Seeing the World: How U.S. Universities Make Knowledge in a Global Era

by Mitchell L. Stevens, Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Seteney Shami

An in-depth look at why American universities continue to favor U.S.-focused social science research despite efforts to make scholarship more cosmopolitan

U.S. research universities have long endeavored to be cosmopolitan places, yet the disciplines of economics, political science, and sociology have remained stubbornly parochial. Despite decades of government and philanthropic investment in international scholarship, the most prestigious academic departments still favor research and expertise on the United States. Why? Seeing the World answers this question by examining university research centers that focus on the Middle East and related regional area studies.

Drawing on candid interviews with scores of top scholars and university leaders to understand how international inquiry is perceived and valued inside the academy, Seeing the World explains how intense competition for tenure-line appointments encourages faculty to pursue "American" projects that are most likely to garner professional advancement. At the same time, constrained by tight budgets at home, university leaders eagerly court patrons and clients worldwide but have a hard time getting departmental faculty to join the program. Together these dynamics shape how scholarship about the rest of the world evolves.

At once a work-and-occupations study of scholarly disciplines, an essay on the formal organization of knowledge, and an inquiry into the fate of area studies, Seeing the World is a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of knowledge in a global era.

Genres: Nonfiction

184 pages, Hardcover

First published February 6, 2018

About the author

A sociologist who studies higher education, and the inaugural Director of the project Futures of Learning, Occupations, and Work (FLOW). An associate professor at Stanford.

Reviews

[Gilion Dumas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short book looks at how US universities are slowly coming around to the need for a global perspective in the study of economics, political science, and sociology. It's a bit wonky, but interesting.

[szymborskalyte · Rating 1 out of 5]

Poor.

[Nils · Rating 4 out of 5]

A useful survey of the growth and development of US universities as producers of global knowledge since the end of World War II. Helpfully deals with the post-Cold War transformations as much as the Cold War era, which has been the subject of a great deal of scholarship, was the transformations of the last 25 years remains largely unaddressed in the historical literature. Contains good summaries of the rise and fall of Area Studies, of study abroad programs, and of language study.