Rudra Sil. Photo © Courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania.

Abstract

In two volumes published by Oxford University Press – Comparative Area Studies: Methodological Rationales and Cross-Regional Applications (2018) and Advancing Comparative Area Studies: Analytical Heterogeneity and Organizational Challenges (2025) – Ariel Ahram, Patrick Köllner and I have laid out the distinctive features and value-added of “comparative area studies” (CAS) in an intellectual environment increasingly preoccupied with “big data” and investing less in contextual knowledge about locales, countries, and regions worldwide. 

CAS seeks to reinvigorate the in-depth, immersive knowledge once associated with interdisciplinary area studies while also relying on contextualized comparisons that cut across areas to illuminate surprising parallels and contracts across time and space. The goal is not to infer full-blown causal models or theories in the language of any one discipline, but rather to generate “middle range” propositions about complex phenomena that may elude researchers who rely on aggregate data or select cases solely to test existing theories. In short, the distinctive value 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 not only to scholarly debates but also to complex processes that affect societies in more than one region of the world. 

The 2025 volume also 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 scholarly debates unfolding across social science disciplines; 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 environment marked by growing fiscal and political pressures that threaten to undermine area studies and double-down on data science.

Biography

Learn more about Rudra Sil

Rudra Sil is Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania where he is also SAS Director of the Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business. He received his Ph.D. from Berkeley in 1996.  His scholarly interests encompass Russian/post-communist studies, Asian studies, comparative labor, international development, qualitative methodology, and the philosophy of social science. Sil has previously authored, coauthored, or coedited eight books. These include Beyond Paradigms: Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics (2010 - coauthored with Peter Katzenstein) and, most recently, Advancing Comparative Area Studies: Analytical Heterogeneity and Organizational Challenges (2025). He is also author or coauthor of more than three dozen papers, including refereed articles have appeared in such journals as Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Economy and Society, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Post-Soviet Affairs, and Studies in Comparative International Development. The paper in Comparative Political Studies received the Dorothy Day Award for Outstanding Labor Scholarship. Sil is currently working on a monograph titled The Fate of a Former Superpower: Russia’s Troubled Search for Its Place in a Post-Cold War World.