Past Fellows at the Institute of International Studies

Alan Sharlin Memorial Award Fellows, 2001-2002

James Daughton, History: The Civilizing Mission: Missionaries, Colonialists, and French Identity, 1885-1914. This dissertation examines how conflict over missionaries, the concept of civilization, and the role of religion in a republican empire shaped both the dynamics of French colonial power and French national identity between 1885 and 1914. Considering events in Indochina, Madagascar, and Tahiti, this study focuses on how missionaries and various French colonial interests battled over the ethical basis of colonialism by promoting different "civilizing missions" to the colonies. By examining such "civilizing" projects, the dissertation also explores the dynamics of European-indigenous relations. Based on research from a variety of national and missionary archives, this study ultimately shows how French men and women, in an attempt to justify their positions of power, debated key tenets of their identity, and ultimately redefined the religious, racial, sexual, and moral boundaries of French culture and politics both in France and abroad.

Jane Zavisca, Sociology: Consumption in Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia. This dissertation investigates how and why consumption tastes and practices have changed in Russia from the late-Soviet to the post-Soviet period. The stratification of consumption, while extensively studied in Western capitalist societies, has not been examined systematically in socialist or postsocialist societies. As Soviet scarcity of goods has given way to post-Soviet scarcity of money, Russians have developed diverse strategies for provisioning themselves and their households. Despite growing inequality, the post-Soviet state seeks citizen's allegiance by promising improved material welfare, recalling to mind previous assurances that the Soviet state would overtake Western living standards. Indeed, the promise of consumer welfare has helped legitimize both state socialist and capitalist regimes, making consumption a key post-socialist arena for renegotiating the relationship between state and society. To understand the relationship between consumption, stratification, and legitimacy in socialist and post-socialist contexts, Ms. Zavisca analyzes changes in both consumption practices themselves, and the relevant institutional environment (government policy; the system of production and distribution of consumer goods; mass media images of goods). Research draws on secondary sources at the national level, and then proceeds through an intensive case study of Kaluga, a mid-sized Central Russian city. Primary data sources include a survey of consumers in Kaluga, oral history interviews, ethnographic observation of diet, dress, home interiors, and leisure activities, and historical research on the administration of the local retail economy.