Stanford University

Society

FSI researchers work to understand continuity and change in societies as they confront their problems and opportunities. This includes the implications of migration and human trafficking. What happens to a society when young girls exit the sex trade? How do groups moving between locations impact societies, economies, self-identity and citizenship? What are the ethnic challenges faced by an increasingly diverse European Union? From a policy perspective, scholars also work to investigate the consequences of security-related measures for society and its values.

The Europe Center reflects much of FSI’s agenda of investigating societies, serving as a forum for experts to research the cultures, religions and people of Europe. The Center sponsors several seminars and lectures, as well as visiting scholars.

Societal research also addresses issues of demography and aging, such as the social and economic challenges of providing health care for an aging population. How do older adults make decisions, and what societal tools need to be in place to ensure the resulting decisions are well-informed? FSI regularly brings in international scholars to look at these issues. They discuss how adults care for their older parents in rural China as well as the economic aspects of aging populations in China and India.

Ari Shavit — Existential War: From Catastrophe, to Victory, to Revival

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Ari Shavit webinar

Ari Shavit – one of Israel’s most experienced, critical, and erudite political analysts – was one of the first people in the world to put pen to paper in the aftermath of the October 7th, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack. In his latest book (published in Hebrew, with an English edition forthcoming), Shavit argues that Israel now finds itself in an existential war with Iran. It is a crisis from which, Ari Shavit argues, Israel will either emerge victorious and transformed or cease to exist.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Ari Shavit is a leading Israeli columnist, author, and political analyst. Born in Rehovot, Israel, Shavit studied philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, before embarking on a distinguished career in journalism. In the early 1990s he was chairman of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and in 1995 he joined Haaretz, where he served on the editorial board until 2016. His recent books include the New York Time bestseller My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel (2013) and Existential War: From Catastrophe, to Victory, to Revival (2024) [Hebrew].

Virtual Event Only.

Amichai Magen
Amichai Magen

Virtual Event Only.

Ari Shavit
Seminars
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Einat Wilf — Twenty-First Century Zionism: Idea Foundations for Israel After October 7th

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Einat Wilf webinar

“Zionism” – once an innocuous term favored by socialists and liberals alike to denote support for the right of the Jewish People to equal national self-determination in the Land of Zion – has become a deeply contested word. Postcolonial and critical theories, in particular, have radically reinterpreted the term, with some weaponizing Zionism to accuse Israel and its allies of everything from racism and genocide to police brutality in Portland, Oregon, and even climate change. So, what is “Zionism”? Where did the word and concept come from? And why has it become so heatedly contested?

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Dr. Einat Wilf is a leading thinker on Israel, Zionism, foreign policy, and education. She was a Member of Knesset from 2010 to 2013, where she served as Chair of the Education Committee and Member of the influential Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Born and raised in Israel, Einat served as Foreign Policy Advisor to then Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres and as a strategic consultant with McKinsey & Company. Her recent books include The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace (2020, co-authored with Adi Schwartz) and We Should All Be Zionists (2022) – a collection of her essays on Israel, Zionism and the path to peace.

Virtual Event Only.

Amichai Magen
Amichai Magen

Virtual Event Only.

Dr. Einat Wilf
Seminars
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Israel Insights Webinar with Azar Gat — What Is The Problem With “The Palestinian Problem”?

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Cover image for Gil Troy event

Despite the great progress made in Arab-Israeli rapprochement over the past several decades, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict appears as intractable today as it has ever been. Why has this conflict proved so difficult to resolve? Why have all attempts at a final peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians failed since the launch of the Oslo Peace Process in the early 1990's? And what can be learned from this history of failure about the prospects of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Join Amichai Magen in conversation with Azar Gat.

Read the essay here.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Professor Azar Gat is the Ezer Weitzman Chair of National Security and Head of the International and Executive MA Programs in Security and Diplomacy in the School of Political Science, Government and International Affairs at Tel Aviv University. He is also Academic Advisor to the Executive Director of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel-Aviv. Professor Gat is the author of 12 books - on democracy, nationalism, ideology, war and military history - which have been translated into numerous languages.

Virtual Event Only.

Amichai Magen
Amichai Magen

Virtual Only Event.

