Past Fellows at the Institute of International Studies

Alan Sharlin Memorial Award Fellows, 2000-2001

Vera Candiani, History: The Drainage of the Valley of Mexico: Science, Technology, and Society. This research will study the drainage project for the Valley of Mexico through the colonial period. It will be conducted mostly in archives located in Mexico City, as well as in that city's manuscript collections in the Biblioteca Nacional. The thesis will deal with the physical and environmental aspects of the drainage, and with the availability, development, and application of scientific and technological knowledge in New Spain from the late Renaissance to the Enlightenment. The aim of this part of the dissertation is to determine how and why the conceptualization of the drainage project changed over time, how this related both to the physical characteristics of the environment and to the struggles that the drainage elicited. To complement this, another aspect of the research will study the social, political, and economic tensions generated around the drainage project and among the different sectors ofthe population affected by it (Spanish administrators and population, criollos, castas, Indians). This is in order to ascertain both what role these tensions played in the evolution of the drainage and what role the drainage played in the lives of people over time. In this regard, Ms. Candiani's project will look at the degree of administrative commitment ot the drainage project, how the viceregal imperatives collided or coincided with the needs of the local elites represented in the town council, and at the same time how the drainage took shape out of these struggles. This is an opportunity to use a case study to further understand the evolution of and the relationship between science, technology, environment, and society in a colonial context.

Eric Jones, History: Asian Wives, Colonial Lives: A Population History of the Women of Dutch Asia -- A Historical Demography. Mr. Jones's research examines interracial families in the colonial world as a means of reconstructing the textures and patterns of everyday early modern colonial life in the Dutch East Indies. At the heart of these household formation systems are answers to important questions about the workings of interracial societies, the legacy of colonialism, and the beginnings of the modern economic world system. This textually rich and empirically sound dissertation will lend further understanding to the role of Asian women in the social world of the East Indies, and more broadly, to produce a study that may suggest new ways of understanding how separate cultures came and continue to come together on the most intimate of terms.

Julia Lynch, Political Science: The Age of Welfare: Citizens, Clients, and Generations in Italian and Dutch Social Policy. Rapid population aging has brought the issue of intergenerational justice and the political influence of the elderly to the fore in many countries of the OECD. At the same time, pressures for fiscal restraint force policy-makers to rethink how welfare states provide for the needs of their citizens. But there has been very little scholarly attention to how welfare policies distribute resources across different age groups, or to the political consequences of a distribution that is skewed either towards the elderly or the young. In the current context of demographic change, the maturation of public pension systems, and high levels of youth poverty and unemployment in many countries, understanding why countries follow different logics of intergenerational justice, and what are the consequences of these differences, takes on special urgency. This research asks why some countries spend most of their social policy budgets on the elderly, while others do more to protect children and working-aged people. The dissertation employs both statistical and qualitative historical analysis to address this question. Statistical analysis of welfare spending patterns over time in 21 OECD countries sets out a basic causal model. Studies of the development of family allowances, unemployment benefits, and pension policies in two country cases, Italy and the Netherlands, then illustrate and refine the basic model. A concluding section of the thesis asks how differing age-orientations of social policy affect the politics of welfare reform. Quantitative analysis of household income and public opinion data in 12 OECD countries provides the basis for evaluating how patterns of welfare program use among elderly and non-elderly client groups affect opinions about welfare, while case studies of the politics surrounding welfare reform in Italy and the Netherlands illustrate the linkages between public opinion, voting behavior, and welfare reform outcomes.