Past Fellows at the Institute of International Studies

John L. Simpson Memorial Research Fellows, 2002-2003

Caroline Arnold, Political Science: Communities of Interest: The Local Bases of Social Service Provision in Turkis and Indian Cities. The state-led economic models that India and Turkey adopted after Independence were more than just archetypes of statist economics; they also embodied a vision of national development that designated the state as the engine of social transformation. Nor was the provision of social services confined to solely state sources. Certain private industries provided health care and housing in an effort to build a local labor force; such services have endured beyond their inception at the turn of the twentieth century. As the requirements of "international competitiveness" have varied from industry to industry, these differences have in turn shaped local-level differences in who provides social services to workers, as well as the type of services that particular groups provide. This dissertation explores how the transformed role of industry and the public sector in India and Turkey has shifted the sources of social services provided to working class populations. The research is concentrated in three types of cities with different local industrial profiles: 1) cities where the predominant industry is export-oriented; 2) cities where the predominant industry originated in the public sector during the expansion of state investment; and 3) large, multi-industrial cities with robust state and private enterprises in industries that developed both before and after the introduction of economic liberalization. Ms. Arnold argues that the historical origins of local services and workers? entitlement to them have in turn shaped their demands, and ability to press for, continued provision of social welfare.

Susan Paige Arthur, Political Science: Decolonizing French Intellectuals: Approaches to the Cultural Other in the Postcolonial Era, 1960-1990. This dissertation will examine the ideas postwar French intellectuals developed about cultural alterity through their consideration of colonialism and neocolonialism. Ms. Arthur begins with Jean-Paul Sartre for two reasons. First, most of the thinking about the cultural other in the postwar era may be related to his work, as either an extension or a rejection of it. Second, certain aspects of his thought, so important to his time, have been forgotten in the wake of his eclipse or obscured through a lens that views his work mainly in relation to the Cold War. The objects of subsequent chapters are chosen for their capacity to represent different positions on the issue of cultural alterity, as well as their willingness to discuss publicly the political issues of their day: Frantz Fanon in terms of his radicalization of Sartrean philosophy, his unique contribution to the psychology of cultural alterity, and his ensuing neglect in France after his death; Michel de Certeau as an anti-subjectivist theorist concerned with the ways the writing of history in the West has gone hand in hand with colonization of non-European others and who advocates the autonomy of cultures; and Tzvetan Todorov as a thinker keen to uphold universal ideals, the independence of moral subjectivity, and the possibility of knowing the cultural other through noncoercive means.

Jennifer Chun, Sociology: New Forms of Working-Class Politics and Organization for Low-Wage (Im)migrant and Women Workers: Examining the Dynamics of Workers' Struggles under Globalization in South Korea and the United States. This project investigates the changing character of working-class politics and organization in the context of globalization by examining struggles waged by unions in two very different national contexts -- South Korea and the United States -- to incorporate groups of low-wage, non-standard (im)migrant and women workers. Ms. Chun argues that crisis-ridden labor movements, which experienced widespread decline under neo-liberal economic restructuring, are attempting to reconstitute themselves in strikingly similar ways: by organizing some of the most vulnerable, not the most powerful, workers in the global labor market. Ms. Chun focuses on two sets of comparative case studies in each national context -- homecare workers in California and golf game assistants in South Korea who are predominantly female, and (im)migrant janitors in California and (im)migrant operatives in South Korea -- to demonstrate that the institutional context in which labor movement organizations are embedded and the highly unequal global context shaping historically contested meanings of "workers" and "workers rights" lead to key differences in the struggles to improve the living and working conditions of highly exploited, institutionally vulnerable and socially marginalized groups of workers. Specifically, she finds that union organizing campaigns in California are promoting a citizenship-based discourse of equal rights under the leadership of highly centralized unions whereas in South Korea, union organizing campaigns are creating smaller, independent union structures that appeal to a global discourse of human rights.

Sebastian Etchemendy, Political Science: Models of Capitalist Reorganization: Compensating the Losers in Liberalizing Economies. The goal of this project is to conceptualize and explain alternative modes of capitalist reorganization in middle-income countries that pursue neoliberal reform. Mr. Etchemendy will study how the sweeping process of market liberalization carried out by labor-based parties in Spain (1982-95) and Argentina (1989-99) involved different models of industrial and labor adjustment. This project proposes that in Argentina and Spain a crucial component of the effort to construct reform coalitions consisted in the politics of designing compensations for the losers in sectors of manufacturing business and labor. The study identifies two quite different patterns of capitalist reorganization: Statist (Spain) and Corporatist (Argentina). Mr. Etchemendy will explore how the specific types of industrial adjustment were shaped by the interplay of external and domestic factors: 1) fiscal resources of the state which were directly influenced by external constraints, 2) the strength of the private industrial sector vis-?-vis the state, and, 3) the degree of centralization of the union movement. This hypothesis is tested by a comparative study of the politics of compensations in the following policy areas: industrial restructuring in three manufacturing sectors -- steel, petroleum, and autos -- and in the deregulation of labor legislation. The project focuses on Spain and Argentina as essentially non-market paths to industrial adjustment, but includes a comparison with Chile in the 1973-89 period as the embodiment of a third and market-oriented type of industrial reorganization under neoliberalism. Finally, the thesis studies the consequences of each mode of neoliberal adjustment for the eventual pattern of development in the post-reform period.