Azar Gat
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Is South Korea Trapped or Transitioning? New Challenges of Low Birth Rate and Aging Population

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Flyer for the talk "Is South Korea Trapped or Transitioning?" with portrait of speaker Kim Boo-kyum

Once the term "Japanification" was widely used in the Western media, cautioning that prolonged economic stagnation could spread to other countries like in Japan. But recently, "South Koreanification" has emerged, meaning that Korea's demographic crisis marked by low birth rates and rapid aging can become a reality elsewhere, too.

In this talk, Mr. Boo Kyum Kim, former Prime Minister of Republic of Korea, will examine the dual challenges of declining birth rate and accelerating aging population facing Korea, and discuss policy directions and strategies South Korea should take for its sustainable national growth. 

Portrait of Boo Kyum Kim

Mr. Boo Kyum Kim was the 47th Prime Minister of Republic of Korea (2021-22), and prior to that,  he was the First Minister of the Interior and Safety (2017-19). Since his college years in 1980s, Mr. Kim had been a leader of democratization movements, and he  served four terms as a National Assembly Member between 2000 and 2017. He received a BA in Political science from Seoul National University and an MA in public administration from Yonsei University in Korea.

Directions and Parking > 

Gi-Wook Shin
Boo Kyum Kim, former Prime Minister, Republic of Korea
Seminars
Korean Studies Colloquium Series
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Flyer for the talk "Is South Korea Trapped or Transitioning?" with portrait of speaker Kim Boo-kyum
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[BOOK TALK] Against Abandonment: Repertoires of Solidarity in South Korean Protest

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Flyer for the book talk "Against Abandonment" with a portrait of author Jennifer Chun

BOOK TALK

Against Abandonment: Repertoires of Solidarity in South Korean Protest (Stanford University Press, 2025) by Jennifer Jihye Chun and Ju Hui Judy Han offers insight into the utility and futility of protesting precarity under neoliberal capitalism. Based on long-term ethnographic research and in-depth interviews with key labor and social movement activists, the book follows the protests of minoritized workers, especially women employed in precarious jobs, as they contend with what it means to be treated as disposable and what it takes to resist. Long-term protest camps, life-threatening hunger strikes, grueling prostrations, perilous high-altitude occupations are agonizing to perform and to witness but often powerful as affective catalysts of change. Through dramatic performances and rituals that are repeated across time and space, Against Abandonment finds that protesters cultivate repertoires of solidarity as a relational force that binds people and worlds together in a collective praxis of refusal. In doing so, Against Abandonment builds upon intersectional, transnational, and abolitionist feminist theorizing that has long emphasized the centrality of building relations of care and community in place-based struggles against capitalist abandonment.

portrait of Jennifer Chun

Jennifer Jihye Chun is Professor of Asian American Studies and Labor Studies at UCLA. Her research and teaching focus on labor and community organizing; gender, care, and migration; ethnography and intersectional feminist methods; and culture, power, and global capitalism. She is the author of the award-winning book Organizing at the Margins: the Symbolic Politics of Labor in South Korea and the United States (Cornell University Press) and Against Abandonment: Repertoires Solidarity in South Korean Protest (co-authored with Ju Hui Judy Han; forthcoming, Stanford University Press). Chun is currently Chair of International Development Studies (IDS) and Associate Director of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. 

Directions and Parking > 

Paul Y. Chang
Jennifer J. Chun, Professor, Asian American Studies and Labor Studies, UCLA Professor, Asian American Studies and Labor Studies, UCLA
Seminars
Korean Studies Colloquium Series
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Flyer for the book talk "Against Abandonment" with a portrait of author Jennifer Chun
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Cross-cultural differences in retaliation: Evidence from the soccer field

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While the threat of retaliation can stabilize cooperation, retaliatory cultures have also been linked to violence and war. There is little systematic evidence for cross-cultural variation in the use and consequences of retaliation in real-life settings. Analyzing a novel data set of foul play from three seasons of nine professional men’s soccer leagues (n = 230, 113n=230,113), I show that players from a cultural background that places a higher value on revenge are more likely to retaliate for a foul during a game but are not more likely to commit fouls overall. I find that players are more retaliatory early on in a game, consistent with the use of retaliation as a deterrent to future transgression. Retaliation is indeed found to limit repeated offenses, as long as the perpetrator’s cultural background also emphasizes retaliation. This informal conflict management interacts with formal sanctioning by the referee in several ways. Victims are less likely to retaliate if the foul was sanctioned with a yellow card, indicating a crowding out by the formal punishment mechanism. Both forms of sanction successfully reduce repeated offenses by the perpetrator of a foul, with sanctioning by a yellow card being around three times as effective as retaliation by the victim. These results provide unique evidence for cultural differences in establishing and maintaining cooperative equilibria and for the interaction of formal and informal punishment mechanisms for sustaining cooperation.

