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.

$100 a Day Justice Delayed Film Screening and Panel

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On December 10, 1991, East Palo Alto resident Rick Walker was convicted of a murder he did not commit. Linked to the crime by false testimony and questionable legal tactics, Walker would spend the next 12 years of his life in some of California's most dangerous prisons. Once exonerated, he would face yet another barrier to justice: the California State Legislature. Entitled to one hundred dollars for every day spent falsely imprisoned, Walker's attempts to receive his just due became caught in the partisan battle over the 2003
California budget.

$100 a Day examines this story of gross injustice, political partisanship, and the heroic struggle to prove Walker's innocence and help him rebuild his life. Associate Dean Larry Marshall, who co-founded and served as legal director of the world-renowned Center on Wrongful Convictions, where he represented many wrongly convicted inmates, will introduce the documentary.  After the screening, Professor Juliet Brodie, Director of the Stanford Community Law Clinic, will moderate a panel featuring:

  • Rick Walker
  • State Senator Joe Simitian
  • filmmaker Gwen Essegian

Co-sponsored by the Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law; Haas Center for Public Service; Center on Philanthropy and Civic Society; Stanford Law School Criminal Law Society; American Constitution Society; Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties; Stanford in Government; and the Program on Human Rights, CDDRL.

Stanford Law School
Room 280B

Larry Marshall Associate Dean Commentator Stanford Law School
Juliet Brody Director Commentator Stanford Community Law Clinic
Rick Walker Panelist
Joe Simitian California State Senator Panelist
Gwen Esseglan Filmmaker Panelist
Conferences

Legalizing Human Rights in Africa: Workshop #5

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This 2009-10 interdisciplinary research workshop examines the trajectory of human rights discourse and institutions in Africa by means of regional and international comparisons. Africa is the third, and most recent, region to establish a regional human rights court, the African Court of Human and Peoples' Rights (ACPHR). At this critical juncture in African human rights, there is an urgent need for deeper understandings and applications of the law of human rights.

This workshop will be of interest and benefit to faculty and graduate students conducting research in the following areas: African studies; human rights; law; anthropology; cultural studies; history; political science and international relations; philosophy; and sociology.

The workshop, coordinated by Helen Stacy (Law School, FSI), met once during Fall quarter and will meet three times during the Winter and Spring quarters of the 2009-2010 academic year.

Our first meeting of Spring quarter features Professor Harri Englund, Department of Social Anthropology at University of Cambridge and author of many articles and books including Prisoners of Freedom: Human rights and the African Poor (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).

Encina West
Rm. 208

Helen Stacy Senior Fellow, CDDRL, Senior Lecturer, Stanford Law School Moderator
Harri Englund Department of Social Anthropology at University of Cambridge Speaker
Workshops

Nanshin: Japan and Southeast Asia in the 20th Century

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An introduction to the origins, evolution, and recent  status of  interaction between Japan and Southeast Asia, 1900-2000.

Mark R. Peattie is a visiting scholar at Shorenstein APARC and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is a professor of history emeritus at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. He was the John A. Burns Distinguished Visiting Professor of History at the University of Hawaii in 1995.

Peattie is a specialist in modern Japanese military, naval, and imperial history. His current research focuses on the historical context of Japanese-Southeast Asian relations. He is also directing a pioneering and international collaborative effort of the military history of the study of the Sino-Japanese war of 1937-45 being sponsored by the Asia Center at Harvard University.

He was a member of the U.S. Information Agency from 1955 to 1968 with service in Cambodia (1955-57), in Japan (Sendai, Tokyo, Kyoto) (1958-67), and in Washington, D.C. (1967-68).

Peattie holds a Ph.D. in Japanese history from Princeton University.

Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Mark Peattie

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Visiting Scholar
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Mark R. Peattie was a visiting scholar at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was a professor of history emeritus at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and was the John A. Burns Distinguished Visiting Professor of History at the University of Hawai'i in 1995.

Peattie was a specialist in modern Japanese military, naval, and imperial history. His current research focused on the historical context of Japanese-Southeast Asian relations. He was also directing a pioneering and international collaborative effort of the military history of the study of the Sino-Japanese war of 1937–45 being sponsored by the Asia Center at Harvard University.

He is editor, with Peter Duus and Ramon H. Myers, of the Japanese Wartime Empire, 1937–1945 (Princeton University Press, 1996). Peattie is the author of the Japanese Colonial Empire: The Vicissitudes of Its Fifty-Year History (Tokyo: Yomiuri Press, 1996).

He coauthored, with David Evans, Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887–1941 (Naval Institute Press, 1997), winner of a 1999 Distinguished Book Award of the Society for Military History. A sequel, Sunburst: The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power, 1909–1941, was published by the Naval Institute Press in 2001.

Peattie is also the author of the monograph A Historian Looks at the Pacific War (Hoover Essays in Public Policy, 1995).

Peattie was a reader for Columbia University, University of California, University of Hawai'i, Stanford University, University of Michigan, and U.S. Naval Institute Presses.

Peattie frequently served as lecturer in the Stanford University Continuing Studies Program and in the Stanford Alumni Travel Program.

