Beyond Methodological Nationalism: Research Methodologies for Cross-Border Studies

This volume strives to establish a new agenda for methodologies in the social sciences, summarizing the most important research strategies developed in the social sciences since the early globalization and transnationalization studies of the 1980s and 1990s - namely, the cosmopolitican approach, the transnational lens, the scalar approach, and global and multi-sited ethnography. The contributions go beyond the early criticisms of methodological nationalism, providing insights into new strategies and illustrating how scholars apply these research strategies in different fields such as migration research and social anthropology. Analyzing the advantages and lacunae of new research strategies helps both to outline general methodological directions and to provide helpful guides for empirical analysis.

Cross-border studies have become attractive for a number of fields, including international migration, studies of material and cultural globalization, and history. While cross-border studies have expanded, the critique on nation-centered research lens has also grown. This book revisits drawbacks of methodological nationalism in theory and methodological strategies. It summarizes research methodologies of the current studies on transnationalization and globalization, such as multi-scalar and transnational approaches, global and multi-sited ethnography, as well as the entangled history approach and the incorporating comparison approach. This collected volume goes beyond rhetorical criticism on methodological nationalism, which is mainly associated with the ignorance and naturalization of national categories. It proffers insights for the systematic implementation of novel research strategies within empirical studies deployed by young and senior scholars. The novelty lies in an interdisciplinary lens ranging from sociology, social anthropology and history.