mistake is the idea that we can simply subsume a particular region's experience under a comprehensive general theory. In particular, we should avoid stereotyped contrasts and models of change: traditional-modern; capitalist-feudal; stagnant-dynamic. Constructs such as "modernization theory" are unhelpful, because they import a raft of unspoken presuppositions, they are teleological, and they are formulated at too high a level. Area specialists are better served by meso-level theories of social mechanisms.  (Arturo Escobar offers a strong contemporary critique of modernization theory in Encountering Development.)

Another variety of faulty historical analysis is the intellectual error of Eurocentrism. It is critical that we not generalize from the experience of Western Europe in application to Asia or Africa.  Consider the example of Asian politics. The polity of pre-colonial India was highly pluralistic, with a very wide and heterogeneous set of social relations, forms of power, ethnic conflicts, economic forms, and political and quasi-political arrangements. China, by contrast, was a more uniform political order, with a visible unified state. And neither of these states is well understood if we simply import the apparatus of political theory developed out of study of the modern European state.  So there is great variety and originality in the political institutions of India, China, or Bali, and we cannot understand those institutions by simply attempting to find European analogies.  (Bin Wong makes these points very powerfully in China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience.)

So area scholars have to aim for a delicate balance, between concrete, local knowledge and the application of relevant findings from the social sciences.  But the social sciences certainly have a key role in understanding the institutions, mentalities, and behavior of particular places.