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Alain Schläpfer
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July 2024

The Impact of Regional Conflict in MENA on Authoritarian Stability and Dissent

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The Impact of Regional Conflict in MENA on Authoritarian Stability and Dissent

This panel examines the impact of the ongoing wars in Gaza and Lebanon on regime stability in the region. How have ruling establishments managed popular sentiment and protests as Israel’s military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon have continued with no end in sight? How have opposition forces and protest movements responded to these developments? What challenges have they faced? What is the relationship between movements in solidarity with Palestine and Lebanon and domestic oppositional politics? The panelists will discuss the major trends and contextualize them in historical perspective.

PANELISTS:

  • Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History, Emeritus
  • Samia Errazzouki, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History and Humanities Center 
  • Hesham Sallam, Associate Director, Program on Arab Reform and Development


This event is co-sponsored by CDDRL's Program on Arab Reform and Development and Democracy Day at Stanford University.

About the Speakers

Joel Benin

Joel Beinin

Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History, Emeritus
full bio

Joel Beinin is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History, Emeritus at Stanford . His research and writing focus on the social and cultural history and political economy of modern Egypt, Palestine, and Israel, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He received his A.B. from Princeton University in 1970, A.M. from Harvard University in 1974, and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1982. He taught at Stanford from 1983 to 2019 with a hiatus as Director of Middle East Studies and Professor of History at the American University in Cairo in 2006-08.

Samia Errazzouki

Samia Errazzouki

Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of History and Humanities Center
full bio

Samia Errazzouki is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History and Humanities Center at Stanford University. She holds a PhD in History from UC Davis and MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University. She is also the social sciences editor for the Journal of North African Studies and co-editor with Jadaliyya. Samia is a former Morocco-based journalist, where she reported for the Associated Press and, later, for Reuters.

Portrait of Hesham Sallam

Hesham Sallam

Associate Director, Program on Arab Reform and Development
full bio

Hesham Sallam is a Senior Research Scholar at CDDRL, where he serves as Associate Director for Research. He is also Associate Director of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He is author of Classless Politics: Islamist Movements, the Left, and Authoritarian Legacies in Egypt (Columbia University Press, 2022), co-editor of Struggles for Political Change in the Arab World (University of Michigan Press, 2022), and editor of Egypt's Parliamentary Elections 2011-2012: A Critical Guide to a Changing Political Arena (Tadween Publishing, 2013). Sallam received a Ph.D. in Government (2015) and an M.A. in Arab Studies (2006) from Georgetown University.  
 

Levinthal Hall (424 Santa Teresa St., Stanford)

This in-person event is open to Stanford affiliates only.

Joel Beinin
Samia Errazzouki

Hesham Sallam

Encina Hall, E105
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Senior Research Scholar
hesham_sallam_thumbnail_image_for_cddrl_1-2_copy.jpg

Hesham Sallam is a Senior Research Scholar at CDDRL, where he serves as Associate Director for Research. He is also Associate Director of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. Sallam is co-editor of Jadaliyya ezine and a former program specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace. His research focuses on political and social development in the Arab World. Sallam’s research has previously received the support of the Social Science Research Council and the U.S. Institute of Peace. He is author of Classless Politics: Islamist Movements, the Left, and Authoritarian Legacies in Egypt (Columbia University Press, 2022), co-editor of Struggles for Political Change in the Arab World (University of Michigan Press, 2022), and editor of Egypt's Parliamentary Elections 2011-2012: A Critical Guide to a Changing Political Arena (Tadween Publishing, 2013). Sallam received a Ph.D. in Government (2015) and an M.A. in Arab Studies (2006) from Georgetown University, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh (2003).

 

Associate Director for Research, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Associate Director, Program on Arab Reform and Development
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The Muslim Social: Neoliberalism, Poverty, and Charity in Turkey | Book Talk with Gizem Zencirci

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Gizem Zencirci

Since coming to power, Turkey’s governing party, the AKP has made poverty relief a central part of their political program. In addition to neoliberal reforms, AKP’s program has involved an emphasis on Islamic charity that is unprecedented in the history of the Turkish Republic. To understand the causes and consequences of this phenomenon, Gizem Zencirci introduces the concept of the Muslim Social, defined as a welfare regime that reimagined and reconfigured Islamic charitable practices to address the complex needs of a modern market society.

