Country Studies: A Team with No Coach? Problems of Composition, Methodology and Development

Abstract

The article raises and discusses six “provocative” questions about country studies in order to review, once more, its headings, facilities and, above all, its problems. The questions are as follows: (1) A discipline lacking its exact name, object and composition? (2) A science or...? (implicitly, not just science); (3) A theory-free science? (4) Сountry or state? (the question of the key object); (5) Degeneration or regeneration? (the nature of the evolution); and (6) Who and why needs it? (the fields of application). The answers are ambiguous and open to criticism. A finding from the reviewed problems of country studies is that they are numerous and serious. This is a truly interdisciplinary squad composed “from geology to ideology”, lacking a head coach, owner or even an internationally proprietary name, with a goal depending on the type (genre) of activity: research, informational, promotional or educational. Country studies as a science lacks clear understanding of its object, as well as its own theory (simplified reductions excluded), and self-confidence resulting in frequent tacks and relabeling. At the same time, its role is still great not as an “idiographer” and collector of any country information, but as a laboratory for searching and checking new development trends. The demand for a country scholar in the shape of a social order, not always explicit, is diverse and relatively stable. Hence the diagnosis: the patient is more alive than dead, and unlikely to die in the near future.