Past Fellows at the Institute of International Studies

John L. Simpson Memorial Research Fellows, 1996-1997

Rodney Benson, Sociology: Mirrors of National Identity: French and American Immigration Politics, 1968-1995. Changing public discourses about immigration and the role of diversity in society are examined in France and California from 1968 to 1994. California, in addition to offering a closer approximation than the United States as a whole to the French case in terms of legal/administrative form, population, size of economy and experience with immigration, is presented as the leading edge and ideal type of American culture. Going beyond static conceptions of national difference, this study will highlight the dynamic processes that tend to reproduce but may in some cases transform national cultural idioms. Le Monde and the Los Angeles Times will be studied as the sites around which political and social movements and intellectual actors seek to construct the social problem of immigration. The study will argue for institutional theories of cuitural change against alternative phenomenological and social movement/rhetorical explanations, but will seek to specify in greater detail than most "new institutional" accounts the actual mechanisms of reproduction and change.

Navroz Kersi Dubash (renewal), Energy and Resources: :Pumping for Power and Profit: A Study of Groundwater Markets in India. Localized "markets" for groundwater based on private tubewells have proliferated in many parts of South Asia, and particularly in the semi-arid state of Gujarat, India. These markets take a bewildering array of forms: water sellers may be individuals or a group who organize themselves into a water "company"; terms of payment for water may be in cash, share of crop, or fixed crop weight; prices may be uniform within a village or vary widely. Many scholars have hailed markets for groundwater as an effective means of providing broad access to irrigation, particularly in comparison with clumsy and conflict-prone surface irrigation systems. Others, however, claim that water markets are inequitable and concentrate access to groundwater in the hands of a few. Do emerging markets for groundwater provide a way out of conflict-ridden surface irrigation systems or do they provide fertile ground for a new set of local conflicts over access to and control over groundwater? Mr. Dubash will explore this question through two village studies, exploring the forms these markets take, how terms of exchange are negotiated, the constituents of buyer and seller bargaining power, and how control over groundwater is consolidated and reproduced.

Max Paul Friedman, History: Unusual Suspects: The Deportation, Internment, and Repatriation of 5,000 "Alien Enemies" from Latin America by the U.S. in World War II. Mr. Friedman is investigating the U.S. "Alien Enemy" program in Latin America, under which some 5,000 people of various nationalities were deported from a dozen countries to prison camps in Texas, then on to Germany and Japan during World War II. This case illustrates and complicates recent theories of postnational identity and transnational citizenship, while providing an example of the way governments react to the perceived national security threat posed by diasporic migrant communities of uncertain national allegiance. He is using archival sources in several countries and interviews with surviving participants to reconstruct this episode.

Sarvar Kothavala, Geography: Global Spirits, Local Vintages: The Genesis of the Indian Champagne Industry and the Restructuring of the World Agro-Food System. This proposal studies the genesis of the Nashik district (West Maharashtra, India) champagne industry as a case study of the rapid globalization of agriculture. Nashik district has historically been the heartland of Indian grape production, and since 1985 it has successfully converted from a locally oriented fresh grape producing agricultural region to a highly competitive export-oriented sector that produces champagne for export markets. Using the case study of the Nashik district's entry into global champagne markets, Ms. Kothavala hopes to demonstrate that globalization must be understood as a product of complicated processes and interactions at multiple sites--global, national, and local. It is a process deeply embedded in and fashioned by local technological transformations, innovative agrarian entrepreneurship, and cooperative producer relationships, set against the larger landscape of regional historical and agrarian conditions as well as changing national and global imperatives. This study contributes to the debate on the restructuring of the global agro-food system, which in turn has interesting parallels to debates over new forms of industrial geography and capitalist reorganization. Second, the study speaks to the nature of emergent local agrarian restructuring during a period of neo-liberal reform in India. Finally, in its consideration of very specific places and regional restructuring, the case study of the genesis of Indian champagne illustrates how processes of globalization are embedded in local processes and are hybrid products of global-local contexts.