Through an in-depth ethnography of social service provision, in The Muslim Social: Neoliberalism, Charity, and Poverty in Turkey (Syracuse University Press, 2024), Zencirci demonstrates the blending of religious values and neoliberal elements in dynamic, flexible, and unexpected ways. Although these governmental assemblages of Islamic neoliberalism produced new forms of generosity, distinctive notions of poverty, and novel ways of relating to others in society, Zencirci’s analysis reveals how this welfare regime privileged managerial efficiency and emotional well-being at the expense of other objectives such as equality, development, or justice. The book provides a lens onto the everyday life of Islamic neoliberalism, while also mapping the kind of political concerns that animate poverty governance in our capitalist present.

Book talk co-sponsored the by Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, CDDRL's Program on Turkey, and the Middle Eastern Studies Forum.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Gizem Zencirci, PhD studies the cultural politics of neoliberalism in Turkey. Zencirci is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Providence College. Her research interests include Islamic neoliberalism, civilizationism, heritage studies, and cultural economy. Her work has been published in journals such as the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and the Journal of Cultural Economy.

In-person: Philippines Conference Room (Encina Hall, 3rd floor, 616 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford)
Online: Via Zoom

Gizem Zencirci
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Majority rule: Do minorities live in ‘tighter’ social worlds?

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Exploring social norms through a diversity perspective, this review examines whether minorities live in ‘tighter’ worlds, wherein they are subject to stricter rules and punishments. Integrating research from psychology, economics, and organizational behavior, we first examine whether minorities are more likely to have tightness imposed on them—i.e., receive more monitoring and harsher penalties in response to norm violations, compared to their majority counterparts. Turning to the subjective experience of minority group members, we explore whether minorities are calibrated to these penalties and experience greater lived tightness—the feeling of being chronically surveilled, judged harshly, and fearing excessive punishment for wrongdoing. We suggest that both imposed and lived tightness contributes to power inequalities and patterns of segregation. This framework helps to organize disparate research streams investigating minorities' experience of social norms, and highlights unanswered questions about when, and why, minority group members feel more constrained by social rules, as well as the consequences of these experiences for their economic and psychological well-being.

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Current Opinion in Psychology
Authors
Michele Gelfand
Number
December 2024, 101885

The Political and Social Legacies of South Korean Authoritarianism

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Much of the scholarship about Park Chung Hee and South Korea's developmental state has focused on economic modernization. This talk complements that literature by highlighting the long-lasting legacies of authoritarianism for the political and social development of South Korean society. The talk first covers the consequences of dictatorship for the evolution of civil society. We then shift to the historical origins of the demographic crisis South Korea is facing today. The central purpose of the talk is to show how both civil society and family change were shaped profoundly by authoritarian policies during the Park Chung Hee era.

portrait of Paul Chang

Paul Chang is Senior Fellow at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; and Tong Yang, Korea Foundation, and Korea Stanford Alumni Association Senior Fellow at Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. Before joining Stanford, Chang was an associate professor of sociology at Harvard University. 

A sociologist by training, Chang’s research on South Korean society has appeared in flagship disciplinary and area studies journals. He is the author of Protest Dialectics: State Repression and South Korea’s Democracy Movement, 1970-1979 (Stanford University Press) and co-editor of South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society (Routledge). His current work examines the diversification of family structures in South Korea.

Gi-Wook Shin
Gi-Wook Shin

Paul Y. Chang

Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Tong Yang, Korea Foundation, and Korea Stanford Alumni Association Senior Fellow at Shorenstein APARC
Paul Chang_0.jpg PhD

Paul Y. Chang is the Tong Yang, Korea Foundation, and Korea Stanford Alumni Association Senior Fellow at Shorenstein APARC; Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; and Professor by courtesy in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. Chang also serves as the Deputy Director of the Korea Program at Shorenstein APARC and Co-Editor of The Journal of Korean Studies. Before joining Stanford, Chang served on the faculty at Harvard University, Yonsei University, and the Singapore Management University. His current work examines the diversification of family structures in South Korea.

Deputy Director, Korea Program at Shorenstein APARC
Professor by courtesy, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
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