He was named an associate in research at the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University from 1982 to 1993.

He was a member of the U.S. Information Agency from 1955 to 1968 with service in Cambodia (1955–57), in Japan (Sendai, Tokyo, Kyoto, 1958–67), and in Washington, D.C. (1967–68).

Peattie held a PhD in Japanese history from Princeton University.

Mark Peattie Visiting Scholar, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center Speaker Stanford University
Seminars

Telling Cases: Epistemological and Aesthetic Aspects of Case Narratives in 18th and 19th Century Science and Literature

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Case studies have a long history in both medicine and law. They contributed to the development of the new sciences humaines in the 18th century as well as of Freud's psychoanalysis, and they are still used in current social sciences as well as popular media formats. As a genuinely interdisciplinary genre, case studies are also influenced by the narrative structure of literature. At they same time, they served as a reference for the new striving for realism and individuality in enlightenment aesthetics. Therefore, in late 18th and early 19th century literature, the logic of induction that structures case studies is transferred into fictional narratives that not only claim to provide knowledge on the biological genre of humans, but also contribute to a new definition of the concept of literary genre. Exemplary readings of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Carl Philipp Moritz, Georg Buechner, and E.A. Poe will suggest a reading of case studies as a narrative form bridging the divide between the 'two cultures' of literature and science.

Nico Pethes received a Ph.D. in German Literature from University Cologne in 1998, and was a postdoc at University Siegen, 1998-2001. He was a Visiting Scholar and Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Comparative Literature and German at Stanford from 2001-2003; Director of a Research Group on the "Cultural History of Human Experimentation" at University Bonn 2003-2005, Habilitation in 2005; Professor of European Literature and Media History at University Hagen 2005-2009; and, since 2009, professor of Modern German Literature at University Bochum. His publications include "Zuglinge der Natur. Der literarische Menschenversuch des 18. Jahrhunderts" (Goettingen: Wallstein 2007), "Das Beispiel. Epistemologie des Exemplarischen" (coeditor; Berlin: Kadmos 2007); "'Victor, l'enfant de la foret': Experiments on Heredity in Savage Children" (in: Heredity Produced: At the Crossroads of Biology, Politics, and Culture, 1500-1870, eds. Staffan Mueller-Wille/Hans-Jorg Rheinberger, Cambridge MA/London: The MIT Press 2007, pp. 399-418); "Terminal Men. Biotechnical Experimentation and the Reshaping of 'the Human' in Medical Thrillers" (in: /New Literary History/ 36, 2005, pp. 161-185)

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Nicolas Pethes Professor of Modern German Literature at University Bochum; Visiting Scholar, Department of German Studies, Stanford University (Spring 2010) Speaker
Seminars

FCE Announces Book Release: "Ethnic Europe: Mobility, Identity, and Conflict in a Globalized World"

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The Forum on Contemporary Europe is pleased to announce the release of "Ethnic Europe: Mobility, Identity, and Conflict in a Globalized World" (Stanford University Press, 2010) edited by FCE Associate Director Roland Hsu.

Ethnic Europe offers accessible, comprehensive, and influential thinking on immigration, and the challenge of how we are to defend minority identity and encourage social solidarity in our world of global migration.  Focused on Europe as a destination for global immigration, eleven of the most influential social science and humanities authors address the increasingly complex challenges facing the expanding European Union—including labor migration, strains on welfare economies, local traditions, globalized cultures, Islamic diasporas, separatist movements, and threats of terrorism.  The authors confront the struggle shared in Europe and the U.S. to balance minority rights and social cohesion.  For the first time in one volume, these writers give startling insight into Europe’s fast-growing communities, taking the reader from global views to local detail.  From questions of high politics (If Europe includes Turkey, where does Europe end?) to local culture wars (How does McDonalds appeal to Catalans?), this collection engages theory, history, and generalized views of diasporas, including the details of neighborhoods, borderlands, and the popular literature and new media and films spawned by the creative mixing of ethnic cultures.

Roland Hsu, Associate Director of Stanford University’s Forum on Contemporary Europe at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, edited, and wrote the opening essay to make “Ethnic Europe” a foundation text and approachable guide to the experience of ethnic politics, migrant life, and movements for integration and exclusion.  With his experience at the Forum bringing scholarship, policy, and public comment to bear of our most pressing issues, Hsu offers this book on “Ethnic Europe” as an approachable guide to the general and specific of ethnic politics, migrant life, and movements for integration and exclusion. 

Roland Hsu earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, and before coming to Stanford was Assistant Professor of European History at the University of Idaho.  Hsu currently teaches, in addition to his research and work at the Forum, in the Humanities at Stanford University.

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Health and Development in Indonesia: The Effect of the 2004 Tsunami in Aceh and North Sumatra

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The talk will look at the short and longer-term implications of the tsunami for mortality and several other social and economic outcomes in Aceh and North Sumatra using data from the Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery.

Elizabeth Frankenberg is Professor of Public Policy, Director of Graduate Studies, MPP Program at Duke University. She earned her PhD in Demography and Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 1992
M.P.A. Public Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton, NJ, 1989
BA with highest honors and distinction in Geography, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, 1986.

Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Elizabeth Frankenberg Speaker Duke University
Seminars

March 2010 Dispatch - The Politics of Pornography: Islamic Governance in Democratic Indonesia

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Prominent Indonesian Muslim intellectual Nurcholish Madjid once declared “Islam Yes; Islamic political party No!” Voters in contemporary Indonesia seem to agree with this basic sentiment. Despite the recent Islamic revival that has dramatically increased public expressions of piety, Islamic political parties have failed to gain any significant electoral traction in Indonesia. In fact, between the 2004 and 2009 national elections, support for Islamic parties actually decreased from 38 percent to approximately 28 percent. Yet during those same five years, the Islamic political parties that failed to win at the ballot box mobilized enough political and popular support to pass one of Indonesia’s most divisive pieces of legislation—the Anti-Pornography Law. These seemingly contradictory elements of Indonesian politics provide starkly different impressions of Islam’s political role. Does a weak showing in the country’s electoral politics indicate the imminent demise of Islam in Indonesian politics? Or does the politically adept maneuvering of Islamists—who seek political power through legislation about bodily discipline—foretell gloomy days ahead?

Explanations for this paradox depend largely on where we look for “the political.” Political scientist Greg Fealy has described Islam in Indonesia as a mosaic. If we spend too much time focusing our gaze on one single area, he observes, we lose sight of other patterns elsewhere in the mosaic. To understand political Islam by ballot box alone is to miss the cultural undercurrents that have direct bearing on Islam and politics in Indonesia.

The anti-pornography bill was not only a political battle waged inside the parliament building; it was also a media drama that played out in the newspapers, televisions, and on the Internet. Human rights and women’s advocacy groups vehemently protested an early version of the bill, which stipulated that women would be prevented from leaving their homes during certain evening hours. From a different vantage point, the mostly Hindu island province of Bali threatened to secede, arguing that the article prohibiting “revealing” clothing in public would wreak havoc on the island’s tourism industry, still sluggish after devastating bomb attacks in 2002 and 2005. Whereas many non-Muslims worried about the “Islamization” of Indonesia, proponents of the bill lamented the “degradation of national morality.”

Popular Muslim television preachers were among the bill’s most vocal supporters. Eager to parlay their celebrity appeal into political clout, TV preachers Ustad Jefri Al-Buchori and Arifin Ilham helped to lead the so-called Million Muslim March to rally public support for the anti-pornography bill. Celebrity preacher and self-help guru Abdullah Gymnastiar led a sophisticated multimedia campaign to promote the bill through television, radio, the Internet, text messages, and public rallies. All of these popular preachers, in step with the political strategy of the Indonesian Council of Ulamas, invoked the religio-political language of moral crisis in an attempt to control the terms of political debate. Unable to win an election, Islamic groups flexed their moral muscle in the public sphere. From the pulpit of his Sunday afternoon television program, Gymnastiar characterized those against the bill as “having no shame” before God or country. Nearly every single political party, anxious not to appear “un-Islamic,” voted to support the anti-pornography legislation.

The political participation of a new generation of media-savvy religious leaders reveals a sentiment quite different from Nurcholish Madjid’s liberal aspirations. As one proponent of the Anti-Pornography Law put it, “Islamic political party No; Political Islam Yes!” Whereas utopian visions of the international caliphate may not resonate with Indonesian voters, it appears that political Islam—as played out on the public stage—is alive and well. What remains to be seen, however, is whether those who engage in the politics of piety also have the moral courage to champion Indonesia’s more pressing issues of poverty and corruption.

 

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Shorenstein APARC Dispatches are regular bulletins designed exclusively for our friends and supporters. Written by center faculty and scholars, Shorenstein APARC Dispatches deliver timely, succinct analysis on current events and trends in Asia, often discussing their potential implications for business.

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III Lisbon Conference on Competition Law and Economics

This event received over 300 participants, including experts from over 20 countries and presentations from two dozen internationally renowned experts.

The III Lisbon Conference emerged as a platform for the exchange of ideas and experiences on the various aspects of the defence and promotion of competition, contributing to the dissemination of a competition culture.

Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation-Lisbon

Frank Wolak

Stanford University 
Economics Department 
579 Jane Stanford Way Stanford, CA 94305-6072 

Website: https://fawolak.org/

(650) 724-1712 (650) 724-1717
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Holbrook Working Professor of Commodity Price Studies in Economics
Senior Fellow, by courtesy, at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
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Frank A. Wolak is a Professor in the Department of Economics at Stanford University. His fields of specialization are Industrial Organization and Econometric Theory. His recent work studies methods for introducing competition into infrastructure industries -- telecommunications, electricity, water delivery and postal delivery services -- and on assessing the impacts of these competition policies on consumer and producer welfare. He is the Chairman of the Market Surveillance Committee of the California Independent System Operator for electricity supply industry in California. He is a visiting scholar at University of California Energy Institute and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

Professor Wolak received his Ph.D. and M.S. from Harvard University and his B.A. from Rice University.

Director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development
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