The strange death of area studies and the normative turn

Areas Studies were set up in universities in the United States at the beginning of the Cold War. The end of the Cold War has entailed the downsizing of this form of academic organization, and the emergence of Global Studies in its place. In a parallel fashion, the 1980s witnessed the rise of Audit Culture in European university systems. These two quite distinct processes have favoured what could tentatively be called a «Normative Turn» in the social sciences, i.e. a switch to an approach which was much more normatively oriented than was the case during the Cold War.