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

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