Natalia Ferretti, Political Science: Organizing Legislative Business: Agenda Power and Policy-Making in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. The purpose of this research is to explore the internal organization of congress in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. By organization of congress, Ms. Ferretti refers to the rules that distribute the power to structure the legislative process among party leaders, committees chairs, rank-and-file legislators, and the president. Scholars working on the US congress have long argued that, while voting power in the legislature is evenly distributed among legislators, the power to decide what committees examine and draft the proposals, what bills are sent to the floor for their consideration, and what amendments are open for a vote, is concentrated in the hands of a few legislative leaders. If this is true, then differences in the distribution of bill referral, scheduling, and amendment power should produce significant differences in policy outcomes. This project will explore these variations, both in congressional organization and policy content, in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile.

Alexandra Huneeus, Jurisprudence and Social Policy: Delayed Justice: How Pinochet-Era Human Rights Cases are Transforming the Rule of Law in Chile. Over a decade after the dictatorship's end, and a quarter-century after its crimes began, Pinochet-era human rights cases have begun to move forward in the Chilean courts. Hundreds of languishing claims, some filed away for years as "temporarily suspended," have re-opened across the country, and dozens of retired officials are being deposed and indicted, at times by the same judges who quietly set aside their cases in the past. This surge of belated procedures suggests a new, prolonged role for law in the aftermath of state-sponsored crimes. While there has been much scholarship about successor justice and the rule of law during the early stages of a transition to democracy, the phenomenon of belated litigation suggests that cases reckoning with prior regimes are not only about founding a new political order against the old; they often -- and perhaps increasingly -- take place after the transition is over, and despite the planning of political elites. This dissertation, which aims to generate rather than test hypotheses, will study the recent resurgence of Pinochet-era human rights trials to explore two related questions: 1) how they reflect important changes in the contours of the rule of law within the new democratic regime, and 2) what these changes reveal about the ability of law to respond to state-sponsored crimes after decades-long delay. In Chile, the very same crimes have come before the same judiciary at three distinct moments: during the military regime, during the transition, and after the transition. This three-part judicial response across time provides an opportunity to study how legal actors understand law and the human rights crimes of the past against a changing political backdrop.

Jeffrey Juris, Anthropology: The Cultural Logic of Networking: Transnational Activism and the Movement for Global Resistance in Barcelona, Spain. The proposed project is an ethnographic study of the Movement for Global Resistance in Barcelona, Spain, as an innovative form of collective action that is locally rooted, yet connected to a growing worldwide challenge to corporate globalization. Through participant observation, qualitative interviews, and internet and media analysis, Mr. Juris explores cultural politics and networking practices within the movement and examine its relationship to broader transnational social processes.

Kwangmin Kim, History: The Maritime World and the Production of Geographical Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century China. This dissertation examines how 19th-century China's unprecedented accumulation of geographical knowledge of the maritime world -- from Southeast Asia to Europe -- could be understood in the context of the overall production of knowledge in coastal Chinese cities. The accumulation of geographical knowledge on the maritime world worked as an integral part of a broader intellectual project to articulate coastal Chinese vision of the new political community, which was more integrated with the maritime world through international economic transactions than with the traditional center of cultural and political universe of Chinese Empire -- Zhongyuan. This dissertation also demonstrates how different localities produced geographical knowledge on the maritime world to different ends, responding to the initiative of coastal cities. Taking Wei Yuan (a New Text scholar in nineteenth-century China) as an example, the dissertation shows how an intellectual living outside of coastal cities produced geographical knowledge on the maritime world, in combination with historical writings pursuing new genealogies of Chinese dynasties, in order to put forward a vision of new political community, which was different from that of coastal cities: a modern territorial empire comparable to British Empire integrated under the cultural hegemony of traditional cultural elites.

Hwa-Jen Liu, Sociology: Why Labor? Why Environment? The Configurations of Social Movements in Two Newly Industrializing Countries, Taiwan and South Korea 1971-2000. This project investigates the dynamics between labor and environmental movements in Taiwan and South Korea. Both are export-oriented, well-acclaimed newly industrializing countries. Why has Taiwan developed a configuration of strong environmental movements and weak labor movements but South Korea the opposite? Through this paired comparison, this dissertation analyzes the historical processes through which Korea's labor movement and Taiwan's environmental movement successfully attracted the participation of intellectuals who forged a potent counter-hegemonic ideology which helped put together an anti-establishment, cross-class alliance. This project also hypothesizes that, as long as either the labor or the environmental movement dominates, it seeks to absorb the energy and imagination of other potentially contending movements, constraining the expansion of its counterpart. Finally, labor and nature represent two major social contradictions growing out of the process of industrialization. This dissertation will theorize the structural difference between labor and environmental movements in the capitalist economy in general, and in late industrialization in particular.