Steven Lopez, Sociology: After the Smoke Clears: Economic Transition in Southwestern Pennsylvania and the Ruhr. This dissertation project examines the experience of post-industrial transition in southwestern Pennsylvania--once the world capital of integrated steel manufacturing--and in the Ruhr area of Germany, which was also a heavily industrialized region dependent on steelmaking as an economic mainstay. Both regions are entering a "post-steel" era, and they are attempting to nurture the same kinds of new industries (such as environmental technology, high-tech plastics, software, and finance) to replace basic metalworking as the core oftheir economies. Evidence suggests that both regions are having at least modest success in achieving these goals. Mr. Lopez's dissertation focuses on how institutional structures involving the state, capital, and organized labor affect the character of this economic transition. The central question is whether the rapid restructuring necessitated by shifts to new "post-fordist" industries and production methods inherently leads to social bifurcation. Or, on the contrary, are there different paths--a high road and a low road--to the goal of successful transition to a new economy? The research combines analysis of available statistical data with interviews and participant observation at selected institutional sites.

Ananya Roy, City and Regional Planning: The Social Construction of the Rural-Urban Interface in Calcutta, India. During the last fifteen years, despite phenomenal agricultural growth and widespread agrarian reforms, rural West Bengal has witnessed persistently high rates of rural poverty. Indeed, in a context of intricate patronage ties between the party apparatus of the Marxist state government and an entrenched middle peasantry,.class and gender inequalities have coalesced to exclude a substantial proportion of the rural population from land, subsidies, employment, and political power. While village-level studies have begun to document these exclusionary patterns, little is known about how the marginalized survive. This research project will focus on the ways in which the rural poor have forged survival strategies that spatially extend beyond villages, often to Calcutta. Such forms of distress migration, involving fragile rural ties and gendered access to urban employment, are strikingly different from the circular migration of male peasants which has historically characterized the region. Theoretically, the project will use recent conversations between feminist, post-structuralist, and postcolonial perspectives to investigate the multiple axes of power that link local contestations, regional processes, and a global political economy. Methodologically, the project will map the rural-urban interface by tracking the productive and reproductive strategies of distress and circular migrants through life-histories and ethnographic research. This cartography of power is offered as a counterpoint to the current policy discouses of West Bengal which bypass issues of exclusion and poverty by claiming agrarian success and blaming urban poverty on national elites.

Kimberly Theidon, Medical Anthropology: Gender in Transition? The Reconstruction of Civil Society in Peru. This research project is an anthropological investigation of gender, ethnicity and popular mobilization in defense of human rights, examining the ways in which women in Peru have forged an unprecedented alliance in their demands for truth, justice and accountability in the aftermath of peru's "dirty war." In their collective action women have organized across deeply rooted divisions of class and ethnicity, organizing as mothers to demand both an end to political violence and redress for past disappearances, extrajudicial executions, rape and other forms of human rights abuses. Ms. Theidon poses the following questions: What is it about their identities as mothers that has allowed women to position themselves as uniquely able to voice the moral outrage of civil society? Does this "politicizing of motherhood" merely extend the domestic realm into the public sphere, or do these women challenge both the authoritarian government and conventional gender ideology? Finally, can this coalition effect lasting changes in ethnic relations within Peruvian society, and in the transition from a democracy in theory to a democracy in practice? In investigating these questions, this research contributes both to our understanding of the reconstruction of civil society in a post-war context as well as offering an opportunity to understand when and how identities are mobilized.

Elaine Thomas, Political Science: Must the Open Nation Disintegrate? French and English Post-Imperial Citizenship Debates and their European Impact. In both France and Britain, post-imperial immigration under conditions of increasing international integration and economic crisis has provoked a comparable series of post-war national debates about citizenship and national identity. The contrasting terms of these debates is currently shaping European legal and institutional developments. Ms. Thomas' dissertation compares the development of post-imperial French and British political contestations of citizenship and analyzes their current impact at the European level, particularly in terms of their effects on the elaboration of European-level minority rights initiatives.