1.2: How did the Field of Global Studies Develop?

Whats in a Name?

Global Studies sometimes has a naming problem.

It sounds a lot like International Studies, International Relations, Area Studies, or Transnational Studies. These fields overlap, borrow from one another, and frequently study some of the same events, yet they differ in the scales they emphasize, the questions they prioritize, and the kinds of connections they are most interested in tracing (Smallman & Brown, 2015; Steger & James, 2019). One way to understand the difference is to imagine several researchers studying migration between Mexico and the United States.

• An International Relations scholar might focus on relationships between the two governments: immigration agreements, diplomacy, border enforcement, security policy, or cooperation between states.
• An Area Studies scholar might develop deep expertise in Mexico, Latin America, U.S.-Mexico border communities, or the languages, histories, politics, and cultures of a particular region.
• A Transnational Studies scholar might focus on what actually moves across the border: people, money sent home through remittances, businesses, family relationships, identities, political activism, communication networks, or cultural practices.
• A Global Studies scholar may ask how all of these processes connect to larger systems involving labor markets, inequality, climate, trade, colonial histories, technology, culture, law, and human mobility.

The difference is not that one field has discovered the “correct” way to study the world, the difference involves scale, emphasis, and perspective.

Area Studies: Go Deep

Area Studies develops detailed knowledge about a particular geographic or cultural region, often by combining history, language, literature, politics, economics, religion, anthropology, geography, and other fields in order to understand a place on its own terms rather than merely as part of somebody else's global story. A scholar may study Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Central Asia, or another region through several disciplines at once. This depth is extremely valuable. Global Studies depends upon people who actually know particular places well, because without that expertise it becomes far too easy to make sweeping claims about “Africa,” “Asia,” “the Global South,” or “the Middle East” as though enormous and internally diverse regions contained one coherent experience. They do not. Area studies keep us from trivializing regions to a single story. 

To learn more about the dangers of reducing people or places to a single narrative, watch Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's TED Talk, The Danger of a Single Story, which explores how stereotypes and incomplete narratives can shape perceptions of cultures, regions, and people.

International Relations: Watch the States

International Relations traditionally emphasizes relationships among governments. Its questions include:

• Why do states cooperate?
• Why do they fight?
• How do alliances work?
• What happens when governments sign treaties?
• How do states pursue security and economic interests?
• What role do organizations such as the United Nations play?

International Relations remains enormously important to Global Studies, particularly when we study war, diplomacy, international institutions, trade, and security. But Global Studies does not assume governments are the only actors worth watching. Corporations, migrants, activists, cities, Indigenous nations, international organizations, communities, social movements, technologies, and even ecosystems can shape global outcomes in ways that may reinforce, bypass, or challenge state power.

Transnational Studies: Follow What Crosses Borders

Transnational Studies pays particular attention to processes that move across national boundaries. Migration is transnational. So are multinational companies. Religious networks may be transnational. Organized crime can be transnational. Social movements may organize across multiple countries. Families themselves may become transnational when members live in different countries but continue to share money, care, responsibilities, culture, and identity. A transnational phenomenon crosses borders but it does not necessarily affect the entire planet. This distinction matters because the scale at which we define a problem influences the scale at which we imagine solutions.

Global Studies: Put the Connections Together

Global Studies is especially interested in phenomena that connect multiple places and systems across large scales, but it also asks how those global systems are experienced differently in particular communities. Climate change is global because its causes and consequences operate at planetary scale. International finance is global because events in one major financial center can affect markets and economies elsewhere. Digital platforms can operate globally even when governments regulate them differently and users experience them through highly local cultures. Global supply chains may connect mines, factories, ports, warehouses, companies, governments, and consumers across several continents, creating relationships among people who may never know one another exist. Global Studies asks how those connections fit together.

Global Does Not Mean Everyone Experiences the Same Thing

Calling a phenomenon “global” does not mean its effects are evenly distributed, nor does it mean every place participates in the same way or possesses the same ability to shape the system. Climate change is global but its effects are not identical everywhere. The internet is global in theory, but access is neither universal nor equal. International trade connects almost every economy but countries and their citizens occupy very different positions within global production and finance. A useful Global Studies habit is therefore to move constantly between two scales.

Zoom Out

What larger system is operating?

Zoom In

What does that system look like in a particular place, community, or person's life?

The global scale can reveal patterns that disappear when we look only at one location, but the local scale reveals experiences, differences, and forms of agency that disappear when we look only at the world as a system. Neither view is complete on its own and Global Studies needs both.