Frederic Merand, Sociology: Dying for the Union? The Institutionalization of European Defense in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The purpose of this dissertation is to describe and explain the emergence of a common security and defense policy in the European Union since the end of the Cold War. More particularly, Mr. Merand is interested in the effects of bilateral and European initiatives on military organization and practices at the national level, in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. He explores changes in national policy and doctrine and tries to explain the multiplicity of attitudes towards European defense, especially but not exclusively among the officer corps. He also analyzes the relationship between security policy, military integration, and European integration. His attempts to assess the social-organizational causes, extent, and limits of this process of institutionalization.

Rita Parhad, Political Science: The Creation and Development of International Security Norms In this project, Ms. Parhad examines the creation and development of international security norms, such as the illegitimacy of terrorism or the legitimacy of nuclear nonproliferation. She intends to explain how certain ideas about security become international norms held collectively by the international society of states. In order to understand this process through which ideas become collectively held norms, She undertakes comparative case-studies of three ideas -- two successful norms, and one potential norm which failed to complete the norm-building process. In each case, She uses a combination of "large N" and "small N" process-tracing analyses to test several hypotheses regarding the creation and development of the international norm. These hypotheses focus on external world events, domestic politics, and systemic factors. Through these cases, her dissertation seeks to answer two main questions: 1) Where do international security norms come from and how do they develop? 2) Why do some ideas take hold as collective norms, while others do not? Her answers to these questions should generate new insights into the patterns of norm development in the international system, and the character of international society at the beginning of the 21^st century.

Pitch Pongsawat, City and Regional Planning: The Formation and Functions of Border Towns in Regional Development of Mainland Southeast Asia: A Case Study of Two Thai-Burmese Border Towns. An ethnography of two towns at the Thai-Burmese border serve as a case study of the role of border town development in the regional economy, especially in Mainland Southeast Asia. The aim is to understand what constitutes the development of the border town and its impact on regional development. Specific focus is placed on the impact of the militarization of the border, ethnic conflicts in Burma, and the drive for cheap labor in Thailand that lead to certain types of border town development, in which the logic of illegality is predominant. The research will also reveal the relationship of the illegal network from local to regional and global levels, especially the formation of illegal ethnic migrant labor, natural resource extraction, drug trade, and sex trade. At the same time, the research looks at similarities and differences between two research sites. One year of fieldwork will be conducted beginning in July 2002.

Analiese M. Richard, Anthropology: Bridging the Grassroots: NGOs, Cultural Mediators, and the Politics of Transnational Coalition Building. This dissertation research tests the basic assumptions in theories of what Appadurai (2000) has recently labeled "grassroots globalization" -- the ongoing restructuring of global civil society, involving the changing role of the nation-state, the rise in the importance of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and an increasing emphasis on transnational circuits and networks. She plans to focus her analysis on the ways in which one specific NGO, Desarollo Rural del Estado de Hidalgo (DERHGO), a Mexican rural development organization, has implicated itself in transnational issues networks built around human rights and economic self-development. More specifically, She asks how DERHGO has evolved over time in response to state policy and pressure, global economic trends, local politics, and the group's own internal dynamics. She is particularly interested in how DERHGO has created its own transnational network by forging links with grassroots groups in the United States and elsewhere by recruiting, training, and deploying local cultural mediators to facilitate cross-cultural understanding and cooperation. She will conduct the bulk of her dissertation fieldwork in Mexico, researching DERHGO's daily operations, it recruiting and training practices for cultural mediators, and its participation in national and transnational NGO networks, working from sites in Hidalgo and Mexico City.

Renata Marson Teixeira de Andrade, Energy and Resource Group: Environmental History of the São Francisco River, Brazil: Conflicts and Discourse. This research is designed to explore the historical, social, and environmental context of human - river relations in the São Francisco River Basin since 1970. Ms. Teixeira de Andrade examines the decline of fish in this river through the lens of discursive narative, studying the ways in which the river, the people, and their socio-economic context and discourses have evolved over the last 30 years. She has identified four relevant discourses on water claims in her research: development, conservation, water scarcity, and water rights. These four discourses are hegemonic in creating social imagery and identity for the São Francisco River, when used by specific social groups, namely fishermen, developers, regulators, and environmentalists. These social groups use these discourses in different ways contingent on their perceptions, values, and meanings assigned to nature, and on their historical, social, and environmental context. Environmental history and environmental ethics have brought a non-human nature into the discourse of disciplines that had previously ignored "nature" or taken it for granted. This research studies how contentious claims over river and water arise from different meanings of the terms "river," "water," "revitalization," and "drought" for each social group