What Comparative Area Studies (CAS) Brings to the Table: Leveraging and Integrating Area-Based Knowledge in the Social Sciences
In a previous volume, Comparative Area Studies: Methodological Rationales and Cross-Regional Applications (Oxford University Press, 2018), Ariel Ahram, Patrick Köllner and I laid out the distinctive features and value-added of “comparative area studies” (CAS) against the backdrop of ongoing methodological debates in the social sciences. CAS seeks to retain and utilize the in-depth, immersive knowledge associated with extensive area-based training and expertise while encouraging contextualized comparisons involving engagement with research and debates on highly relevant cases brought in from other, less familiar areas. The goal is not to infer full-blown causal generalizations but rather to generate novel interpretations and partially portable middle-range propositions that may elude researchers who rely on aggregate data or limit their cases to a single area they are familiar with. In short, the promise of the CAS framework lies in a concerted effort to reinvigorate area studies, to encourage members of multiple area studies communities to engage more with each other around specific issues, and to leverage contextualized comparisons across regions so as to stimulate fresh interpretations and conceptual frameworks that speak to disciplinary debates in the social sciences.

Since the publication of the 2018 volume, a new cohort of (mostly qualitative) researchers has sought to connect a growing range of scholarly endeavors to the CAS framework while asking important questions about its epistemological flexibility and about the institutional pressures that the CAS approach must contend with. These questions have inspired a new volume, Advancing Comparative Area Studies: Analytical Heterogeneity and Organizational Challenges (Oxford University Press, 2025), which brings in more varied approaches and topics along with some new voices, including those of fifteen scholars who had no connection to the first volume. The latter book showcases how CAS can accommodate a wider range of area-based scholarship predicated on more varied methodological and epistemological principles. This includes not only contextualized comparisons of countries from different regions but also interpretive work, sub-national comparisons focused on sites and sectors, as well as inter-regional comparisons that speak to global issues such as human rights and the rise of regional powers (topics that go beyond comparative politics, which was the focus of the first volume). Moreover, the volume offers practical, realistic discussions of how our current institutional architecture can be adapted to: (i) bridge debates going on in different area studies communities to each other and to disciplinary debates; and (ii) spur discussions of how a more efficient and streamlined infrastructure can support both area studies programs and cross-regional comparative research in an uncertain institutional environment marked by growing fiscal pressures that threaten to eliminate some area studies programs.

Rudra Sil is Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania where he is also SAS Director of the dual-degree Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business. He received his Ph.D. from Berkeley before joining the Penn faculty in 1996. His scholarly interests encompass Russian/post-communist studies, Asian studies, comparative labor politics, international development, qualitative methodology, and the philosophy of social science. Sil is currently working on a monograph titled The Fate of a Former Superpower: Russia’s Troubled Search for Relevance and Recognition in a Post-Cold War World. He has previously authored, coauthored, or coedited eight books. These include two monographs – Managing ‘Modernity’: Work, Community, and Authority in Late-Industrializing Japan and Russia (2002) and Beyond Paradigms: Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics (2010), coauthored with Peter Katzenstein and honored as a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title – as well as six co-edited books, including The Politics of Labor in a Global Age (2001), World Order After Leninism (2006) and, most recently, Advancing Comparative Area Studies: Analytical Heterogeneity and Organizational Challenges (2025). His articles have appeared in a variety of scholarly journals, including Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Political Studies, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Economy and Society, Post-Soviet Affairs and Studies in Comparative International Development. The paper in Comparative Political Studies was awarded the Dorothy Day Award for Outstanding Labor Scholarship. Sil is also recipient of multiple teaching awards, including the 2022 Ira H. Abrams Memorial Prize for Distinguished Teaching in the School of Arts and Sciences.
Date: 3 December 2025, 17:00
Venue: St Antony's College, 62 Woodstock Road OX2 6JF
Venue Details: Nissan Lecture Theatre
Speaker: Professor Rudra Sil (University of Pennsylvania)
Organising department: Oxford School of Global and Area Studies
Organiser: Dr Chigusa Yamaura (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: osga.ea@area.ox.ac.uk
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Charlotte Guillain