Trans-Area Studies and the perils of geographical ‘world-writing’

Abstract

The relationship between Geography and Area Studies remains fraught but crucial, as it highlights at least three imperatives we cannot do without: to decolonize disciplinary Geography, to forge more egalitarian and sustainable relations of knowledge production and to foreground enduring differences of life ‘elsewhere’ represented in novel forms. I argue that these imperatives require an Area Studies ethos, and that the longer Geography as we know it remains aloof from such imperatives, its days as an art or science of broader value are numbered.